Autopropaganda or Capital is a Bad Mediator

Text by Wenzel Mracek

Liquid Realities and Apparent Transparency

Once more, business has acquired an “extraterritorial territory”, a space of its own where it can roam freely, sweeping aside minor hurdles erected by weak local powers and steering clear of the obstacles built by the strong ones. It can pursue its own ends and ignore or bypass all others as economically irrelevant and therefore illegitimate.

A number of panels appear in this installation titled Autopropaganda or Capital is a Bad Mediator like windows to events of the past and the present. As part of steirischer herbst 2018 and as an artistic intervention in the Kunsthalle Graz

, the Graz-based duo studio ASYNCHROME—Marleen Leitner and Michael Schitnig—have set up a space-filling dispositif with narrative content that makes up the very first impression. Drawings on transparent panels show

, for example, the former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher, who is characterized by her verdict “There is no alternative”, which can be read in a speech bubble.
Memories of iconic motifs from the history of the 20th century are evoked, such as the hoisting of the US flag after conquering the Pacific island of Iwo Jima. What can be seen, however, is not the reproduction of the well-known photograph or the resulting heroic monument in Virginia—studio ASYNCHROME’s version is rather a metaphorical interpretation of power and potency of all kinds. In a similar way, one is reminded of Eugène Delacroix’ Liberty Leading the People from 1830. The events of the original have been adapted: Under the lettering RESISTANCE, Liberty personified by Marianne now seizes the end of the white flag of the Iwo Jima metaphor. Marianne is standing in the midst of destroyed barricades and the visibly lifeless bodies of the victims of the revolution.
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Full Text in the Catalogue: Autopropaganda – or Capital is a bad mediator

Photo credits by Peter Brandstätter and Arnold Reinisch