In the series HMKV Video of the Month, HMKV presents current video works by international artists for the duration of one month each. The video for the month of August was selected by Judith Funke.
Thomas Galler: American Soldiers
HMKV Video of the Month
On view 1 – 31 August 2014
In autumn 2003 the US country singer-songwriter Toby Keith released his song American Soldier, which conquered the hearts and charts in his home country. His number one song also reached the war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan where Keith performed to entertain the troops and soldiers watched cover versions posted by fans and relatives on video platforms in support of their loved ones. Galler’s compilation mines the online archive of interpretations of the song, which it assembles into a polyphonic, evocative and highly emotional choir piece.
American Soldiers is composed of a series of cover versions of Toby Keith’s song American Soldier (USA, 2003) performed and uploaded to YouTube by Jeffery, Joe, Zack, Debbie, the Scillan Family, Colin, Patrizio, Tasia, Shanda, Stephany, Kathy and others.
Thomas Galler (born 1970 in Baden, CH) lives and works in Zurich. His work deals with questions of media representation, authorship and shifts of meaning when working with found objects, while reflecting critically on the effects of products and phenomena of mass culture on society at large. Galler’s works are based on digital archives of photographic, video, sound and text documents, which he compiles and collages to create new meaning.
Galler’s work has recently been shown in the solo or group exhibitions Power Tracks Vol. 1: Tales and Aesthetics of Power in Western Electronic Music Cultures, Le Commun/BAC, Geneva, 2014; Surfaces: New Photography from Switzerland, Fotomuseum Winterthur, 2014; Do you speak touriste? Quand les photographes décodent les clichés, Musée d’art de Pully, 2014; Desiderata; New in the Collection, Aargauer Kunsthaus, 2014; L’art à l’épreuve du monde, Dépoland, Dunkerque, 2013; ReCoCo: Life under Representational Regimes, Museums of Bat Yam, Tel Aviv, 2013; Ed Ruscha: Books & Co., Gagosian Gallery, New York, and Museum Brandhorst, Munich, 2013; Images for Images: Artists for Tichý – Tichý for Artists, GASK, Kutná Hora, 2013; Achtung?! – Respect, Control, Change, Fotodoks, Munich, 2012; Help/Less, Printed Matter, Inc., New York, 2012; Unheimlich vertraut. Bilder vom Terror, C/O Berlin – International Forum for Visual Dialogue, 2011.