The Kierkeguaardians
Leipzig, DE 2016 - unfinished
Installation of fake newspapers featuring research/ images/ drawings, TV and DVD player, videos
Variable dimensions
Three fake newspapers that compile various artworks, texts and research material and a scripted surreal zapping situation contextualize topics of terror and the role of the media which became weaponized in the fight against terror. Things are never just black or white, bad or evil, there are often little confusions.
During the time of the making there were a lot of terror attacks happening with trucks driving into crowds of people in Europe and thus the truck suddenly appeared much more dangerous than before or after that time. The first of such an incident was done by a psychologically unstable women in Prague as early as in 1973, aged only 23 she got the death penalty and can be described as a female pioneer for this kind of terror attack.
Only two years earlier Steven Spielbergs movie “Duel” was released which is about a regular guy in his red car who is followed by a creepy truck that aims to kill him. In 1963 artist John Baldessari made a work called The Back Of All The Trucks Passed While Driving From Los Angeles To Santa Barbara..., a grid of 30 color photos that are taken from a red car following various trucks. There is a remarkable resemblance to Spielbergs movie. The Californian landscape as well as the car and the trucks look very similar, and also the film material, probably Kodak, looks identical.
In my fake newspaper I also presented a work called “All The Trucks Passed While On A Bus From Berlin To Leipzig in 2016” since this was my weekly route at the time. The photo series aimed to normalize the sight of trucks in times of truck terror but in the context of the other material in the newspaper it also played with the possibility of these vehicles as a possible evil.
The project consists of various works that can be combined for a larger installation. They also touch on the topic of fear, of the power of images and on strategies that disarm these images and find reason. The found footage film “Disarming Duel” for example is a video work that removes all the scenes where the victim, a guy in his red car, is shown and thus the bad guy following him with a big truck, just becomes a truck driving through Californian landscapes. This strategy of removing the evil or good side, neutralizes any movie and it becomes something completely different. I am planning to apply this process to other movies in the future too.
Link to “Disarming Duel”
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