The film is part of the event programme:
"HAVING REACHED A CERTAIN POINT OF CRUELTY, IT DOESN'T MATTER WHO COMMITTED IT: IT SHOULD JUST STOP"
The Programme comprises a series of video screenings by the artists and directors Ursula Biemann, Klaus vom Bruch, Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Korpys / Löffler and Martha Rosler.
Each screening will be followed by an introduction, discussion and week-long presentation. States and political alliances are based on imposing their own ideological concepts as the ones that set the tone. What means do they use to do so? And how do governments act when their current political and cultural claims to leadership are challenged from within or without? When hegemony crumbles?
How do they hold together what may have been constructed from the outset on the basis of artificial narratives and the exclusion of divergent points of view?
In light of current events and using artistic means, the series examines how Western governments instrumentalized the experience of terrorist attacks in the context of the "German Autumn", "9/11" or the so-called "Middle East conflict" in order to homogenize public opinion. And even to discredit peaceful forms of protest and criticism.
Martha Rosler: A Simple Case for Torture, or How To Sleep at Night, 1983, 62 Min.Beginning with a text from Newsweek magazine by philosopher Michael Levin, this work deals with theoretical and real-world political systems that understand and use violence and torture as legitimate means of imposing state order or individual laws. While a narrator reads Levin’s text, we see the artist’s finger tracing the lines or framing a photograph of the neoconservative thinker in various ways. As the hand flicks on through the magazine, other pages and pictures appear showing adverts for luxury goods or photographs of everyday life in the United States. They tell the story of an idyllic world that is under threat from “others”—subversives, terrorists, hostile states—and which must allegedly protect itself. Many of the images and text excerpts reflect a public mentality of preparation for war. The media material presented by Rosler offers an insight into the heart of the American brand of neoconservative thought. From here, the video becomes a collage of countless newspaper cuttings that are laid out in front of the camera, read aloud, replaced, or leafed through in a dizzying and unreadable array, sometimes accompanied by multiple, overlapping sound tracks. They document the activities of death and torture squads worldwide, especially in Latin America, and show how regimes that use torture receive support from the CIA and the United States military. Here, as in previous works, Rosler redirects attention away from distant zones of war and conflict and back to her own society and its politics.Additional informationProduction manager: John Strauss, Camera: Dieter Froese, Martha Rosler, Readers: Michael Bernhard, Lyn Blumenthal, Martha Rosler, John Strauss, Singers: Frank White, Postproduction: Women’s Interart Center, New York, residency program, Titles: Electronic Arts Intermix, N.Y.
