Installation (Installation)

Jonas Staal’s installation is based on the thesis written by Fleur Agema and titled “Closed Architecture”. The paper, written by the second most important person of Geert Wilderds’ Freedom Party, concerns an ambitious model for a new prison that focuses on the reconditioning of prisoners by means of four phases. Staal’s work is developed through a book, a plan and a 3d virtual tour in the social imagery of a current minister of the State of the Netherlands.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Addressing the legacy of colonialism, The Guestbook by Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper is a slow-paced, black-and-white film exploring the German colony of Togoland, now the Republic of Togo. The guestbook in question—a thin, battered copy that Do Do, the Togolese protagonist of the film, finds in Berlin’s State Library—is filled with the signatures of colonial-era explorers. The plot follows Do Do as he seeks out Treptower Park, where the JAZZ musician Kwassi Bruce was once exhibited in a human zoo in the first German Colonial Exhibition.

Film & Video (Film & Video)

Commissioned by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and riffing on the “I Want You” army recruitment campaigns of the 1930s and 1940s, Labat asked Bay Area residents to interpret the slogan and make their own demands of the public in a series of live performance auditions. Given one minute to seize the voice of authority, contestants were asked to be the finger-pointing Uncle Sam, and their performances—as on the TV program American Idol —were voted on by a live audience. Five winners were chosen and their image and slogans appeared on posters throughout San Francisco to coincide with the presidential elections.