video photobook with performative gestures

Video, 16:9, 16’10’’, Stereo

How does a complex political and historical context successfully inform a work of art without undermining its autonomy? Which examples show how transdisciplinary research genuinely produces trans-medial visual works? The work  How to dismantle a bomb  by photographer Marco Frauchiger, released in July 2020, is a great example of how research and art can conjoin naturally and un-academically. Its representational format frames a set of acute questions: For one, the author’s perspective on a long-forgotten war in Laos, including its economic and social consequences, raises questions about armed conflicts; in general and in relation to the perceived distance from, yet economic proximity to, Switzerland’s weapon industry. Sharp editing, which carefully interweaves poetic imagery, physical proof, documentation, moving and still images, challenges the relationship between aesthetics and societal facts. Strikingly, the video of the physical turning of book pages interrupted by other video sequences augments the analogue medium and inventively replies to the digital exchange forced upon many of us currently.
The project and the actions that are undertaken can be read as a gesture. The bomb is de fused both through the reuse by the local population and through artistic transformation and contextualization. In this way, other levels of meaning are created without marginalizing the problem. Destructive objects of war are transformed into new objects whose meanings may well be positive. This process questions the meaning of the weapons industry, but also evokes ambivalent feelings when considering the aestheticization of war by means of its traces.

Tine Melzer: Review (English) about how to dismantle a bomb on SARN (Swiss Artistic research Network): -> Click here

Installation view, Kunstmuseum Thun, 2021

Installation view, Kunstraum Dreiviertel Bern, 2022

Installation view, Noorderlicht Photography Festival, Groningen 2021