We
live within a culture marked by violence, both real and simulated.
Acts of violence and references to it, whether pragmatic or fictional,
dominate television, film, newspapers, magazines, video games, cartoons,
books, and a wide plethora of cultural manifestations. To this excessive
proliferation of violent images and texts we mostly react as passive
observers. The quantity and frequency of these representations has
stripped them of the effect they these representations has stripped
them of the effect they once had, often neutralizing them and turning
them into abstractions. In the society of the spectacle where the
image exercises an all-pervasive power and everything tends to be
reduced to mere representation, images of violence have become commonplace,
yet another product for consumption. Full report
Rainer Ganahl Homeland Security
"I would like to end this essay with the most impressive,
most stunning and most simple answer from the most fundamentalist,
fanatic corner of the spectrum operating with god in the center
of gravitation: Confronted with the Twin Tower Terrorism, Bin Laden
compressed all political, social, economic, cultural, racial and
religious complexity and causality into one word: “Allah did
it.” Read the complete text
Marc Bijl Searching For The Suspicious
"For ‘Channel Zero’, Marc Bijl's contribution to the show includes an intervention
with graffiti in the building inspired by the Dutch liberal poet
Bernard de Mandeville and his 'The Fable of the Bees or Private
Vices, Public Benefits'."
Go to page
Christophe
Draeger Black September
"Black September, an installation which combines film, video
and found objects, takes as its starting point the present day confluence
of international news and international terror by referencing one
of the first incidents in history in which political violence played
to an audience of millions through television: the massacre of the
Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics. Read all about it
Katarzyna
Kozyra Punishment and Crime
"Punishment and Crime depicts a group of gun enthusiasts engaged
in a bizarre and disturbing ritual hobby which involves spending
their week-end leisure time engaged in the ‘playful’
use of variety of firearms with the ‘simple’ intent
of causing destruction." Read about it
Palle Torsson Evil interiors
‘Evil Interiors’ is, a comment on how our perceptions
of violence are conditioned by the entertainment industry. Violence
is not actually depicted here, but it certainly exists in the eye
and mind of the beholder." Go to page
Elahe Massumi My Father’s Blood
“My hands were full of my father's blood,” says the
doctor in Elahe Massumi’s video testament to the war in Bosnia.
Massumi was in Mostar, Bosnia, researching footage of the war, when
she came across a clip of a doctor’s account of her treatment
of her own father’s wounds, which had been used in a BBC documentary
on the war." Full report
Heather Burnett Witness – An Aesthetic
"To view something is a passive phenomenon, one in which disconnection,
disassociation can easily occur. To witness on the other hand, carries
with it the implication of testimony, the possibility of responding,
of responsibility. It also implies the testimony of an individual
witness, not the politics or pressure of a group consensus."
Go to page
Francesco
Simeti Now I Know My ABC
"Now I Know my ABCs, Next Time Won’t You Sing with Me?,
is a series of digital prints representing a pictorial alphabet,
where each letter is visualized by a picture and a word that accompanies
it as in any child's book of ABC’s, except that Simeti’s
images and words are an alphabet of violence and destruction."
Go to page
Ritsaert
Ten Cate Pax and Peace and Etc
"The past isn't dead; it isn't even past." (Faulkner)
My work is an act of story telling within the context of the reality
as we desire it - and of what reality is - right now.
"Now we make the fiction. On the old reality we impose the
new fiction"(LeCarré) Go to page
Nikos Charalambidis Social Gym No.35: Violence through Fashion
“The exquisite attire of Mrs Maya Meijer-Bergmans during
the reception for the princess Maxima, at the opening of the exhibition
''Giganteen'' in the Hague, was the central inspiration for this
series of twelve pictures which are a comment on the so-called 'tourisms of war'." Full
story
Maja Bajevic Back in Black
"This is also the function of the jokes: their dark humor
eludes understanding and they do not suggest that humor is the vital
energy that triumphs over all the difficulties, nor does it create
a distance from the reality; humour denotes the very Real that cannot
be symbolized. The cruelty of jokes is the only truth, the unutterable,
the trauma that is not being discussed, and post-war Sarajevo acknowledges
it in the form the jokes."
Full article
Personal Cinema The Making of Balkan Wars: The Game
"One of the challenges and aims of The Making of Balkan Wars:
The Game is to recuperate the essence of the game as a tool for
communication, as a modus operandi for approaching and exploring
the complexity of the world around us. The rules of this game deal
with the problems of coexistence among peoples with different cultures,
beliefs and ideologies."
Go to article
"The video, which was found by Russian Special Forces, captures
one day – April 16, 1999 – of the war in Chechnya. It
shows the fate of the Russian 245th Motorized Infantry Regiment,
comprised primarily of new, untrained recruits, who were returning
home without helicopter or aerial support, two weeks into a general
ceasefire, and who were ambushed and wiped out by Arab fighters."
Full story
Lina Theodorou MADMASS 03
"Yes, today we open our arms to embrace and welcome these 75 million
new European citizens. This is your home too now. It is yours to
cherish, to make yourselves at home in, to dream in, to adorn, to
extend even further. And, if necessary one day, it will be your
duty to stand by our side and defend its values and its founding
principles." excerpt from speech by Romano Prodi on 16/4/04 the day of the signing of the Treaty of Accession of the 10 EU member states. Go to
page
Simone Zaugg Everybody Loves The Crime
"It is not the source of experience which enables you to understand,
rather it is the mirroring of the visible reality that lets you
see apparent day-to-dayness which moves on the borderline between
the dangerous and the criminal, between the physical and the psychic,
between the formal and the social, between the public and the private,
between voyeurism and insight."
Read more
Kendell Geers
48 hours
"Imagine you wake up one morning and your country has dissapeared.
Your bed and house are the same and your neighborhood is almost
the same, but your neighbors seem to have changed and the city is
changing even as you get out of bed." Full
story
"Boris Mikhailov’s work in ‘Channel Zero’
consists of a part of the series ‘TV Mania’ (1991-2002)
entitled ‘War’. ‘TV Mania’ is an installation
that comprises different photographs taken directly from the TV
set such as excerpts of reality shows, sex films, sports events,
war reportage and current affairs. Go
to page
David Claerbout Cat and Bird in Peace
‘Cat and Bird in Peace’ is a real-time recording of
a cat and a bird sitting in a cage. Nothing happens... the bird
looks from time to time to the left and then to the right, the cat
sometimes looks up. The animals seem to ignore one another. In contrast
to what one would expect there is no suspense raised by this -usually-
dangerous situation. This scene lasts for ten minutes, then it starts
again."
Go to page
"The concept of “virtue” and “evil”
lies at the heart of this creative investigation, which revolves
around the current political conflict in Israel." Go
to page
This online catalogue was made especially
for the exhibition "Channel Zero" by Lina Theodorou (design) and
Mark Pors (implementation), New: Into the pill
We
live within a culture marked by violence, both real and simulated.
Acts of violence and references to it, whether pragmatic or fictional,
dominate television, film, newspapers, magazines, video games, cartoons,
books, and a wide plethora of cultural manifestations. To this excessive
proliferation of violent images and texts we mostly react as passive
observers. The quantity and frequency of these representations has
stripped them of the effect they these representations has stripped
them of the effect they once had, often neutralizing them and turning
them into abstractions. In the society of the spectacle where the
image exercises an all-pervasive power and everything tends to be
reduced to mere representation, images of violence have become commonplace,
yet another product for consumption. 
