Theseus und Kentaur, 2007
- slide projection
- 80 medium format colour transparencies projected endless, each stays for 16 second
"Whoever until this day emerges victorious, marches in the triumphal procession in which today’s rulers tread over those who are sprawled underfoot. The spoils are, as was ever the case, carried along in the triumphal procession. They are known as the cultural heritage. In the historical materialist they have to reckon with a distanced observer. For what he surveys as the cultural heritage is part and parcel of a lineage [Abkunft: descent] which he cannot contemplate without horror. It owes its existence not only to the toil of the great geniuses, who created it, but also to the nameless drudgery of its contemporaries. There has never been a document of culture, which is not simultaneously one of barbarism. And just as it is itself not free from barbarism, neither is it free from the process of transmission, in which it falls from one set of hands into another." Walter Benjamin "On the Concept of History" (Translation: Dennis Redmond)
The photos show a sculpture by Antonio Canova and its spectators in the main staircase of the Kunsthistorische Museum Vienna.