Micah Hesse

Also on view in Der Würfel: Jonas Lund "Mutual Display"

‘Shampaigne’ is a new video animation by Micah Hesse (b. 1991, New Mexico – lives in New York). The cover of Charlie Hebdo magazine, shortly after the shooting at their office, declared: “Ils ont les armes, on les emmerde, on a le champagne!” (They have weapons, fuck them, we have champagne), below a comic of a man riddled in bullet holes with champagne flowing out.

Linking US gun lobbyists and super-gun-collectors, those who claim: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people” (and represent 3% of all gun possession, with 17 or more guns each), implying that a gun, on its own, is incapable of inflicting harm unless in the hands of a bad guy. And asks: What if guns were indeed the ‘bad guys’, and a ‘bad gun’ got its hands on a revolver? Throughout the four minute video animation Hesse explores guns as independent entities with their own agency, challenging the above notion, and exploring the psychological reaction created by the loaded presence of a firearm.

At the same time, Hesse is fascinated by the aesthetics of fetishized arrangements of firearms in the arsenals of super-gun-owners/collectors. The opening sequence of ‘Shampaigne’ examines formal displays of weapons within a museum environment, including two jewel encrusted revolvers sitting interlocked like a sculpture: one fires at the sky. A piece of cartoon sky falls to the ground, evoking the idiom “The sky is falling!” from the folk tale ‘Henny Penny’ indicating a hysterical belief that disaster is imminent. To Hesse the champagne that we have, is a mixture of ‘real’ and ‘sham pain’.

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Mutual Display is a new sculptural work by Jonas Lund (1984, Sweden) consisting of two robotic arms with concrete bases, positioned to face each other, as mirror images.

The arms are programmed to move in a carefully composed choreography, sometimes mimicking each other, sometimes moving as if trying to impress the other through ritualised motions or dances like a courtship display.

Together the robots perform a dialogue like a discussion, their mechanical gestures illustrate an exchange, although ultimately their opposing nature rather than oneness. By setting one robot against the other, Lund is interested in binary oppositions in relation to a predestined future of automation.

Is there a choice whether or not to replace human labor by an algorithmic or automated production? The machines dance is constructed in a language only few speak, while technological advance seems to drive towards a complete understanding, artificial super intelligence looms as a supersession to language as we know it, rather than a solution to The Confusion of Tongues.