no one ever dies here, no one has a head

"This is the Mighty B-52! Now you have experienced the terrible rain of death and destruction its bombs have caused. These planes come swiftly, strongly speaking as the voice of the government of Vietnam proclaiming its determination to eliminate the VC threat to peace. Your area will be struck again and again, but you will not know when or where. The planes fly too high to be heard or seen. They will rain death upon you again without warning..."

Quote from a psychological warfare flyer by the US Army in Vietnam

Planet Claire has pink air

All the trees are red

No one ever dies there

No one has a head

Quote from the "B-52's" song "Planet Claire"

Intro

If you enter the term "B-52" in a search engine, you will get just as many hits for fan pages for the 1980s band "The B-52's" as you will for pages by enthusiasts of the legendary B-52 bombers.

The Boeing B-52 is the oldest aircraft in aviation history still in use today. It was developed during the late 1940s and was first used in the early 1950s. Until today, the B-52, which can be used to transport atom bombs and cruise missiles among others, represents the ideologies of the Cold War and the United States' technological, military and economic superiority.

In the 1980s the American band "The B-52's", which was not named after the bomber but after an exaggerated (bomb-proof?)"bouffant hairdosa", took up a retro-futuristic look – from their outfits to their album covers – that imitated in an excessive way the pop and party culture of the 1960s, which is known to be also a product of the Cold War.

The B-52's party cult, which is as affirmative as it is counteracting, revolves around the glamour and glitter of extraterrestrial worlds. The B-52 bomber "Stratofortress" (!) may not really be able to fly close to the sun, but it can still reach a flying altitude of 15,000 meters.

The enormous flying altitude of the B-52 bomber, which is equipped with electronic visual display units, has allowed a manner of warfare that no longer has its targets in sight and which "collateral damages" reach us only as abstract images. When viewed from the "high points" of modern warfare, the victims of war are not only faceless, but they also apparently no longer die. "No one ever dies there, no one has a head," sing the B-52's in "Planet Claire".

The exhibition

The exhibition "No one ever dies there, no one has a head" presents art works that deal with forms of presentation and perception as well as the abstraction and repression of war, violence and fear in "western civilisation." They counteract the blind spots of short- and long-sightedness as well as the fading and fade-over of those images that are just as important for modern warfare as they are for modern mass media.

The artists make use of conceptual approaches and ironic distance as well as strategies of emotional involvement and irritation of the viewer.

Instead of intending to create "dismay" or "enlighten", the exhibition wants to focus on ambivalence: on our closeness and dissociation, emotionality and apathy, obsession and diversion when dealing with war, violence and fear.

Besides art works the exhibition also includes documentary material – concerning for example, a commission programme of the ”Imperial War Museum“ in London that sends contemporary artists to war sites in order to produce paintings there.

On the 12th and 13th of July 2002, the exhibition will be accompanied by a film and lecture series, which deals with problems of war journalism.

The programme presents contributions by Heather Burnett, Andreas Gedin, Christoph Draeger, Marcel Ophuls, Christian Conrad, et. al.

The Artists

Jamie Wagg, B-52, 2001, www.iniva.org/xspaceprojects/wagg/

The newer B-52 bombers are approximately 50 metres long, 12 metres high and have a wingspan of 56 metres. Jamie Wagg, has for many years, explored issues around a critical practice with regard to "History Painting", seen in the tradition of Goya and Manet. He has installed a 1:1 scale representation of a B52 on the Internet which takes the form of a monochrome "painting". All that the viewer sees is a grey field or better: a "window to the world" through which he can navigate endlessly over the surface of the bomber. Wagg radically twists the essential point of the legend of the B-52 bomber: its flying altitude, which does not allow the "enemy" to see it. However the results are in a certain way the same. The viewer now is so close to the bomber that it disappears also from his view. The blind spots of modern warfare, which not only leave behind collateral damage but also blot out the violence and the death of the individuals involved, are sharpen to a point – as is the "real time myth" of the Internet, which is known to be coming from military industries. Additionally, the work clearly uses the tropes of a formalist minimalism and simultaneously makes reference to the 1:1 scale maps of Art & Language, but has become laden with the history of Post WW2 American Imperialism, culturally, economically and militarily.

Wolf Vostell, B-52 – statt Bomben, 1968, Object graphics

Wolf Vostell created a series of "object graphics" in 1968 that were based on a prominent press photo of a B-52 bombing an invisible target: a well-known picture that was published at that time in all newspapers to demonstrate the U.S.'s supremacy over Vietnam. However Vostell's B-52 bomber, which is a roughly pixelled enlargement of the press photo, not only throws bombs, but also objects like for example a chain of yellow lollipops. Vostell suggests that the soldiers should have thrown lollipops, lipsticks and other similar items "instead of bombs" (as the series' title states). One-upping the motto "Make Love not War," the artist also plays with and on the "soft" strategies of the Cold War, whose dogma was "unlimited consumer freedom."

Rudolf Bonvie, Pariser Platz 1990, 1990, Photography

The victory of the western world with its ideologies of unlimited consumer freedom is reflected in Rudolf Bonvie’s photograph ”Pariser Platz, January 1990: Short after the ”turn”, it shows a part of the Berlin Wall covered by a banner, which says: ”Saatchi & Saatchi first over the Wall”.

Volker Eichelmann / Roland Rust / Johannes Schweiger,

"What does it mean when a whole culture dreams the same dream", 1999 - 2000

The book/poster series "What does it mean when a whole culture dreams the same dream" by Volker Eichelmann, Roland Rust and Johannes Schweiger, reads like a compilation of strange conspiracy theory and is written in the typography of LED displays. It tells, among many other things, about the incredible parallels in the lives of both American presidents Abraham Lincoln and John F. Kennedy, who were both assassinated, are listed here: Lincoln was elected to the Congress in 1846 and Kennedy in 1946, both last names contain 7 letters. Lincoln became president in 1860 and Kennedy in 1960, both of their wives lost a child while living in the White House. Lincoln's secretary was named Kennedy and Kennedy's secretary was named Lincoln. Lincoln was shot in a theatre named Kennedy while Kennedy was shot in a car named Lincoln …

Ross Sinclair, REAL LIFE....and how to live with it, 2001, Neon work

Ross Sinclair, who has the words "REAL LIFE" tattooed on his back in capital letters, has dealt with questions around the perception and construction of "reality" since 1994. In the context of various projects he has displayed the words "REAL LIFE" made of red neon tubing in public and private locations as well as institutions. The neon tubing, which on a large scale was considered as fashionable urban design in the 1960s, can be read as a reference to the artificial "make-up" of everyday life. But for Sinclair it's more a question of declaring and thinking the artificial as "reality". "REAL LIFE....and how to live with it GEOGRAPHY" is a large-format installation and neon work that radically and in an aggressive way demands the idea of citizenship and citizens to be abolished using different imperatives such as "Burn your passport," "Renounce Citizenship," or "Annihilate Nations".

Douglas Gordon, 10 MS-1, 1994, Video installation

Douglas Gordon's video installation "10 MS-1" – the title refers to the speed at which an object falls under the pull of gravity – is based on silent films of scientific experiments in World War I. The film shows a soldier in an empty room wearing only his underpants. He falls to the floor after taking a couple of clumsy steps. His repeated attempts to stand up fail miserably. Gordon has created a loop using this short scene. The man continually tries to stand up, but he never succeeds. The scene is also in slow motion, which only reinforces the impression of bitter hopelessness. Since the man appears in good physical and almost athletic shape, the viewer is left to speculate that he is suffering from shock, a war-induced neurosis or is under the influence of paralysing drugs - or he also could be an actor who is merely pretending a symptom for scientific purposes. The video is projected onto a free-standing screen, whose "state of suspension" somehow "cushions" the man's fall. The aesthetic effect of the installation is perfect and carries the video, which – already through its nostalgic references to the beginning of the age of film – is also defined by a sublime beauty. The horrors of the scenario portrayed in the film, which resembles those nightmares where one would like to escape but cannot, are present and yet at the same time preserved in a kind of double "suspense."

Annis Joslin, unhelp, Video installation

It is said that more and more people in "Western civilisation" are suffering from depression and states of anxiety. In any case, the pharmaceutical industry and more-or-less reputable providers of pycho-social care are certainly raking in huge profits from this state of affairs. The fact that there are legitimate reasons for anxiety and depression is often mercilessly overlooked when the psychologically and physically intact careerite is used as the measure. In Annis Joslin's video 'unhelp' a series of aphorisms appear as text against a thick and gloomy blanket of rain. At first glance they remind us of lines from countless self-help books that drum into the readers mind: "Tell yourself 'I am strong' 10 times a day and all your problems will disappear". Joslin, though, has inverted the content of such brainwash-like phrases, making the reader who searches for consolation and stability bluntly aware that they are a born loser and have no hope of escaping their dilemma.

Mike Marshall, Someone, Somewhere is doing this, video projection

In the video installation "Someone, Somewhere is doing this" by Mike Marshall we witness the highly aesthetical, almost hypnotic scenario of a sunset that slowly breaks across the soft waves of a water's surface. This strong spectacle of nature is accompanied by an absent minded disharmonic hum that appears from off screen. The hum breaks up the overwhelming scene but still supports its suggestive power. "Someone, Somewhere is doing this" involves the viewer in an equivocal psychological and emotional situation. He struggles between the desire of total devotion to the dreamlike situation and a certain strangeness or suspicion – and even a kind of unconscious fear.

Heather Burnett, Witness: An Aesthetic, Videowork

The representation of fictitious and of real scenarios of war or violence – that means on the one hand action movies and on the other hand television coverage of war – are following a distinctly different script so that we can clearly differentiate between the two. In action films the over-aesthetisizing of even the most blood-curdling carnage, which the camera focuses on in such a detailed manner, ensures that the death and violence involved is covered up and we can more or less enjoy the scene.

Compared to this short-sightedness of action films, television images showing theatre of war are often soberingly dissociated from the occurrence, as if what is happening is taking place on another planet.

The commentators finally dismiss the disaster through its verbal fixation. In both cases, – action films as well as authentic television images –, the violence we see is shifted to a level of unreality.

In a radical way Heather Burnett’s video, " Witness:AnAesthetic " irritates our abilities to dissociate ourselves regarding action films and war reporting or even to differentiate between both “genres”. The split screen work, which was produced for a wide-screen monitor, begins with the featuring of a number of brutal scenes from different Hollywood productions, accompanied by the theme from "Mission Impossible." A short time later, the music fades and authentic war images are shown: sequences from Sorious Samura’s documentary film "Cry Freetown" on the civil war in Sierra Leone. Unlike television images of trouble spots, the viewer here witnesses how individuals are “really” killed and “really” die; however, it takes a little while to understand that all this in fact is happening. Once the viewer realises that the auth-entic images are indeed real, they overstep the boundaries of how we are used to registering violence and death. Than, the shock that the war images generate all in a sudden is with a second delay carried over also to the Hollywood images so that the viewer in some ways is no longer able to make a difference between fiction and the authentic disaster.

Heather Burnett's video does neither represent an act of enlightenment nor does it aim to shock the viewer. Instead, the artist succeeds in counteracting the viewer's perception by irritating his well-established viewpoint, depending on the suppression method used in the representation of on the one hand fictitious violence and on the other hand authentic violence.

A project by

medien_kunst_netz dortmund

> hartware > Museum am Ostwall > Kulturbüro Stadt Dortmund

 

Context

Scene: Großbritannien, 36. Internationale Kulturtage der Stadt Dortmund

 

Curated by

Hans D. Christ, Iris Dressler

 

Assistants

Tabea Sieben

 

Technics

Hans D. Christ, Uwe Gorski

 

Courtesy

The artists

The British Council, London (Douglas Gordon)

The Agency, London (Heather Burnett, Ross Sinclair)

Museum am Ostwall, Dortmund (Wolf Vostell)

Museum Bochum (Wolf Vostell)

 

 

Thanks to

Jari Lager, VTO Gallery, London

Bea de Souza, The Agency

 

 

Support

Kulturbüro Stadt Dortmund

Ministerium für Städtebau und Wohnen, Kultur und Sport des Landes NRW

British Council