GUE SCHMIDT
ARTICLE 1.
OPENING: WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 19th 2014, 7:00 P.M.
ABOUT THE EXHIBITION: REINHOLD STURM
DURATION: 20.11. - 12.12.2014
OPENING TIMES: Tuesday - Friday 5:00 - 8:00 P.M.
MAG3 > SCHIFFAMTSGASSE 17, A 1020 VIENNA
(ACCESSIBLE BY U2 TABORSTRASSE OR U4 SCHOTTENRING/ EXIT U2 HERMINENGASSE)
www.nammkhah.at/Mag3/index.html
work - property - capital, is an installation consisting of three large-format image-collages which were photographically produced.
The main motives originate from a publicity campaign of the Austrian Ministry of the Interior from the year 2011, promoting the police service by means of an extensive poster campaign - all in all these representations had an extremely repressive and totalitarian character.
Slogans like "security", "freedom" and "commitment" used on these posters, were contrasted on the level of imagery with those of the once revolutionary bourgeoisie (freedom, equality, brotherhood).
The image plates also contain extracts from the Resolution 217 A (III) by the General Assembly of the UNO from 10th December, 1948, from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. These extracts are articles 1, 3 and 7, which make an internal reference to the nouns used and depicted in the campaign.
A further design element is the use of photographs with an obviously totalitarian character referring to structural elements of repression which still exist in the current societal mechanisms of production and reproduction surrounding us. (Whoever does not want to talk about capitalism should also be quiet about fascism. M. Horkheimer)
The statics of the image collages are compensated for by a running text moving from the right edge across the total surface of the pictures and disappearing on the left. This text consists fragments of different authors.
The installation is also an imaginative space. Prefabricated scenes from films but also elements from painting, sound and architecture are the material, which, by the technique of mounting, are arranged in a new way, alienating them from their immediate effect and making them appear as a commentary that imparts knowledge in contrast to socially conventional processes of perception. Thereby a distance is created which represents a deliberate intermediate step, breaking the rhythmic staccato of an almost endlessly offered representation of the apparent loss of societal history. (Text from the announcment of my installation with the same subject matter: likeNOTHING (comoNADA) in the LABORATORIO INTERDISCIPLINARIO PARA LAS ARTES, Bogotá, COLOMBIA 2011)
