Instead of looking at "The Americans" like Robert Frank did 50 years ago, "Life In Exile" intends to turn the process around: It looks at what looks at you, at the insignia of American culture, the imprint that the last 100 years of art have left on everyday items and the face of the streets. It takes this look through the curious eyes of an expatriate who has absorbed American culture long before he first got here, who is as much puzzled by the American mind as he is attracted to life in the United States. "America" still rings of promise and many still dream, like the figures in Beckett at the most desperate moments, of "going to America". This project aims to capture how the America of such dreams looks back at us in often hideous and shockingly trivial ways. How the ideas that artists such as Hopper, Hockney or Warhol have captured are all over the place and form our minds, how the art which engages with the everyday has shaped the everyday world. As Selby put it, "anybody walking down the streets today is influenced by Joyce". "Life In Exile" aims to capture the terribly seductive crassness and bluntness of American way of life, the indulgence in the artificial, the relentless promise of happiness, the 24/7 lie fo the Willy Lomans of the 21st century. As an exercise in retaining the surprise, it aims to preserve the view of the outsider.
The subject of this "Manhattan Project", different from the secret undertaking that led to the production of the first atomic bomb in 1945, is the Manhattan borough of New York City. While there is hardly a place on the planet that has been visually documented as extensively by artists, filmmakers, street photographers, photo journalists and tourists alike, the existing body of work, with few exceptions, is astonishingly repetitive. While, consequently, images of Manhattan's landmarks, its skyscrapers and yellow cabs, its "street life", are ingrained, at least, throughout western civilizations, this may be the time to look at Manhattan not so much just as a big, dense and lively city, but almost as if it were an archeological site. To visualize the impact of Manhattan, one approach still stands out: Andreas Feininger in mid 20th century decided to leave the island, and better document it from a distance, based on the seemingly simple observation that, to look at a high rise building, you have to move away from it. This project draws from that observation insofar as it is based on the opposite approach: It moves very, very close, eliminating the clutter, similar to the effect of a distant view, and treats the city as if its inhabitants were absent, as if only the traces left on the ground were there to tell us what the nature of this place must be like. While, at first, the effect may be as if one were looking at the surface of the moon from far away, an astonishing diversity of visually encoded information emerges.
All I have to say about my project "What It Is Like To Be A Traffic Cone" is perfectly summed up in this little snippet from Sigmund Freud's The Interpretation Of Dreams, 3rd edition, Nachtraege zur Traumdeutung, Zentralblatt fuer Psychoanalyse 1911: "A fragment from the dream of a young woman who suffered from agoraphobia as the result of her fear of temptation: I am walking in the street in summer; I am wearing a straw hat of peculiar shape, the middle piece of which is bent upwards, while the side pieces hang downwards (here the description hesitates), and in such a fashion that one hangs lower than the other. I am cheerful and in a confident mood, and as I pass a number of young officers I think to myself: You can't do anything to me. As she could produce no associations to the hat, I said to her: "The hat is really a male genital organ, with its raised middle piece and the two downward-hanging side pieces." It is perhaps peculiar that her hat should be supposed to be a man, but after all one says: Unter die Haube kommen (to get under the cap) when we mean: to get married. I intentionally refrained from interpreting the details concerning the unequal dependence of the two side pieces, although the determination of just such details must point the way to the interpretation. I went on to say that if, therefore, she had a husband with such splendid genitals she would not have to fear the officers; that is, she would have nothing to wish from them, for it was essentially her temptation-phantasies which prevented her from going about unprotected and unaccompanied. This last explanation of her anxiety I had already been able to give her repeatedly on the basis of other material."
"Pax Americana" is triggered by a movie that I've seen on TV many years ago. I only remember that the movie was shot in black and white, the setting a generic urban America of the 1960ies. Most probably an independent movie, reportage style. The main character kept seeing huge signs everywhere with the words "Buy", "Consume" etc. printed on them. Apparently, no one else could see those signs. The gist of it seemed to be that it was left unclear if the signs were really there and everybody was manipulated by them on some level, or if the main character simply was completely paranoid... Again, it was many years ago that I saw that movie on TV, and only a small part of it at that. The "subliminal" theme was quite popular in the 1960ies/70ies I think, so I guess it must be from that era. So far I have asked many people if they have an idea, but without success. If you know this movie/ short film, please drop me an email thru the contact section of this site. Many thanks in advance!
"30 Dozen Eggs" is based on my impression that (1) in a world infested with visuable garbage, it is often preferrable to make an image of the word instead of the real thing and (2) with zillions of photographs of just about everything already exisiting, why not instead make images of the words for those things, or of the words for those things on the packages they come in.
All I have to say about "The End Of The Nuclear Winter" is perfectly summed up in the poem "War All The Time" by Charles Bukowski. It must be at least 10 years since I read that poem and the book probably is at the bottom of some cardboard box in some basement, forgotten during one of too many moves. But once I get hold of the book one way or another, I'll post the poem here.
After a prior visit in 2006, I started to make images in the Dolomites in the winter of 2006/07. I sought out places that are very high up, where the mountains no longer look familiar. At this altitude, being in the Alps is like being on another planet. An amazing, uninhabitable planet, where one can only stay for so long, as a visitor who carefully monitors every cloud and every bit of supply, like an astronaut would monitor vital equipment. For me the Alps are a strangely meaningful place. I have grown up in the mountains, and have left for the big cities as early as I possibly could. And to this day, I cannot feel comfortable in the kind of countryside that's welcoming and lovely. If I'm not in a big city, I must be in solitude. In the higher regions of the Alps, the frantic city life seems like a distant memory. In the winter, these places are even more deserted. The deep snow is an added trap, the silence is overwhelming. There's snow and stones, and sky. With an eye adapted to deciphering the grey surfaces of cities, I am deeply attracted to this environment, and to the surfaces that weather and time make of them.