© by Cardiff/Miller / Robot arm design Carlo Crovato / Music »Heartstrings« by Frieda Abtan / Percussion assistance Titus MaderlechnerTHE KILLING MACHINE
Once there was Kafka. The famous author whose literary work merely derives from the unknown somewhat absurd. Regarded as one of his most shocking essays In der the Strafkolonie deals with a cruel means of punishment that tattoos words into the bodies of the accused ones. The chosen ones will die in advance of this cruel way of torture.
As disturbing as Kafka’s essay is Janet Cardiff’s and George Bures Miller’s »The Killing machine« establishes a straight connection to the essay and puts it to terms of modern life. Eventually the installation turns out as equally compelling.
The room filling installation owns a special place within Number Two: Fragile – the latest exhibition of Julia Stoschek Collection. Specifically built up for the Stoschek environment it is displayed at the centre of a cubical room deprived of anything else. The prestigious object will move on to New York’s Guggenheim after the exhibition ends in late fall 2009.
Initially meant to serve as a critical viewpoint on death penalty it provokes a far more wider range of emotions in reception. Interactive to the point which allows the visitor to start the installation by pushing a red button the killing machine successively fills the room with subtle light and appalling sounds: Robotlike arms (the infamously-known video shot by Chris Cunningham for Bjork’s »All is full of love« comes to mind) shed a discrete lighting into the darkness; a glittery discoball hanging of the ceiling embraces the whole room at the end of the horrorlike spectacle. The whole set is underlined by voice output and the absurd playing of violins which together account for an uncanny athmosphere.
From a foremost direct point of view it can be taken as a critical answer to death penalty which evidently spreads all over the USA. But that’s too simple- and that is when killing machine becomes most appealing: It deals with the omnispresent fact of punishment within its own rules of performative acts; it answers the penalty with theatrical performance: It profoundly plays within the gap of critical notion and theatrical occurence. A gap that can only derive from the fact that it does not want to have an opinion or a strict mindedness. Instead it plays by rules of sheer absurdity exaggerated to a pinnacle only a few can bear.
The Killing machine deals with this in such a vivid brilliance that you cannot prevent yourself from pushing the red button again and again.
The art-duo and married couple Cardiff/Miller stated a brave work of art. A Piece that does not take up a stance on a distinctive position, a piece that leaves the visitor shattered and thoroughly alone: You will remember the aroused emptiness for a very long time.
The Killing Machine can be seen at Julia Stoschek Collection
Düsseldorf-Oberkassel, Schanzenstraße 54, until late fall 2009.
Visit JULIA STOSCHEK COLLECTION Website