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Old media …
As of course the diffusion of religious convictions didn´t start with the first televangelists thundering from American TV sets in the 1950ies nor with Iranian ayatollahs bellowing from Teheran´s public adress systems into living rooms all around the world. Instead there are archaic forms of medial diffusion, like itenerant preachers and cloistral scriptoriums, where monks were copying holy texts diligently.

… New media
Within the exhibition the latter example of early medial technology is presented in a slightly contemporary fashion: A group called robotlab imitates the arduous handwriting of medieval friars by instructing a machine to repeat one of mankind´s cultural achievements with high-tech precision. A huge robot arm, borrowed from some industrial product line and slowly navigating a fountain pen, is writing down the whole bible in perfectly regular ancient typography. Seven months will pass before the pious work will be accomplished.

Celebrities …
The once wandering missionary however appears on various monitors, as in the guise of Tom Cruise accepting magniloquently a grotesquely gorgeous medal from his fellow scientologists. The operetta-like scenery stands in marked contrast to the actor´s professionally skillful rethoric. On the opposite wall two Bin Ladens are announcing the collapse of the occident, clothed as a divine fighter in camouflage on the left and as a serene pontiff on the right screen.
The adjacing compartment contains Joshua Simon´s (1979) collage of the last farewell-videos of six Palastinean future suicide-assasins, using the internet to enhance the public impact of their mission.

… and other Madmen
Right beside these Islamic fundamentalist “chronicles of a death foretold”¹ one stumbles into visualizations of Christian fundamentalists´ wishful thinking. In a computer game which is enjoying great popularity among the US-American evangelical movement, the participant is encouraged to clear the streets from heathens by means of heavy artillery.
Apart from those evidences of extraordinary mental states one finds less dramatic equally strange behavior like historic films about charismatic faith healing or contemporary posters of a public campaign against the construction of a large mosque in Cologne.

Multiple Identites
Complementary to the documentary material a couple of installative works take rather a subjective point of view. As if to visualize the multitude and adaptability of a religion´s founder two identic statues of Jesus are covered in twinkling sequin, while just around the corner curator Boris Groys (1947), who also officiates as artist, chose sequences of Mel Gibson´s Passion of Christ to present the very figure from quite a different angle.
Although alarming pictures prevail in the exhibition, those of joyful aspects occur as well. Oreet Ashery´s (1966) video Dancing with Men documented her – disguised - participation in an orthodox Jewish celebration, where she experienced a strong sense of shared identity.

Eye Candy
Clearly the show doesn´t promote “fine” arts. Due to the explicit aim to shed light on the presentation of religion by mass media there simply isn´t much to enjoy. Just two participants venture to reanimate the ancient myth of “art must be beautiful”². One example of the scarce feast of the eyes is Sacred Reality by Hermes Zygott (1938), who stages photographs of damaged Byzantine icons in Jeff Wall-fashion onto lumious boxes. Another example is Adel Abdessemed´s (1971) film God is Design. In Reaction to the xenophobic atmosphere after 9/11 the Algerian combined 3000 parts of geometric ornaments of all times and spaces together with celular structures to an exciting flow of configurations, in which cultural hierarchies sink into insignificance.

Immortal Supremacy
Whereas Abdessemed visualizes the transformation of religious signs into “free” art, the Slovenian artists´ collective IRWIN stages the transfer of art to a position which usually is occupied by religious symbols. In a not necessarily authentica fashion IRWIN´s five members reconstruct the scenography by which the dead Malewich was presented in his flat 1935, surrounded by reminders of his work. The artistic design of the coffin, right beneath the Black Square – “the last picture at all times” (or so he thought before continuing to paint additional ones) - exemplifies the advancing of art in the sphere of the supernatural – or rather “Suprematist”, in Malevich´s terms. This way the adamant believer in the absolut qualities of painting functions as an example of the totalitarian claim of artists at the beginning of 20th Century. But since it is a coffin, which is adorned by elementary forms, this embodiement of art´s final superiority will be buried together with its creator.

Martial Arts
On the contrary Christoph Büchel´s (1966) display of 1000 copies of Hitler´s Mein Kampf in Arabic Language appears amazingly sculptural. Having been a bestseller in Arabian countries for years by now, the Swiss artist has 1000 covers with Hitler´s conterfei and Arabic lettering spilling from American cigarette cartons onto wooden pallets. On a purely formal level this series of identic building blocks takes on an almost modular character. From a textual point of view however the piled up print media allude to the historic relationship between some Arabic countries and German National Socialism, which dates back to the 1930ies. And looking at the mixture of stacked books, towering over rows and rows of flatly outstretched ones, with a little malignity resembles muslim believers, kneeling in prayer.

Old News
Another constructive application of print media is realized by Osvaldo Romberg (1938), who rebuilds the floor plan of a Jewish ritual bathhouse with stacks of obsolete newspaper. This way the shape of a once concrete building appears, which then served abstract purposes. Now it is made from equally abstract materials, that is: written language. But while the mikve´s foundation meanwhile has been lasting about 2000 years, the bundles of newspaper the artist employed represent the breathtaking speed with which information is becoming obsolete.

The Unavoidable …
In so doing Romberg´s structure belongs to those pieces which expand the narrow range of institutional religion to integrate existential situations as a form of religious experience. Shortly after returning from a journey through Nepal 2007 Christoph Schlingensief (1960) was diagnosed with cancer. Like he has done all through his artistic carreer he is incorporating his personal situation in his work. For Der König in mir³ Schlingensief errected a series of small cabins where medical procedures in western countries are put into context with photographs of sacrificial ceremonies and Indian hospices on opposite walls.
Now where is the religious aspect? Can any life threatening situation be declared a religious experience? Although this question goes beyond the scope of this discussion, it´s safe to say that Schlingensief created a course for rites of passage – on a more mental level in Nepal, on a physical one in a local hospital. Rites of passage have always been an interface between secular and supernatural experiences. Together with a taped interview, in which the artist describes his present state of mind in a hautingly personal fashion, this multifaceted installation is representative for the majority of exhibits, which are characterized by an intense complexity.

… and the Superfluous
Slightly adolescent pieces however make up the smaller part, like Michael Schuster´s (1956) Golgatha, which consists fo a wooden cross, onto which a can of spray-glue is fixed, reading “no more nails”. While the late Martin Kippenberger (1953-1997) once by means of poignant wit created pieces which were offensive and funny at the same time⁴, the traditional heretic of the Austrian born Schuster seems just to fullfill the role of the flagship provocateur, whose deliberate viciousness appears oddly one-dimensional.
Much more subtle and stronger at the same time Wael Shawky (1971) interlocks the spiritual and the profane when he has himself filmed, wandering through an Amsterdam supermarket, reciting the 18^th sura⁵, which deals with the islamic perception of a city governed by Christians.

The Sublimity on or of the Marketplace
These last example in particular comprises the exhibition´s bottom line: although the medium is not the only message, it certainly moulds its content. The apprehension of a text changes wether it is yelled into microphones in front of an agitated audience, quietly read from a book or rather dispassionately quoted in a surrounding which provides the otherwise abstract spoken word with concrete and hence suggestive pictures.

¹“Chronicle of a death foretold” is the translation of Gabriel García Márquez´ Crónica de una muerte anunciada.
²Art must be beautiful, artist must be beautiful is the title fo a performance by Marina Abramović in 1975.
³ That is: “The King inside myself”.
⁴See Kippenberger´s notorious cruzified frog, being evacuated on occasion of the pope´s visit in the South Tyrolian city of Bozen.
⁵The 18th sura contains sentences like“These cities, we destroyed them when they were unjust; and for their destruction we set an appointed time.”

© Charlotte Lindenberg M.A. arbeitet als Autorin und Kunstlehrerin in Frankfurt am Main.