La chasse / The Strip

CR 88. Year 1986

La Chasse Jochen Gerz Cr 88 Web 7
La Chasse Jochen Gerz Cr 88 Web 4
La Chasse Jochen Gerz Cr 88 Web 3

Once a year, once in a lifetime, or as far back as memory goes, it is said to have happened. "I undress and put everything (that I believe and stand for) in a fire. I burn my clothes", was written on the Parliament Building and every public toilet. It was not meant to be a question of refuting some science or other or, for instance, of denying religion, be it familiar or exotic.

Jochen Gerz does not conjure up new forms of living together, offers no solutions, sets no hope on things getting better – he just invites one to radically question oneself. For this, his means are the observation of other societies and the exposure of our thinking as entirely geared to function… After the “Strip” everything is open; the hunt bestows on us a free space for being.

Christine Tacke 1986. Translated by e_CR editors

Keine neue Formen des Zusammenlebens zeigt Jochen Gerz auf, keine Lösungen bietet er an, keine Hoffnungen darauf setzt er, dass etwas besser wird, er fordert nur zur radikalen Selbstbefragung auf. Hilfsmittel ist dabei der Blick auf andere Gesellschaften und die Entlarvung unseres auf Funktion ausgerichteten Denkens. Kunst als Sinnes- und Denkerfahrung. Nach dem "Strip" ist alles offen, die Jagd gewährt uns Spielraum für das Sein.

Christine Tacke 1986.

All those changes that are happening against the odds. But also our suppression of historical consciousness, or our ritualisation of "historical remembering". … Not history as such, but exactly our history that "we" tend to forget about, to "automatize".

A.B. Meadows 2010

Categories

Installation

2 b/w photographs on green color-field, each 150 x 100 cm, video recorder, monitor, video tape, 60 min, wooden fence, 200 x 160 cm, 3 wall texts (white vinyl letters), aluminum sheet, 45 x 30 cm, image (text on photo vellum), 150 x 100 cm

The installation occupies three rooms joined by open doorways. The first room is dark. A photograph is affixed to the front wall. The second room is semi-dark. A video monitor on the floor shows pictures of public buildings with flags in Paris. A wooden fence is mounted in one corner of the room. The third room is brightly lit. The negative of the photograph shown in the first room hangs on the front wall, directly opposite. A text and an aluminum sheet with a mirror surface appear on the other walls. Three quotations from the text are affixed to the walls of the first two rooms.

See the edition with the same title (806).

Exhibition

München 1986

Bibliography

I: München 1986, pp. 3-8. Düsseldorf 1988, pp. 90-93

II: Rein 1986

Access general bibliography

My name is Jochen Gerz