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concept: I was invited for this show by Eva Schmidt, director at the GAK, as a result to my work I made for Bremen group show "Nobody is an Island." For that show I was working with 2 Iraqi expatriates - Finan Binjan and Ahmet Baban - who emigrated to Bremen for political reasons. For this show, I decided to bring together a variety of works made specifically for this show aswell as chosen for this show. The show starts with 2 newspaper drawings, one from the New York Times on European's (German's) discussion of whether to allow the head scarf of Muslim women in the school or not; the second drawing from the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung from two days before the opening consists of an interview by the paper with Alain Finkelkraut who speaks of new forms of ant-Semitism.

Finkelkraut dedects new forms of Anti-Semitism in simplistic anti-Americanism and certain forms of globalisation critics. I myself have attended the G8 protests in Geneva (Evian) Summer of 2003 interviewing protesting and interviewing protesters. To my rather big surprise I did exactly encounter this type of anti-Semitism that expresses itself as naive anti-Americanism by nice looking people. I am very sensitive to this issue since I myself am against the current Bush administration, something this exhibition and the work series "Iraq Dialogs" also address. I try to criticise current US domestic and foreign politics that are really endangering world peace. But I am against any indifferentiated anti-Americanism as I more and more encounter it in Europe. I myself have taken on US citizenship and don't regret it since I do believe in the USA. I am also very alarmed by the kind of anti-Semitism that believes in Jewish conspiracies of any form. I am becoming more and more confronted with left leaning intellectuals and artists who utter anti-Semitic sentences of the sorts of the retired Malaysean prime minister.

The show continues wiht a selection of photographs from my series "Seminars/Lectures." I was selecting seminars and lectures that somehow addressed the current political crisis but added some complexity to it. Afghan Dialogs preceeded the Iraq Dialog series and addresses media politics with the means of embroidery.

9/11, Homeland Security, War on Terror, Axis of Evil, Old Europe, Freedom fries, Operation Iraqi Freedom are pen ball drawings that show the Bush terminology that is unfortunately defining his administration.

9/11, the illegal invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq, global terrorism, illegal Homeland Security poltitics andPatriot Acts, genocides, relgious unrests, the Middle East Crisis with the Israel - Palestina conflict, financial crisises, environmental and biotechnolgocial crimes etc.. add to a climate that reduces problems and pushes people to think in terms of "cultural clashes," "axis of evils," and worse. With my show, I try to complicate the issue and allow people to think and express themselves, something that is more and more difficult to do. It is not so much about my opinion but about some kind of a private opinioin polling that should freeze frame the political malaise of our time. The war archive - Iraq 2003 - is a televised version of the failed news paper projet that consisted tohand draw all the article concerning the Iraq until the immance of war. Already a year earlier I understood that Bush wanted this war to happen, independent of the WMD issue.

First I asked Afghans and Pakistanis about what they were thinking of the Afghan war; then I addressed Iraqi's living in Western Europe, later any Arab writing person in the Italian place of Sassuolo and since recently I am interested in anybody's oppinioin about these terible headline news. What do you think is one series that plays a direct role in this show.

 

 

I SOON WILL WRITE MORE ABOUT IT..