georg klein
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Imperial News
2003
acoustic and visual surfaces out of TV-news of international broadcasting companies during Iraq war 2003

site-specific installation
8 channel video, 10 channel audio
voice: Steffi Weismann

audio video loop: 15min.
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The raw material for this installation is video and sound edited out of television news programs from international broadcasters during the Iraq War (January to May, 2003). The focus is on the media preparation of war news: music trailers and pictorial impressions; deep bass voices announcing the news and news presenters; all-out, dynamic graphics showing war scenes from the perspective of fighter jets; “embedded journalists” with gas masks in the desert, and smart speakers in colour co-ordinated studios, who either could not, or were not permitted to say anything. In the installation, the acoustic and visual construction of the genre “News” is isolated, multiplied and regenerated in a bi-medially separated form. Political content disappears in the picture and sound effect saturated “window on the world” – the television as it stands in every living room – and in its place appears the politics of the media designers and news producers, fed by the war leading parties, picture powerful, with a fascinating allure. Only one voice by a female speaker stands outside in this audio-visual maelstrom describing news television screens from the top left corner to the down right corner.

The installation was placed in the Red City Hall in Berlin in a site specific manner. The 8 cases of the middle door of the Heraldry room, gilded with gold frames and suns, served as projection surface, as 8 parallel “windows to the world”, with mirroring in the marble door frames (columns?) and in an arrangement that resembled the side heraldry windows of the hall. 16 red horn loudspeakers, lit from within by LEDs (light emitting diodes) were arranged on the floor in two arches. The complete symmetry of the installation used the representative frame of the site in an outbidding of the media. The political site becomes the stage for the media powers as the ruling powers of representation.

Wappensaal des
Roten Rathauses Berlin
5. - 10.Okt. 2003
Senat Berlin

ausland Berlin
12. - 22. Nov. 2003
ausland berlin

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