Broken Token: A Two-Screen Film Installation by Paul Rooney

Broken Token was a two-screen film by artist Paul Rooney, that explored the idea of home during times of conflict. The artist worked with Plymouth veterans, veteran families, Plymouth Cinematographer Dan Paolantonio and West Country folk singer Hannah Martin. In its exhibition, the film commission was accompanied by other materials connected to the commission and relevant to the veterans’ stories, including photographs drawn from the IWM collection.

Rooney drew upon the veterans’ and family members’ recollections of connecting with home during the Falklands War, Gulf War and War in Afghanistan, and combined these stories with film footage and a folk ballad performed by Martin. The ballad was inspired by a Victorian folk song collector’s manuscript held in The Box's archives.

Film footage of suburban garden gates in Plymouth accompanies the sound, revealing the quiet unpredictability of the ordinary. The garden images represent ‘home’, but also stand in for a more general possibility of redemption, of the potential of the past to return, changed, to renew the present: ‘Each moment of time is a garden gate,’ the song goes, ‘Through it my love may walk.’.

Exhibited at The Box in Autumn 2024-Winter 2025, authored by artist Paul Rooney. Funded by IWM 14-18 NOW Legacy Fund.