This is not a time for metaphors

Shortfilm – Animation

The artist Andrea Fraser said that in these times of exaggerated and distorted political spectacle, art should not be poetical and metaphorical, but factual and understated.
In this short-film I collage contradictory layers of meaning to ask what should be done with art in these times.

Over a general mood of imminent danger I speak texts from (mostly) psychoanalytically inclined social theorists, literary writers, art-historians and journalists from the past hundert and twenty years. I distort their ideas so that they mean that metaphorical language and imagery is one of the main ills of our times, opening society up for manipulation and exploitation. My partial copies in acrylic ink of woodprints of Kuniyoshi refer to suggestive and symbolic use of imagery. The contradiction between message and form expresses my own ambivalent attitude towards the question of metaphor.

media:	video with sound (HD, 9:45); animation with acrylic ink drawings
project start:	april 2018
public presentations (all versions, old and new):	dec 2019: Cantonale 19-20, kunsthaus langenthal nov 2018: “kunst in unruhigen zeiten” in “science talk”, sattelkammer bern
links:	short-film on vimeo (excerpt): https://vimeo.com/292597816 Please write me for link on full video!
credits:	nairs zentrum für gegenwartskunst, sattelkammer bern, moritz sommet (japanology background on kuniyoshi)