Group exhibition 'The End of the World as We Know It'
16 Sept - 14 Nov 2010
La Kunsthalle Mulhouse

Songs made of newspaper cuttings

One of the most impressing works at the group exhibition 'The End of the World as We Know It' of the La Kunsthalle Mulhouse (FR) comes from the Argentinean multimedia artist Jorge Macchi who presents the video installation '12 Short Songs' (2009). Macchi perforates randomly collected, old newspaper cuttings about the first days of the financial crisis and plays them on an historical music player. The relaxed music is a total contrast to the headlines.

The exhibition focuses on the signs that we know from history and which are the bricks of our future as we communicate with them. The inspiring idea came from the 1987 REM song 'It's the End of the World as We Know it (and I feel fine)'; the music video shows a young skateboarder in an abandoned house filled with garbage-a-like souvenirs.

Another installation are the Brickbats (bricks covered by book covers). The art work is contributed by the French fictive artist 'Claire Fontaine' (in real the artist duo Fulvia Carnivale und James Thornhill) approaches art from a semiotic view which leads to a mathematical addition: reality is the sum of the effects of reality.

"This can be found in contemporary art practice as well. What art history and theory describe as "détournement" signifies the complex practice of dismantling existing aesthetic structures and reassembling them in an altered and subverted way in order to question or critique society, traditional values, and the status quo. All art, in some ways, conveys a vision for the future." The exhibition is accompanied by an audio guide kunsthallemulhouse.com.


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