un-frieden. sabotage von wirklichkeiten
discord. sabotage of realities

A Tour of the Exhibition
by Inke Arns
 

control >> in-security

The first zone in discord. sabotage of realities is not, strictly speaking, self-contained but runs as a network of checkpoints through the different areas of the exhibition. Control is implemented subtly rather than conspicuously, as something that allegedly does not exist (1).
The passer-by who hears the cultivated female voice in the checkpoints provided by Anja Wiese's sound installation Registration Range is repeatedly reminded that he/she has not gone unnoticed. Every change of position is registered and commented on with acoustic, poetical instructions.
With its invariably futile attempts to bring some order into abstract notions, Marcus Bastel's work Search for a Method, by contrast, is devoted to our need to control our own environment, the urge to harness the flow of information, but also to our fear of losing control.
Heath Bunting sets a different emphasis with his 'alarming' postcard campaign, in which he affixed anti-theft tags to postcards and mailed them to various firms in Hamburg that work with electronic security systems. In this way, the person delivering the mail became a triggerer of alarms, the actual purpose of such systems was turned upside down.
 

 state machineries >> law, discipline, repression

A central position in this zone is occupied by the consulate of the NSK State in Time, a state whose borders, unlike those of other newly founded states, are demarcated neither geographically nor by national groupings. This new state positions itself rather as a structure in time, its geographical dimensions dependent on the location of citizens holdings its passport. Thus, it is a state in constant flux. A number of cases are on record of people lacking valid travel documents, e.g. Bosnians during the Yugoslavian war, who were able to pass international frontiers with the NSK State in Time passport. Christoph Irrgang is concerned with systems of order of a different type. His installation projects onto public spaces in the evening specialized terms from the garments industry. Bizarre standard formulations such as 'deviation in shape' or 'standard circular dimension' demonstrate their kinship with ethnological anatomical descriptions.
 

 border politics >> walking the tightrope

Frantisek Skala shows in this zone a large-format photo series with 'application figures' of the Sark, a universal offensive and defensive weapon. The visual series of peculiar offensive or defensive figures is underlined by philosophic comments.
In Experiment on myself I: tear recovery, Birgit Brenner photographically documents with relics and statistics her attempt to recover the statistical average amount of tears shed in the course of a year.
In Wandering Position, Yukinori Yanagi re-traces the path followed by an ant within a demarcated area over a period of 25 hours: 'A Frame is now given to you in which you are to wander'. What remains is a red-chalk drawing documenting the ant's unwearying attempts to escape; a web of paths that thins out in the middle of the demarcated area but densifies towards the edges. A possible reference to visible and invisible (social/political) border relationships.
The dissolution of borders and the disruption of orders was the concern of tonnage inc. in their action tonnage 1: on two different evenings, a crew permanently swapped over the entire furniture of three cafes in Hamburg. The irritation this provoked had less to do with the 'disruption' of an order, however, than with the superimposition and substitution of one system of order for another.
 

 everyday life >> alienation

A credit card functions as entrance ticket to the exhibition. The words 'Does your Mama know you're out' are printed in silver over the trunk of a white man holding in his arms a black baby. The perfidiousness of the image strikes the viewer only at second glance. A furious comment on the connection between marketing strategies and social exclusion, seemingly casually presented on an everyday means of payment.
Stan Douglas is also motivated by ways of dealing with images and the emphasis on the strange appearance of these everyday pictures. His Television Spots - a group of 12 short videotapes showing disturbingly bizzare everyday situations, were slotted without further comment into the ad blocks broadcast in the evening by various U.S. TV stations. The spots all follow an allegedly familiar scenario without, however, ever approaching a recognizable catharsis or offering any conclusion of the sparse narrative. The evening's viewing they offer is irritating in the true sense of the word.
Joergen Erkius donates the furniture to match these spots: sofa, carpet, chairs, table and other objects he slits open, saws up and demolishes. He then painstakingly sews or glues back together the debris. At the end of the exhibition, he will return the re-assembled items of furniture to their original places in his apartment.
The installations created by Jayce Salloum and Bea de Visser also orbit around issues of identity and dissimilarity. But whereas Salloum's Kan ya ma Kan deploys an alignment of images of the individual and collective psyche to question the public (media) representation of Lebanon in the western world, Bea de Visser investigates the myth of the identicalness of twin sisters in Blink - an interior of difference, deconstructing it with painting and morphing techniques.
 

 news services >> disinformation

In terms both of spatial layout and content, this zone has a number of points of intersection with the adjacent zones. The goal of the Invisible Embassy of Seborga is to attain full control over the public image of the separatist movement of Seborga, a village that wants to secede from Italy. The Invisible Embassy has taken possession of the idea of an autonomous Seborga and mixes 'authentic' news about actual events with fictional reports.
The File Room by Muntadas offers another news service of a special kind. In a room lined with filing cabinets it is possible to retrieve from an Internet database information relating to the history of censorship. This 'negative archive', to which the visitors can add new information, documents blacked-out and forbidden information, in this way writing a kind of parallel history of information.
With its 'deluge of banal, wholly useless pictures often depicting deserted landscapes'(2), the 'Visitor' Enterprise questions the sense of an all-embracing cartographical obsession using images (media images especially) to satisfy its own needs.
 

 science fiction & economy >> the administration of the future

Located in the Kunsthaus, this zone accommodates prospects of imminent dangers, possible preventive action and references to future economic factors. Kenji Yanobe combines these points in his Emergency Escape Pods - sliding one deutschmark into the slot gives you a short ride in one of the protective vessels equipped with Geiger counter, LED displays, shock absorbers and a survival kit. The 'emergency pod' will offer permanent shelter, however, only if you constantly replenish the supply of coins.
In the same zone the Institute of Media Diseases has installed a first-aid station that will supposedly allow the early detection of symptoms of media diseases. The digitization of our environment brings with it new clinical pictures; the work of the Institute of Media Diseases will continue.

 Hamburg, December 1996

 (1) Gilles Deleuze confirms in 'Postscript on the Societies of Control' the emergent transition from the Foucaultian 'societies of discipline' to 'societies of control', in: Gilles Deleuze, Negotiations, Columbia University Press, New York, 1996; see also: http://www2.stg.brown.edu/-groupa/deleuze.html
(2) tunguska index / Peder Iblher, The 'Visitor' Enterprise, Berlin, 1995