History Exhaustion (2009)

installation, radio & antenna, sound, artist book with narration, The Entrepreneur, The Worker, The Student (3 video performances), Stray Area (9 digital prints 40x30cm)

The frame and background of this installation is a narration: Three protagonists, representing different parts of society – the entrepreneurship, social criticism and unionized labour, set off on an expedition, after they receive radio calls from an unknown area. The exhibition is comprised of artifacts and objects from this fictitious world. As independent works, these artifacts build an evocative continuum, which has been translated into the form of an exhibition.

The main exhibition space is dominated by an eight meter long antenna. Through a short wave receiver, an automated voice announces a code of numbers. During the Cold War this so-called »number stations« were used to communicate secret messages to spies and secret agents. Only with the help of the correct counter code could these columns of figures be decoded. In the narration, one of the protagonists – the worker – convinces his friends to search for the number stations’ origin.

Along the long wall hangs a series of images depicting different mountain-scapes. These images refer to the different stations of the alpine tour such as the »Valley of the foreshortened Critique on Capitalism« or the »Precipice of the Over Production Crisis« where the protagonists meet with an accident or are possibly left behind. It is only the worker who disappears in an unknown area…

A series of videos, the Exhaustion Trilogy,  present the phantasmata of the protagonists and they are usually shown along the installation.