Your Presence Leads to Conflict

Doing and Undergoing, Columbia University Teachers College, New York, 2013
Galerie pro arte, Austria, 2005
Front Room Gallery, By Artificial Resemblance, New York, 2005

“Your presence leads to conflict (however, there is little reason to think that your absence will lead to peace.)” deals with politics and its influence and/or the other way round.

Doing and and Undergoing:
The project, installed in the old gym of the Teachers College, deals with individuality vs groups/ crowds. How do politics, especially during their age of globalization affect the individual? At Columbia Teachers College three Everlast heavy bags are hanging from the ceiling with three different imprints: one is a slogan from a recent student protest in India against rape, one is a quote from Goethe translated into english and another one, also the title of the piece, is a quote from a Sunni leader about Shiites during the recent Iraq war.

Proarte:
In the solo show in Salzburg, I involved one “Your presence leads to conflict” boxing bag as a centerpiece, a video with people performing to Bob Dylan’s song “Masters of War” in colorful costumes and a series of posters (pieces of one huge printout blown up from a tiny photograph, printed in bip map format and mounted on wood).

The Front Room Gallery:
As the banner piece for “By Artificial Resemblance: Portraits from Four Centuries”, an exhibition of portraits from a variety of periods and styles, I installed the boxing bag at the entrance of the gallery with the imprint: Your Presence leads to conflict, however, there is little reason to think that your absence will lead to peace