Krzysztof Wodiczko

Exhibited at Galerie Lelong & Co., New York, January 25 – March 7, 2020

During the past 50 years of my artistic practice, most of my projects have been “interventional” and at times, termed “contestations.” They aimed at disrupting public silence over neglected or unrecognized social and cultural issues. The voices of marginalized peoples were amplified and transmitted in official public spaces, and in doing so, the development of these projects exposed systems of injustice, exclusion and alienation.

The scale of socio-political divide across the world today is unprecedented in our living memory. Interventional and contestational approaches may no longer have a chance to reach anyone among those deeply entrenched on their own side of the politico-ideological barricade. In today’s divided world, it is a dialogue itself that is neglected, excluded, silenced and marginalized.

The narrative held by one side about the way it is perceived by the other side seems mutually false—grossly negative and simplified—due to the lack of trust and willingness to listen to each other. This is further conflicted by the faith placed in their respective political leaders who further enforce such perceptions and ideological positions.

A public dialogue must be valued, encouraged, respected, developed and cultivated as a vital function of democratic culture. I strongly believe that in such a dangerous and progressively self-perpetuating situation, our artistic, cultural and pedagogical work must focus on establishing new conditions and methodologies for an informed and generous dialogue across the divide. This would bring about a new political culture through the art of mutual listening, building communicative trust among those who hold different positions, experiences, and views.

A House Divided… focuses on deeply diverged opinions, beliefs and perspectives on key social, cultural and political matters exchanged and voiced by a group of conservative and liberal residents of the politically divided Staten Island. Staten Island is evenly split between Republican and Democratic voters. The project’s participants include those who are close to each other as co-workers, old friends or even members of the same family.

Speaking to each other, they explain and exchange their positions and disagreements while expressing their mutual wish for careful and respectful listening to the opposite side. They question the present-day tyranny of uninformed and unfair opinions and a false, simplified image of political opponents that are perpetuated within their own isolated circles—taking too often the form of mindless and painful insults thrown at others publicly and privately. This is an appeal for themselves, for others and for the entire country.

In this project, the two divided sides have yet to reach a true open-ended dialogue, but they do share the same sentiments in agreeing that it is necessary, and even advocate for it.

I hope that A House Divided... is a first step towards my further response to such a need.

Krzysztof Wodiczko collaborated with twelve refugees who have been resettled in the United States; their filmed likenesses and spoken narratives are superimposed on the historic 1881 monument to Admiral David Glasgow Farragut, lauded in his day as a Union naval hero during the Civil War. Pertinent to this project is current scholarship documenting how the American Civil War drove millions—soldiers, civilians, stragglers, enslaved Africans, free people, Northerners and Southerners—from their homes to generate a nineteenth-century refugee crisis. Similarly, each filmed participant’s home country has suffered the devastation of civil war which prompted Wodiczko to choose the Farragut location for this project to compare how select individuals are lionized in wartime and others are overlooked. With footage of people from Africa, Central America, South Asia, and the Middle East, the bronze monument emerges as a surrogate for refugees whose diverse plights, harrowing journeys, grueling fortitude, and quest for democracy have recently brought them to this country. Refugees are adults and children who flee their home countries because of war, persecution, and violence and who cross borders into the promised safety of another country. Most of the speakers in this project have spent years in refugee camps.

National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul, 2017
In this projection, inspired by the recent social movement in Korea, various Koreans, including a mother of a victim in the Sewol ferry disaster, a fired laborer, a North Korean defector and a gay rights activist, tell their stories upon a replica statue of the Korean independence fighter and politician Kim Koo (1876-1949).

Participatory and Interactive Projection- Animation of the Statue of Goethe and Schiller

Weimar Theater Plaza August 26-28, KuntsFest festival, during Goethe’s birthday celebrations.

On three consecutive days from 20:30-24:00. Passers-by could ask questions and exchange opinions with the refugees from Syria, Afghanistan and other countries via statue of Goethe and Schiller. Using projection mapping software, the participants were projected and “mapped” on the monument in real time in such a way that Goethes and Schillers appeared to come to life as current refugees. A specially designed podium, symbolically equal in height to the statues, invited the public to speak with with the animated figures. In part, this participatory installation gave a platform and a voice to refugees to publicly shared their experiences after arriving to Germany and from before.

Warsaw, 2015

Projection on Wojciech Bogulawski’s statue in Warsaw, Poland utilizing texts by the author. Performed by actors of the National Theatre.

In collaboration with: Tomasz Kubikowski

Organizer: Teatr Narodowy

Harvard Yard, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 2015
In the projection, the stone statue of John Harvard, the clergyman to whom America’s oldest university (originally a college) owes its name, “spoke” with the voices and gestures of students. Their comments were often critical of the university’s present-day policies.
Projection organized by the Harvard University Committee on the Arts (HUCA).

Place des Arts, Montreal, Quebec, 2014
In this site-specific large-scale projection, the voices and bodies of homeless people frequenting downtown Montreal fi lled the multi-tiered façade of Théâtre Maisonneuve. Working closely with St. Michael’s Mission and other community organizations, Wodiczko offered the homeless a space to share their experiences, tell their stories, express their fears and desires. Situating the staged projection on a theater building meant that its participants became both spectators of offi cial culture and actors playing in their own theater, following their own lived scripts. Giving voice to marginalized persons, the artist included their narratives in the city’s public discourse.
Projection organized as part of La Biennale de Montréal, co-produced by the Musée d’art contemporain de Montréal, the Quartier des Spectacles, and the Phi Centre, in collaboration with St. Michael’s Mission.

Mechelen, 2012
The facade of the Mechelen city hall was transformed into an audiovisual communication medium for immigrants. Special software made it possible to record the eyes of the persons who gave their testimonies for the project. Magnified images of eyes looking at the city from the façade of the 13th-century building were accompanied by sound: the voices of immigrants speaking about their traumatic experiences, resounding from a building of symbolic significance and usually inaccessible for them. The artist conducted a series of interviews and recording sessions with immigrants thanks to the support of the local organization Werkgroep Integratie Vluchtelingen.
The projection was part of the exhibition Newtopia: The State of Human Rights.
Curator: Katerina Gregos

New York City, 2012
In this projection carried out at New York’s Union Square, the voices and images of Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan veterans were projected on the 143-year-old statue of the US president and veteran of the worst war in US history, Abraham Lincoln. The images of contemporary veterans were projected on a monument of a historical figure, inscribing themselves in its symbolic status, while the statue lent them its moral authority. The monument became a medium through which the veterans shared their experiences in public space. For a month the immobile statue was animated with gestures and voices that made it part of the public debate on war and the fate of veterans. Updated in its symbolism, the Lincoln statue had earlier been a silent witness of numerous protests against the Iraq war staged in Union Square.
Organized by: Galerie Lelong and More Art.

Wzgórze Partyzantów [Partisans Hill], Wrocław, 2010
The projection took place against the background of a 19th-century colonnade symmetrically surrounding a square that became fi lled with war veterans’ voices. On the colonnade’s middle arcade was projected the filmed image of a candle flame moved by the speakers’
breath. A similar synchronization of image and sound had been used by the artist in The Veterans’ Flame presented a year earlier in Fort Jay on New York’s Governors Island. In Wrocław, he chose the site of Partisans Hill, a place centrally located in the city but seldom visited by its inhabitants, and one marked by history: the remnants of a former bastion in the city’s fortification system, turned in the 19th century into a leisure ground, with elegant buildings and a viewing tower. In 1932, a monument to German soldiers who had lost their lives in the colonies was erected, and towards the end of World War II the city’s central military command headquarters was located in tunnels under the hill. Run-down after the war, then revitalized, and recently run-down again, the place became the scenery in which Polish war veterans from Iraq and Afghanistan spoke for three days about their experiences and traumas and the impact of those on their daily lives.
Organized for the 10th International Film Festival New Horizons.
Curator: Beata Nowacka-Kardzis

Fort Jay, New York City, 2009
In Krzysztof Wodiczko’s Veterans’ Flame, the image of a candle fl ame moves with the recorded voices of veterans sharing accounts of war and its aftermath in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Organized by New York City with support of Creative Time organization.

Clock Tower, Zamek Culture Center, Poznań, 2008
The projection was on the clock tower of a former imperial castle, now the Zamek Culture Center. On all four faces of the tower, high overhead, were projected pre-recorded images of homeless people, their magnified figures emerging like busts from the background of the fine architecture. In sequences lasting roughly 10-15 minutes, the protagonists spoke of their experiences of homelessness, their superimposed voices making it impossible to follow any single narrative. The viewer could listen to the individual recordings outside the tower, where loudspeakers emitting the soundtrack of the projection had been installed. The project was realized in collaboration with Poznań’s Pogotowie Społeczne, an NGO helping unemployed and homeless persons.
Project organized by Signum Foundation in association with the Zamek Culture Center, Poznań.

Kunstmuseum Basel, Basel, 2006
In the projection, carried out on 23 February 2006 on the building of Basel’s prestigious Kunstmuseum, the artist gave a voice to Switzerland’s illegal immigrants, commonly known in French as the sans-papiers [people without papers]. Living in the gray zone and usually invisible, they were now made visible in the very heart of the city’s public space. The moving image projected on the upper part of the building’s façade made the impression as if four immigrants were sitting on the roof, talking to each other and sometimes doing a little bit of singing in their native tongues. The viewer could see only their legs dangling from the roof of the museum and gesticulating hands, while the faces and figures remained invisible. In a casual conversation, two men and two women talked about their lives and their experiences as illegal immigrants. Out of a total of six hours of footage, the artist selected a seven-minute recording that was presented as a loop.
Projection organized in conjunction with the exhibition Flashback. Revisiting the Art of the 1980s in Kunstmuseum Basel, and with the assistance of Sans-Papiers, an organization working with illegal immigrants.
Curator: Philipp Kaiser

Warsaw, 2005
The projection took place on 14 November 2005 on the façade of the Zachęta National Gallery of Art building in Warsaw. The distinguished building in Warsaw’s historical downtown resounded with the voices of women, whose images the artist projected on the two pilasters supporting the neo-baroque building’s tympanum. The projection dealt with the unequal status of women, their problems, traumas, psychological and physical domestic violence, alcohol abuse. The images of women supporting above their heads the portico’s entablature with the inscription “Artibus” [To the arts] were represented in the role of caryatids, an ancient Greek term that originally meant women sold into slavery. The mute caryatids in the twenty-minute looped projection spoke with the voices of women carrying the burden of various traumatic experiences. Hailing from the city or the country, they spoke of enslavement and humiliation, talking to each other or directly to the audience.
Projection organized in conjunction with Monument Therapy, the artist’s solo exhibition at the Zachęta National Gallery of Art, Warsaw.
Curator: Hanna Wróblewska

St. Louis, Missouri, 2004
The projection on the building of St. Louis’s main public library dealt with the consequences of violence and the therapeutic potential of public discourse. Participants included both the victims of violence and the perpetrators. Over the course of three nights, April 16-18,
confessions were played back over loudspeakers of six St. Louis residents who had lost their loved ones to violence and of inmates serving sentences at the Potosi Correctional Center prison. Their highly moving testimonies were accompanied by images, projected on
the library building’s neo-renaissance façade, of gesticulating hands, seemingly emerging from inside the building, enlivened by the gestures and voices of people speaking publicly about their traumatic experiences. During the projection, pre-recorded testimonies were
mixed with live comments. Some of the participants spoke from a studio inside the library, and members of the audience were able to use a microphone installed outside. According to the original concept, the projection was to take place on the façade of the historic Old Courthouse building, but a week before the planned date the federal government withdrew its permission.
Projection accompanying the international symposium Critical Praxis for the Emerging Culture: A Collaborative Investigation into the Nature of Cultural Transformation Brought About by Technology and Media, organized by the School of Architecture and the School of Art of Washington University in St. Louis.
Coordinator: Bob Hansman

El Centro Cultural, Tijuana, 2001
The projection was carried out on February 23-24 in Tijuana, a city located right by the Mexican-US border and in the middle of the maquiladora belt, a border-adjacent concentration of manufacturing and assembly plants run by international corporations using low-cost Mexican labor. The site of the projection was one of the city’s symbols, a cultural center comprising theaters, museums, galleries, restaurants, and so on. Images of the faces of the projection’s protagonists were projected on the huge spherical shape of the Omnimax movie theater. The artist had worked with a group of Mexican women who now spoke about their often traumatic experiences, sexual harassment at the workplace, domestic violence, family disintegration, police brutality. The pre-recorded statements were interrupted and rounded out live in response to viewer reactions. In Tijuana the participants took part in the live projection for the first time, thanks to a special head-mounted device comprising a camera, a microphone, and a portable transmitter. Blown-up to huge dimensions, the “live” faces of six women and their amplified voices, speaking of issues that had until now been mostly taboo, meant the projection spectacularly claimed the city’s public space. During his year-long preparations for the project, the artist worked with local organizations that support women, Factor X and Yeuani.
Organized as the final event of InSite 2000, the Border Art Festival of San Diego and Tijuana.
Curators: Michael Krichman and Carmen Cuenca

Atomic Bomb Dome, Hiroshima, 1999
The projection took place on August 7–8, 1999, the 54th anniversary of the atomic bombing of Hiroshima. The background was formed by the Atomic Bomb Dome, the only building located close to the epicenter of the explosion that wasn’t completely destroyed. On the embankment of the river Motoyasu at the foot of the Dome’s ruin, today known as the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, the artist projected magnified images
of the hands of the explosion’s victims, while their recorded testimonies were played back through loudspeakers. The images of the gesticulating or sometimes motionless hands were refl ected in the surface of the river, in which thousands died, jumping into the irradiated water in the hope of soothing pain caused by burns. The images of hands were accompanied by recorded testimonies of the traumatic experiences of a dozen or so victims of the explosion as well as their children and grandchildren. Among them were also testimonies concerning the tragedy, seldom mentioned in Japan, of Korean slave workers killed by the A-bomb. The 39-minute projection, presented three times a night, included a total of fifteen testimonies.
Organized by the Hiroshima City Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the solo exhibition following the artist’s receipt of the Hiroshima Art Prize a year earlier.

Charlestown, Boston, Massachusetts, 1998
The projection took place on three consecutive nights, September 24-26, 1998. The Bunker Hill Monument is Boston’s most famous public monument, commemorating the fight for freedom during the American Revolution. The construction of the granite obelisk in Egyptian style started on the 50th anniversary of the Battle of Bunker Hill, fought between American colonists and British troops in 1775. Completed after seventeen years, the 221-foot structure stands on Breed’s Hill, the highest hill of Charlestown, Boston’s working-class district that has a particularly high murder and violence ratio, especially among young people. The artist transformed a historical monument devoted to freedom fighters into a monument of contemporary heroes trying to fight violence. On top of the huge obelisk were projected images of the faces of people recounting their experiences, mothers of murdered children, or young people who had lost their brothers or sisters. Shown from the waist up, they held candles or portraits of their dead loved ones, the huge images
of their faces enlivening the monument, and their painful confessions and testimonies breaking the borough’s conspiracy of silence. Aimed at giving a voice to the aggrieved, the projection was co-organized by the Charlestown After Murder Program, a support group for victims of violence founded by local mothers who had lost their children to violence. The 19-minute looped projection featured the testimonies of three mothers and two brothers of murdered persons.
Organized as part of the project Let Freedom Ring by the Institute of Contemporary Art (ICA/Vita Brevis) in Boston.
Curator: Carole Anne Meehan

Kraków, 1996
In the Kraków projection the artist for the first time used moving image and sound, using video projectors and speakers instead of slides and slide projectors. He combined here the experience of his previous monumental public projections with the social action of his communication-serving Instruments. The use of new technologies made it possible to give a voice to those marginalized in public life. The projection’s protagonists were victims of family violence, disabled people, homeless people, drug addicts, homosexuals, HIV carriers.
The images of their hands — gesticulating, peeling potatoes, holding a cigarette or a candle — were projected on the 14th-century City Hall Tower standing in the Market Square. Over the course of three nights, October 2-4, the tower, identified with the speaking persons, “spoke” with their voices and gestures to the crowd below. The half-hour projection, looped into a two-hour recording of highly intimate confessions, broke the public silence about issues such as social exclusion, violence, crime, alcohol or drug abuse.
Organized by Bunkier Sztuki Contemporary Art Gallery, the Andrzej Wajda Festival, and the City of Kraków as part of the Kraków 2000 celebration, with the co-operation of Women’s Center.
Coordinator: Beata Nowacka-Kardzis

Madrid, 1991
The projection took place on Madrid’s triumphal arch commemorating General Franco’s nationalistic army’s final victory over Republicans in the Spanish civil war. Situated in Plaza de la Moncloa, the arch has now also been called Puerta de la Moncloa, reflecting a desire to get it rid of its former meanings and erase the memory of the times of Franco’s terror, at whose orders it was erected in 1956. Images of skeleton hands were projected on two pillars of the single-span arch: one the one side, holding an M16 rifle, on the other, clenching a fuel nozzle. Under the statue of Minerva’s quadriga topping the arch, on the attic with a sculpted frieze and a Latin inscription commemorating the 1937 victory, the question “Cuantos?” appeared (meaning both “how many” and “how much”). In the projection, which took place in January 1991, three days after the start of the first Gulf War, which saw Spain join the US-led coalition, Wodiczko included the monument’s politics of non-memory in the strategies of legitimizing current political interests.
Organized by Circulo de Bellas Artes in conjunction with the exhibition El Sueno Imperativo [The Imperative Dream]

Leninplatz, Berlin, 1990
As part of the exhibition Die Endlichkeit der Freiheit, organized shortly after the fall of the Berlin Wall, Krzysztof Wodiczko carried out two parallel projections, one in the former East Berlin, the other in what used to be West Berlin.
In the Leninplatz projection, the artist transformed the Russian revolutionary into a Polish tourist, dressed in a striped shirt and pushing a supermarket cart filled with cheap household electronics. The representation of the communist leader laden with consumer goods, products of the bugaboo of consumerism, was an ironic image of the ultimate end of the proletarian utopia. In his reinterpretation of the monument, Wodiczko replaced the monumental heroization of a cult figure of Soviet power with the image of an anti-hero, as unwelcome in the former era as it was inconvenient now, amid the euphoria of regained freedom and opening of borders between the countries of the former Eastern bloc. This attempt to appropriate the monument’s symbolism found its epilogue a year later when, following a heated public debate, the monument was removed and destroyed.
Projection organized by Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD), in conjunction with the exhibition Die Endlichkeit der Freiheit, took place on September 2 and 4, 1990.

Tijuana, 1988
In Tijuana the projection took place on the modernist El Centro Cultural complex, built in 1982 with the purpose of presenting Mexican art. On the spherical shape of the IMAX Theater (where the film El Pueblo del Sol [People of the Sun], showing the richness of the nature and civilization of Mexico, was screened daily for many years) the artist projected the image of hands folded at the back of the head, on the neck, reminiscent of the position assumed by people being arrested or searched. The image was enclosed in question marks, the way questions begin with an inverted question mark in the Spanish language.
Organized by El Centro Cultural Tijuana in conjunction with the artist’s solo exhibition at the La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art.
Curator: Madeleine Grynsztejn

San Diego, California, 1988
The architectural complex today housing The San Diego Museum of Man was erected in 1915-16 for the purposes of the Panama-California Exposition, organized on the occasion of the inauguration of the Panama Canal. Designed in a colonial, richly decorated style, the buildings were to highlight San Diego’s Spanish heritage. The ornamented façade of the Californian Building, full of patriotic and ecclesiastic references to the colonial past, with figures of kings, conquistadors, and martyrs, was the site of the projection, which highlighted the reverse side of the triumphal history of colonialism. On both sides of the main entrance the artist projected images of manicured hands holding elegant cutlery, while on the soaring tower nearby was projected the image of work-worn hands embracing a large fruit basket. The juxtaposition of jewellery-adorned hands and elegant shirt cuffs, on the one hand, and fettered hands and a knife used for picking fruit, on the other, problematized the glorification of the colonial past.
Organized by La Jolla Museum of Contemporary Art in conjunction with the artist’s solo exhibition.
Curator: Madeleine Grynsztejn

Tyne River, Newcastle upon Tyne, 1990
The Tuxedo Royale was a ship (the former TSS-Dover passenger ferry), transformed in 1986 into a floating nightclub moored on the River Tyne in Newcastle upon Tyne. The projection turned the Tuxedo Royale into a symbol of the then policy of privatization and quick profit derived from the conversion and sale of real estate properties located in the city’s postindustrial quays and docksides, a process that caused the resettlement of low-income inhabitants. The projection’s different images were projected on the ship’s side from four projectors installed on the wharf across the river.
Organized by First Tyne International, Newcastle upon Tyne in conjunction with the exhibition A New Necessity.
Production coordinator: Steve White

New York, New York, 1989
The projection took place at a time when in the Soviet Union Mikhail Gorbachev had initiated democratization processes known under the collective name of glasnost (transparency), whereas in the United States, on the initiative of Senators Jesse Helms and Alphonse D’Amato, a debate had started on the censorship of artistic activities subsidized by the federal government, as a result of which the National Endowment for the Arts introduced more restrictive policies and stopped supporting art criticized by the conservatives. On the Marcel Breuer-designed Whitney Museum building, America’s fIrst museum for collecting art by living artists, Wodiczko projected the images of two open hands, one with the word “Glasnost,” the other with the words “In USA.” The projection was a response to the unconstitutional attempts to restrict freedom of speech promoted at the time by conservative politicians.
Organized by the Whitney Museum in conjunction with the exhibition Image World: Art and Media Culture.
Curators: Marvin Heiferman, Lisa Phillips, and John G. Hanhardt

Washington, DC, 1988
The projection was presented for three consecutive nights (25–27 October) in the week prior to US presidential elections. The artist chose the wall of the museum facing an avenue (the National Mall) connecting the George Washington Memorial obelisk with the Capitol. The projected images organically inscribed themselves in the architectural structure of the cylinder-shaped modernist building. Two hands with shirt cuffs and the cufflinks visible seemed to embrace the museum’s spherical bulk. On one side was a hand with a straightpointed gun, on the other a hand holding a lit candle. Both representations referred to the campaign rhetoric of the Republican candidate, George H. W. Bush, who was both in favor of the death penalty and against abortion, spoke both of doing good and of people of good will (“a thousand points of light”) and of the need for militarist policies. Projected between the hands and below the bright opening of a horizontal window was the image of a row of microphones, which could evoke the notion of media “weapons” used in campaign battles.
Organized by Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden as part of the exhibition series Works.
Curator: Phyllis Rosenzweig

Heldenplatz, Vienna, 1988
The projection, organized in connection with the Flakturm one, took place on the 50th anniversary of the Third Reich’s annexation of Austria. The artist chose one of the Hofburg’s finest buildings, from the balcony of which Hitler in 1938 announced the Anschluss and near which, in one of the wings, the chancellery of the President of Austria is located. On the front wall of the Neue Hofburg building, the artist projected a huge image of an eagle’s spread wings, photographed in the nearby Natural History Museum, which brought to mind the German national emblem of the Third Reich era. In the center, between the eagle wings superimposed on the wings of the building, was projected the logo of Noricum, an Austrian arms producer specializing in long-distance missiles, which, during the Iraq-Iran war, taking advantage of Austria’s neutral status, sold weapons to both sides of the conflict.
Organized by Wiener Festwochen.
Curator: Catherine Pichler

Toronto, 1988
The projection, which showed a crying public official signing a document over a glass of water and a dead fish, referred to issues related to water management in the Canadian province of Ontario. During a period of prolonged drought in North America, the Canadian House of Commons was close to signing a free trade agreement with the United States. Part of the negotiations were requests by some US states for the right to draw water from the Great Lakes to alleviate shortages caused by the drought, which threatened to lower water levels to a critical point.
Organized by Visual Arts Ontario in conjunction with the exhibition WaterWorks.

Kassel, 1987
The projection of the image of a man in a mask and protective overalls alluded to the contemporary risks caused by chemical pollution and radioactive waste. The figure, its hands joined in a gesture of prayer, inscribed itself in the soaring architecture of the neo-Gothic church. The tower of the former Lutheran church, the city’s tallest, is one of the few buildings in the city that survived the Allied bombing raids at the end of World War II. Half a year before the opening of Documenta 8, an evacuation alert was sounded in Kassel for the first time since the end of the war, the reason being a possible pollution hazard from industrial plants in Leipzig and Frankfurt/Oder.
Organized for Documenta 8, Kassel.
Curator: Manfred Schneckenburger

Kassel, 1987

“On the monument to Landgrave Friedrich II of Hesse- Kassel, I confront his glorious but also egomaniacal heroic acts—the spreading of ideas of the Enlightenment and the popularizing of aristocratic culture, the promotion of art and science—with his dubious economic and political acts, which served as the monetary source for all of his cultural and artistic projects. His politics, incidentally, were a source of criticism even in his lifetime. Gazing proudly at one of these projects, the Museum Fridericianum, his obscene white body too bloated from gluttony to fit its heroic Roman armor, the Landgrave cannot conceal his ravenous hunger for conquest, his imperial appetite for plundering foreign territories (look at Austria). He is interested in political and cultural power over the world. (One thinks about the Polish crown.) He also knows that the Soldatenhandel, a trade in soldiers in the eighteenth century (22,000 peasants were sold to Great Britain for 21,276,778 talers in order to support that country’s war against American independence), is hardly different from Daimler-Benz’s use of slave labor today by exploiting ‘guest workers’ to make military equipment such as the Unimog S (a four-wheel-drive military truck, parts of which are produced in Kassel) and deliver it to South Africa, where it is used to subjugate blacks; or from accepting donations from Mercedes and the Deutsche Bank, though knowing of their South African dealings, in order to organize Documenta 8 in the Fridericianum and the Orangerie Gardens—places Friedrich II built with money from the trade in soldiers. To expose the relation between Daimler-Benz and Documenta 8 as a clear example of the way the shameless ‘history of the victors’ perpetuates itself today, I had decided to recall the Landgrave’s monument in order to critically actualize it.

This slide projection superimposed onto the large base of the monument an image of a crate containing axles to Unimog S military trucks produced by the DaimlerBenz plant in Kassel. The content, the manufacturer, the origin, and the South African, Salvadoran, and Chilean destinations of this shipment were clearly marked oneach side of the crate. The statue itself was subjected to similar superimposition. Projected over his Roman armor, a white shir t, tie, and Daimler-Benz identity badge had transformed the Landgrave into both warrior and company executive. The face of Friedrich II, which according to many spectators resembled that of the Documenta 8 director, as well as tubes held by the statue containing architectural and cultural designs, were both strongly illuminated.”

Krzysztof Wodiczko, in Documenta 8, vol. 2, exh. cat. (Kassel: Fridericianum, 1987), pp. 278–79.
Organized for Documenta 8, Kassel.
Curator: Manfred Schneckenburger

“All War Memorials in the United States operate as cultural sites, performing social functions for the community of the city. In order to see music, lectures, operas, sporting events — in order, in other words, to have access to culture, one must go through the showers. One passes through displays, environmental arrangements of images, memorabilias, and mythical objects, like the bullet which grazed the leg of some general on some battle. The buildings invested with neoclassic, purifying, disciplining order. It imposes through monumental scale and all kinds of signs and symbols on its surface, such as texts related to patriotism and commemorating all wars, without distinction, wars very democratically listed. From this point of view veterans have an enormous forum to infiltrate their sentimentality for war. On one hand there is this sweet sound, on the other, cannons. In Memorial Hall, Dayton, the imagery was from art history, from a painting about sacrifice and patriotism by David, together with missiles, crowds, a whole set of separate images thrust close upon the viewer to be connected in the tradition of montage. In Pittsburgh, one’s distance from the structure is much greater, so images could be related to the entire building. In Dayton suggested impending disaster, Pittsburgh involved post-disaster imagery. There is an iconographic tradition of the skeleton playing an instrument in European popular art, the dance of death. The accordion is the most complex but portable instrument for wandering musicians. It is also a very working class instrument and Pittsburgh — its history and memory and social culture — is still a working class city . . .”
Krzysztof Wodiczko, in Counter Monuments: Krzysztof Wodiczko Public Projections, exh. cat. Hayden Gallery, List Visual Arts Center (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 1987).

Soldiers and Sailors Civil War Memorial, Boston, Massachusetts 1986/87
In the projection on the monument erected in the memory of the protagonists of celebrated history, the artist showed images of anti-heroes, people unrepresented in the official version
of history. A monument to Civil War soldiers was transformed into a monument to homeless people and their fight for survival. At the foot of the monument, from four sides, images of homeless people, surrounded by their typical accessories such as shopping carts or plastic bags filled with bottles and cans, were projected. On the column above was projected a photographic image from the construction of one of Boston’s residential buildings, showing the logo of the developer, the Turner Construction Company, in what was a clear allusion to a connection between real-estate development and the rise in homelessness. Like Wodiczko’s other monumental projections, The Homeless Projection 2 revealed what official monuments try to deny.
Organized as part of the First Night New-Year festival, it was viewed by over 200,000 people.

London, 1985
It was an improvisation during the projections on Nelson’s Column and the Duke of York Column in London. One of the projectors was directed by the artist towards the South Africa House building in a gesture of support for demonstrations against South Africa’s apartheid policies and the loans offered to Pretoria by the Margaret Thatcher government.
On the building’s front wall with a relief of a boat and in the inscription “Good Hope” (the Republic of South Africa’s national motto), the artist projected a swastika. The nearly two-hour projection was interrupted by the police on public disturbance charges.
The RSA government subsequently issued a note of protest to the government of Canada, demanding explanations about a Canadian artist’s action against an RSA embassy. In response, the Canadian government said individual citizens’ actions didn’t necessarily have to reflect the government’s official position. The projection was viewed by some two thousand people; the December issue of Time Out
proclaimed it one of the year’s most important events in London.
Production coordinator: Steve White.

Trafalgar Square, London, 1985
In the center of London’s Trafalgar Square, on the shaft of a tall column topped with a statue of Admiral Horatio Nelson, the image was projected of a large, intercontinental ballistic missile, wrapped in barbed wire. Simultaneously, images of tank tracks were being projected on the plinths of the four bronze lions surrounding the column.
Organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art and The Artangel Trust in conjunction with the artist’s solo exhibition at Canada House, London.
Curator: Declan McGonagle

Montreal, Quebec, 1985
The projection took place at a time when the Royal Bank of Canada was trying to secure major deals in South Africa while the governing National Party openly supported apartheid policies.
Organized for the Aurora Borealis Festival of Contemporary Art.

Waterloo Place, London, 1985
The projection, realized concurrently with the one on Nelson’s Column, followed a wave of strikes by Welsh miners. The artist projected the image of a crowd of British miners on the stairs leading up to the column, while an image of an armored vehicle in full speed was projected on the base of the column and that of crossed hands on the lower part of the column itself. The projection, which took place during a “sound and light” event titled The Heart of the Nation, commemorating crucial moments in the history of the British Empire, served as an alternative to the official, imperial symbolics and public space-decoration spectacles.
Organized by the Institute for Contemporary Art and the Artangel Trust in conjunction with the artist’s solo exhibition at Canada House, London.

New York, New York, 1984

“It was winter and I was living very close to the main shelter for homeless men and quite close to a shelter for women. I saw many people living on the street, trying to survive the bitter-cold temperatures by burning tires. It was therefore shocking to me to see one of the largest buildings in the entire neighborhood empty. It was very evident that the building that houses the New Museum was completely dark. People speaking to me at the time of the projection had no doubts whatsoever about the meaning of it. I learned that the upper floors of the building were awaiting new tenants at a price nearly one million dollars each, and at the same time the New Museum received the basement and ground floor spaces for free, or at least for a very cheap rent. The very fact the museum moved into the buildings creates a certain myth for the building. There are, in fact, two exhibition spaces there. One is for the New Museum exhibitions, and next door there is an exhibition of the former state of the building and how it will look after renovation, a real-estate exhibition. There is obviously a connection between the presence of the museum and the subsequent conversion of the entire surrounding area into one of art galleries and other art-related institutions and business. I’m not saying that there is a direct responsibility on anyone’s part, but this is a mechanism, and it’s important to recognize and reveal our place within that mechanism, even if we cannot change it at this point.”
“Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko,” with Douglas Crimp, Rosalyn Deutsche, and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, October, no. 38 (Winter 1986), p. 43.

Stuttgart, 1983
The site of the projection was the city’s main train station building, a monumental stone structure completed in 1927 to the design of Paul Bonatz. The artist projected the image of two folded hands on a side wall of the clock tower, the dominant feature of this part of town. A business executive’s manicured hands in elegant cuffs corresponded with the Mercedes-Benz logo on top of the tower. The projection was held at a time when the company, operating the city’s largest industrial plant, employed particularly many “guest workers,” or Gastarbeiter. Stuttgart, an important railway junction, was an infl ux point for immigrants searching for work and gathering around the train station. The second part of the projection, which was to show the hands of the Gastarbeiter carrying their travel bags, didn’t take place due to financial reasons. The projection, organized by the Württembergischer Kunstverein, Stuttgart in conjunction with the exhibition Künstler aus Kanada: Räume und Installationen, was presented two nights a week for the duration of the exhibition.
Curator: Tilman Osterwold

Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1981
The first public projection widely announced by the press.
Organized by the Centre for Art Tapes and by the Eye Gallery, Halifax.

Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981
The projection was carried out with the support of students from the Massachusetts College of Art and Design during Wodiczko’s brief visit to Boston, where he attended as a visiting artist.

Dalhousie University of Nova Scotia, Halifax, Nova Scotia, Canada, 1981
Organized by the Centre for Art Tapes and by the Eye Gallery, Halifax.

Grand Army Plaza, Brooklyn, New York, 1984/85
The projection was part of the New Year’s celebrations with fireworks and music concerts organized annually by the Borough of Brooklyn for the local community. On New Year’s Eve 1984, Krzysztof Wodiczko projected on the Soldiers and Sailors Memorial Arch an image of two missiles connected by a chain. The representations, of a US missile and a Soviet missile, were used in the context of planned arms-reduction talks between the United States and the Soviet Union. Visible above the image of the padlock linking the chains, projected on the arch’s keystone, was a statue of freedom, a Winged Victory crowning the arch from the south. “This is a monument to the Northern army, so the south side of the arch is very busy with representations of the army marching south to liberate the South from ‘wrongdoing.’ The monument has absolutely nothing to say about the North, because if it did it would have to reflect on itself . . . Ironically, this arch, which [shows the] victorious Northern army and which uses the typical classicizing Beaux-Arts style in the work of [Augustus] Saint-Gaudens, is challenged by two small, realist bas-relief sculptures by [Thomas] Eakins placed inside the arch. They are the only two figures actually walking north, coming back from the war, extremely tired. As far as I know, this is the only monument in the world that contains such an internal debate, aesthetically and historically . . . The people viewing the projection offered their own interpretations. What I liked was that everyone was trying to impose his or her reading [of] the symbols and referring to the contemporary political situation. It was a time when the public was being prepared for impending peace talks between the US and Soviet governments. There were great expectations about coming back to the conference table and perhaps for a reduction of the arms race. . . . Because the debate was open and easily heard, all the readings were most likely received by everyone, and hopefully this social and auditory interaction helped the visual projection survive in the public’s memory as a complex experience. For a moment at least, this ‘necro-ideological’ monument became ‘alive.’”
“Conversation with Krzysztof Wodiczko,” with Douglas Crimp, Rosalyn Deutsche, and Ewa Lajer-Burcharth, October, no. 38, Winter 1986.
Organized by the Prospect Park Administrator’s Office, New York City Department of Parks and Recreation.
Curator: Mariella Bisson, Art-in-the-Park Program

Dayton, Ohio, 1983
With the projection in Dayton, the artist changed the meanings evoked by the commemorative iconography of a building erected in the early 20th century to commemorate soldiers fighting in the US Civil War and the Spanish-American war. The relationship between the projected images and the neo-classical architecture produced a highly critical
reading of history and the ways of remembering it. The portico’s columns became missiles pointed downwards, towards the image of a crowd gathered on the stairs leading up to the building. On both sides of the columns, in the place of inscriptions honoring those who died for their country, the artist projected identical, symmetrically arranged, images of lamenting mothers borrowed from Jacques-Louis David’s painting The Lictors Bring to Brutus the Bodies of His Sons. The lamenting motif highlighted the patriarchal ethos of war inscribed in the monument, erected in the memory of soldiers who died defending Montgomery County, Ohio, home of Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, one of the largest such bases in the US.
Projection was part of the Art in Public Places program organized by City Beautiful Council and Wright State University with the assistance of students from the Art Department, Dayton.

Banff, Alberta, Canada, 1983
Held in a natural setting, in the oldest national park in Alberta, in the Rocky Mountains, near the popular tourist town of Bow Falls, the projection was unique for the artist’s work usually involving buildings or manmade monuments. This time too, however, Wodiczko used
a motif characteristic for his 1980s projections: in a canyon, on a rocky river bank, the image of a missile, magnified several times, was projected. At the time when the projection took place, the Canadian public opinion was protesting against the decision to test Cruise missiles in Alberta, which the government said made sense because the province had a similar lay of the land as Siberia.
Organized by The Banff Center.
Assistance: Brian McNevin