Prometheus

In the piece in D., P. is the man who will not let himself be reproduced. He blinds the camera lens directed at him with the light coming from the sun (with the mirror). He cannot bear to be visible, i.e. subject to reproduction. What is visible can be transformed into an image, made immobile, dead (while still alive). (59)

Jochen Gerz 1976

P. im Stück von D. ist der Mann, der sich dagegen wehrt, abgebildet zu werden. Er blendet mit dem Licht, das von der Sonne kommt (mit dem Spiegel), die Linse der Kamera, die auf ihn gerichtet ist. Er kann es nicht verwinden, sichtbar zu sein, d.h. reproduzierbar. Was sichtbar ist, kann man in ein Bild verwandeln, unbeweglich machen, fix, tot (bei lebendigem Leib). (59)

Jochen Gerz 1976

Gerz subverts, attacks and exposes the mechanisms and tenors of bourgeois culture by integrating them in his art...

Peter Friese 1991. Translated by e_CR editor

Gerz unterläuft, attackiert und ironisiert die Mechanismen und Inhalte bürgerlicher Kultur, indem er sie in gebrochener Form in seine Kunst integriert.

Peter Friese 1991

Like this, in a tenacious and uncomfortable resistance against the lethal force of a culture of visibility, he confronts the viewer with himself. It depends on him, not on art. Art becomes the means of awareness of one’s own indolence, immaturity, helplessness.

Thomas Wagner 1997. Translated by e_CR editors

So konfrontiert er im zähen, unbequemen Widerstand gegen die tödliche Macht einer Kultur der Sichtbarkeit den Betrachter mit sich selbst. Auf ihn kommt es an, nicht auf die Kunst. Diese wird zum Mittel der Erkenntnis der eigenen Trägheit, Unmündigkeit, Ohnmacht.

Thomas Wagner 1997

Finding his way through [a medium ED.] corresponds, in Gerz's work, to a two-sided approach which implies both wearing it out - since he pushes the medium to its technical limits - and sounding the depths of his own personality. The artists's mistrust of the medium is such that it causes him to "make it part of his life so that he will corrupt it in turn", knowing full well that he cannot escape the risk of contamination. Thus it is through an art of subversion and resistance that the artist tries to reveal the existing structures of transmission, inasmuch as they are tools of power, yet without confronting them with anything other than life itself.

Marion Hohlfeldt 2002