http://www02.zkm.de/mediumreligion/
Exhibition in ZKM I visited a couple of years ago.
1st Light, 2005
Since particularly 9/11 and the war in Iraq, Paul Chan has become a key
figure in the American art scene as well as in political activism. As
part of the series
The 7 Lights, the computer-animated video
1st Light
describes a vision of Biblical elation – the ascending of the believers
to Heaven – making reference to 9/11. The floor projection shows
shadowy silhouettes of bodies and everyday objects falling to the ground
and equally rising towards the sky. This evokes the 1969 images of
floating astronauts as much as those of bodies tumbling from the burning
towers – iconic images of hope and terror, of utopia and the apocalypse
merge. They show how Chan's deconstructivist critique of civilisation
rests on the idea that a random happiness is possible.
Paul Chan, * 1973 in Hong Kong (CN, formerly GB), lives and works in New York (USA)
mΛmı, 2008
The exterior projection of
mΛmı
shows eight young women in Iranian school uniforms standing in a
row
before a blue backdrop. They slowly close their eyes and dissolve into
the blue of the curtain. The rocking chair in the interior is a play on
an unadorned "throne," and the television set shows a 6-year-old
professional mourner weeping bitterly.
mΛmı
reflects the role of the media, television in particular; how it has in
general, and in a motherly way, substituted religion and particularly
the Pastor, and how religion, once considered as "the opium of the
masses", has become the opium of a religious media-based state and its
masses. The Persian word for curtain,
pardé, carries equally the meanings of
screen,
hymen and
shroud.
The blue pardé refers both to the blue box technique and various
mise-en-scènes used in Iran's political visual system of representation.
The installation
mΛmı is oriented towards Mecca.
Barbad Golshiri, * 1982 in Tehran (IR), lives and works in Tehran (IR)
Boris Groys
Geen opmerkingen:
Een reactie posten