"Glitter, glamour and glory: HUNDE VERBOTEN"

January 25, 07 - March 11, 07
created during a residency at Kunsthaus Tacheles in Berlin
multimedia installation by BOX 1035: Alysse Stepanian & Philip Mantione
Project site: http://www.box1035.com/hundeVerboten.html
Poem by Stepanian

The artists portray themselves as glittering silhouettes with water recycling through their mouths, a reference to filtered experience as more a function of the self than of so-called objective reality.  “If the human experience is limited by perception, these featureless figures owe their substance to a controlled diet of information flowing in and out.”  

The red-dotted background reaches out into three-dimensional space, enveloping the table and taking on its form. “Other beings, other countries, other people are by definition less important by virtue of their otherness. Their importance can only increase by becoming more like me or us. Once homogenized, they can safely be ignored.”

In a video animals on a fur-farm are routinely and methodically beaten and skinned alive (downloaded from PETA.org). To make this violence morally acceptable, the animals need to be perceived as non-beings. “Governments and religions are very adept at prescribing what is moral and what is not. Killing is fine if it is for fashion or the spread of democracy. Torture is okay if it prevents terrorism or if no one knows about it. One person’s atrocity is another’s job.”