RELIGION

RELIGIONFaith. Geopolitics. Art

Contents

5–7 Boris Groys, Peter Weibel Introduction

9–22 Boris GroysReligion as Medium

2–27 Participating Artists / List of Works

14–15 Exhibition Plan

23–27 Documentary Installations

45–28 Symposium Information

Cover Boris Groys: Medium Religion [Religion as Medium], 2006video lecture (colour, sound), 25 min, loop, courtesy Boris Groys, production ZKM | Center for Art andMedia Karlsruhe, 2006, commissioned by Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

This booklet is published on the occasion of the exhibition Medium Religion at the The Model Satellite, Model Arts and Niland Gallery, Sligo, Ireland23 May 2009 – 16 August 2009

Curatorial Team: ZKM

CuratorsBoris Groys, Peter Weibel

Project ManagementAnne Däuper, Antonia Marten

Curatorial Team: The Model

Director/CuratorSeamus Kealy

Assistant CuratorEmer McGarry

Development ManagerAoife Flynn

Education TeamMarie Louise Blaney and Linda Hayden

Technical SupervisorMichael McLoughlin

Model TeamAnne Bucknell, Jean Dunleavy, Maura Keegan, Denise Rushe, Evelyn Gallagher, David Leonard,Edna Lynch and Richard Diegnan

Graphic DesignOriginal Design: Holger Jost

Sligo Design Edit: Martin Corr

AcknowledgmentsThis exhibition is a production of ZKM/Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe,Germany. Curators:Boris Groys, Peter Weibel. Presented by The Model Arts and Niland Gallery it is made possiblethough funding from The Arts Council of Ireland, Sligo Borough Council and Sligo County Council,and supported by the Goethe Institut Irland.

www.modelart.ie

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Participating Artists / List of Works

Adel Abdessemed

Oreet Ashery

Peter Bogers

Christoph Büchel

Paul Chan

Susana Pilar DelahanteMatienzo

VALIE EXPORT,Ingrid and Oswald Wiener

Omer Fast

Barbad Golshiri

Boris Groys

IRWIN

Korpys/Löffler

Alexander Kosolapov

Rabih Mroué

Sang-Kyoon Noh

Nira Pereg

Anri Sala

Günter Saree

Wael Shawky

Jalal Toufic

Vadim Zakharov

Geneviève Zondervan

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Adel Abdessemed

God is Design2005video animation made from 3,050 drawings(b/w, sound)4:44 min, loopcourtesy the artist and David Zwirner, New York; Christine König Galerie, Wien/Vienna

Oreet Ashery

Dancing with Men2003video (colour, sound)3 min, loopcourtesy Oreet Ashery

Peter Bogers

The Secret of the Most High2003video installation (colour, sound)10 min, loopcourtesy Netherlands Media Art Institute, Amsterdam

With kind support of the Royal Netherlands Embassy in Berlin

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Today’s religious move ments operatepredominantly with images that canbe spread across the entire world in aflash by means of contemporary mass

media. The electronic picture media video and television havebecome the chosen media for religious propaganda as they arecapable of being produced and distributed especially fast. The“return of religions” that people are currently talking about doesnot necessarily mean that more people have become religiousnowadays. In stead, religions have moved from the private sphe-re of personal belief out into the public sphere of visual commu-nication. In this, religions function, for one, as machines for therepe tition and mass medial distri bution of mechanically produ-ced images.

For another, the role model for this repetition is found in therepeatability of religious rituals, which is the foundation for theemergence of all subsequent medial reproduction technologies.The original media used by religions were scriptures and books,assigned the same task of distributing belief. Text served, addi-tionally, to canonize belief. Without writing there is no church;without scrolls, no belief. Thus, right from the start, through thedemand for repeatability embodied by the ritual, religion was notonly bound to media, but was itself a medium: religion as medi-um complements media as religion.

The exhibition Medium Religion aims at demonstrating thismedial aspect of religion using current examples of religiousvideo propaganda and the work of contemporary artists. Thehorizons of religion have expanded enormously through thedevelopment of electronic media. The uncomplicated recordingof the message (e.g., the video message), the rapid distribution,and huge, nearly global scope (e.g., television, Internet), offereda technological base for religions’ reentry into public awareness.Since the mass media constitute public awareness and religionmakes use of mass media (e.g., the broadcast of the Papal massfrom Rome), it is only logical that it, too, will shift more intopublic awareness. The result is the reevaluation of minority

Boris Groys, Peter Weibel

Introduction

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Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo

Anexión oculta[Hidden Annexation]20086 photographs (inkjet print)70 × 100cmcourtesy Susana PilarDelahante Matienzoproduced in cooperation with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Paul Chan

1st Light2005digital video projection (colour, no sound)14 min, loopcourtesy of Greene Naftali, New Yorkphoto: Jean Vong

Christoph Büchel

Tomorrow’s Pioneers (Farfour)2007video (colour, sound)10:59 min, loopcourtesy the artist and Hauser & WirthZürich London

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faiths and their messages. Shown will be, among other things,suicide confessions from religiously inspired terrorists, religiouspropaganda TV series, and documentaries on new religioussects and faith communities. The artistic works that are shownalong with this documentary material come mainly from thesame cultural circles as the corresponding religious movements.The relationship of most of the artists to religious rituals, images,and texts from their own culture is neither affirmative nor critical,but instead, blasphemous. They place religious symbolism in anunconventional context in order to provoke a different mode ofperception. This enables a critical analysis of the respective reli-gious iconography as well as its transfer to a cultural modernity.

Death is thematized in the exhibition as religion’s most primaland basic topic—and, indeed, death as the result of political,artistic, or private martyrdom, much in the way it plays a centralrole in the political awareness of secular moder nity. Throughexamples, the exhibition shows how the iconography of thesecivil religions is ritualized and artistically represented and how itworks.

The exhibition Medium Religion thus provides comprehensiveinsight into the medial reproduction and significance of religion,in particular, its manifestations in geopolitical hotspots, such asthe Middle East, Asia, Russia, the U.S., and South America.Many exhibits are being shown for the first time in Germany andhave been specially researched or newly produced for the exhibi-tion.

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Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo

El escandalo de lo Real[The Scandal of the Real]2006–2007heterologous artificial insemination 2 photographs (inkjet print),20 × 30cm 2 copies of medical documentscourtesy Susana PilarDelahante Matienzoproduced in cooperation with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

VALIE EXPORT, Ingridand Oswald Wiener

Das Unsagbare Sagen1992video (colour, sound)45 min, extract of 12:50 minScript: Oswald WienerDirection and Design: VALIE EXPORT, Ingridand Oswald WienerCamera: VALIE EXPORTand Ingrid WienerSound: Oswald WienerEditor: Heinrich MisProduction: P.R.E.TV on behalf of:ORF /Kunststücke

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In our present post-Enlightenment cul-ture, religion is generally understoodto mean a collection of certain opin-

ions. Correspondingly, religion is usually discussed in the contextof a demand for a freedom of opinion guaranteed by law. Reli-gion is tolerated as an opinion so long as it remains tolerant anddoes not question the freedom of other opinions – that is to say,as long as it makes no exclusive, fundamentalist claim to its owntruth. Thus religion seems to be in a quite comfortable situation.It is no longer, as it was in the dark times of the radical Enlighten-ment, criticized, ironized, or even combated in the name of sci-entific truth. Rather, scientific truth itself has since acquired thestatus of mere opinion. At least since Nietzsche, and especiallythanks to Michel Foucault, we now know that the claim to scien-tific truth is dictated primarily by the will to power, and it must,therefore, be deconstructed and deterred. Scientific opinions cir-culate in the same media and in the same way as religious opin-ions. Opinions in both cases come to us as news that is dissemi-nated by the mass media. Sometimes we read about a newapparition of the Mother of God; sometimes we read that theEarth is getting warmer. Neither piece of information can be test-ed directly by those who hear it. The experts always disagree insuch cases. Hence either bit of news can be believed or not.

Consequently our culture today knows no truths, be they ofreligious or scientific nature, but only opinions, whose dignity is,however, inviolable, because it is protected by law. The variousopinions are either shared or rejected by autonomous citizens.Thus the value of an opinion can be measured precisely by deter-mining how many people share it. The market of opinions is con-stantly being studied, and the results of this research tell uswhich opinions belong to the mainstream and which are margin-al. This data offers a reliable basis for each individual’s decisionhow he or she wishes to draw up the budget of his or her opin-ions. Those who wish to be compatible with the mainstream willadopt opinions that are either already part of the mainstream orhave a chance to become so in the near future. Those who pre-fer to be thought of as representatives of a minority can seek out

Boris Groys

Religion as Medium

a suitable minority. Those who speak of a revival of religion todayclearly do not mean anything like the second coming of the Mes-siah or even that new gods and new prophets have appeared.Rather, they mean that religious opinions have moved from mar-ginal zones to the mainstream. If that is true, and statistics seemto confirm that assumption, then the question arises what couldhave caused religious opinions to become mainstream.

The survival and dissemination of opinions on the free marketis regulated by a law that Darwin formulated: the survival of thefittest. The opinions that are best adapted to the conditionsunder which they are disseminated will automatically have thebest odds of becoming mainstream. The market of opinionstoday, however, is clearly dominated by reproduction, repetition,and tautology. The standard diagnosis of today’s civilization isthat, over the course of the modern age, theology was replacedby philosophy, an orientation toward the past by an orientationtoward the future, tradition by subjective evidence, fidelity to ori-gins by innovation, and so on. In fact, however, the modern agewas not the age in which the sacred was abolished but the ageof its dissemination in profane space, its democratization, itsglobalization. Once ritual, repetition, and reproduction were mat-ters of religion; they were practiced in isolated, sacred places. Inthe modern age ritual, repetition, and reproduction have becomethe fate of the entire world, the entire culture. Everything repro-duces itself – capital, commodities, technology, art. Evenprogress is ultimately reproductive; it consists in a constantlyrepeated destruction of everything that cannot be reproducedquickly and effectively enough. People like to talk about innova-tion and change, but in fact they are referring almost exclusivelyto technological innovations.

Innovation in the realm of opinion can occur only if people notonly believe it is possible to recognize the truth but also expectit, strive for it. As noted above, however, our post-Enlightenmentculture does not believe in truth. Truth claims are seen as adver-tising gimmicks, as a pushy and hence disagreeable sales strate-gy, as deceptive packaging par excellence. Or worse: as totalitar-ian coercion, as an order to share an opinion even if one doesn’t

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Barbad Golshiri

2008video installation

(colour, sound) mixed media

dimensions and runtime variable

from Odyssey-i projectcourtesy Barbad Golshiriproduced in cooperation

with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Omer Fast

CNN Concatenated2002

video (colour, sound)18 min, loop

courtesy gb agency, Paris

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Boris Groys

Medium Religion[Religion as Medium]

2006video lecture (colour, sound)

25 min, loopcourtesy Boris Groys

production ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe,

2006 commissioned by

Schirn Kunsthalle Frankfurt

IRWIN

Corpse of Art2003–2004Mixed-Media-Installation(Wood, textile, wax, hair,vase, flowers)dimensions variablecourtesy Galerija Gregor Podnar, Berlin/Ljubljanaphoto: Jesko Hirschfeld, 2007

Boris Groys

The Immortal Bodies2007Video Lecture (colour,sound)29 min, loopcourtesy Boris Groysproduction ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe,2007in cooperation with Associazione Culturale il Vento del Cinema Roma

Korpys/Löffler

Für ein Leben nach dem Tod (Generalaudienz Audienzhalle 15. Dez. 2004,Generalaudienz Petersdom 24. Nov. 2004,Petrus skulptur Petersdom 12. Okt. 2004)20063 c-prints, 68 × 100 cmcourtesy Meyer Riegger, KarlsruheVG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008

Für ein Leben nach dem Tod2006video (colour, sound)72:30 min, loopcourtesy Meyer Riegger, KarlsruheVG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008

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really want to, as an insidious attack on freedom and the dignityof the consumer. Under such conditions religion clearly has bet-ter odds to succeed on the market of opinions than philosophy orscience does, for two reasons. First, the historical religions areestablished brands. For that reason alone they are more effec-tive at reaching people than philosophical or scientific doctrines.Whatever people might say, Christ, Muhammad, and the Bud-dha are genuine superstars. Not even Plato or Descartes canmeasure up to them, to say nothing of today’s philosophers. Ifyou want to succeed on the market of opinions, you are thuswell advised to appeal to the founders of religions. The universi-ties still bristle at this, but it is only a matter of time before theyabandon their resistance.

There is, however, another – if you will, deeper, weightier –reason to turn to religion. Religion can indeed be seen as a cer-tain set of opinions, to the extent this refers to the role of religionin profane space. There religion is associated with opinionsabout whether contraception should be permitted or womenshould wear headscarves. All religions, however, have anotherspace: sacred space. And religions have a different attitudetoward this space – namely, the view that it is the space of a lackof opinion, of opinionlessness. For the will of the gods or God isultimately hidden to the opinions of mortals. And that means thatwhile people in our culture are first and foremost holders of cer-tain opinions, religion is a place where this task, this mediality ofhuman beings is reflected on – and precisely because religionmarks and describes the state of opinionlessness, the zero levelof freedom of opinion. Just as Kazimir Malevich’s Black Square(1913) symbolized this for the medium of painting, because itcaused all figuration to disappear, so the sacred places of reli-gions are the places where the mediality of the human being canbe thematized, precisely because they are places where peoplelose all their opinions and find themselves once again in a statewithout opinions. As men without opinions, they practice repeti-tion tout court, that is, the kind of repetition that is no longer rep-etition of a certain opinion but rather a ritual of the opinionless-ness. That is what the hero of Andrei Tarkovsky’s film Nostalgia

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Exhibition Plan

First Floor

Second Floor

Third Floor

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Stairs

WC

Lift

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1 Adel Abdessemed, God is Design, 2005 2 Oreet Ashery, Dancing with men, 2003 3 Peter Bogers, The Secret Place of the

Most High, 2003 4 Christoph Büchel, Tomorrow‘s Pioneers

(Farfour), 2007 5 Paul Chan, 1st Light, 2005 6 Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo,

Anexion Oculta / Hidden Annexation, 2008 Susana Pilar Delahante Matienzo, El Escandalo de lo Real / Scandal of the Real, 2006-2007

7 VALIE EXPORT, Ingrid and Oswald Wiener, Das unsagbare Sagen, 1992

8 Omer Fast, CNN CONCATENATED, 2002 9 Barbad Golshiri10 Boris Groys, Das Medium Religion

(Religion as Medium), 2006 Boris Groys, Unsterbliche Körper (The Immortal Bodies), 2007

11 IRWIN, Corpse of Art, 2003-2004 12 Korpys/Löffler, Für ein Leben nach dem

Tod, 2006 13 Alexander Kosolapov, This is my blood,

2002 14 Rabih Mroué, On ThreePosters -

Reflection on a video-performance, 2006 15 Sang-Kyoon Noh, Twin Jesus Christs,

2001 Sang-Kyoon Noh, For the Worshippers

16 Nira Pereg, Sabbath 2008, 2008 17 Anri Sala, Uomoduomo, 2000 18 Günter Saree, Sterbetuch, 1973

(reconstruction, 2008) 19 Wael Shawky, The Cave, 2006

Wael Shawky, Al Aqsa Park, 2006 20 Jalal Toufic, The Sleep of Reason. This

Blood Spilled in My Veins, 2002 21 Vadim Zakharov, Der See der

Vergessenheit / Lake of Oblivion, 2000

23 Bin Laden, Al-Qaida-Video, 2004 Bin Laden, Al-Qaida-Video, 2001

24 God’s Generals, 2008 25 Jerry B. Jenkins & Tim LaHaye: Left

Behind. Eternal Forces, 2006 26 Kajri Jain, Bazaar religious images 27 Paul Eugene, Gospel Aerobics28 Maxim Kononenko, Natalia Struchkova,

Alexey Naumenkov, Timur Yudin, Virtual Mawsolej W. I. Lenina, 1998/2008 Alexei W. Schtschussew, Lenin-Mausoleum, 1924/2008 Geneviève Zondervan, Lenine (Portrait of Lenin), 1953

29 Dorna Safaian, After being interpreted by a machine (the blind; the dead; realism), 2008

30 Gregor Schneider/Natalia Schmidt, Cube Documentation, 2005-2008

31 Tom Cruise, Scientology-Video [Medal of Valor], 2008 Tom Cruise, Scientology-Video [Monologue], 2004/2008

32 Joshua Simon, Shahids, 2003-08

UC Berkeley Journalism Project:Faces of Faith, 2008see www.modelart.ie for details of this work.

Participating Artists / List of Works List of Documentary installations

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(1983) does when he finds himself in a state of a total lack ofopinion; he begins by going back and forth on the same path.This path does not by any means bring the hero forward – how-ever “forward” might be meant here. Rather, by so doing thehero connects to the movement back and forth whose very radi-cally solitary, inescapable repetitiveness marks him as a mediumof this lack of opinion.

The experience of a lack of opinions, which is a genuinely reli-gious experience, is not necessarily tied to certain places, how-ever. This situation of a lack of opinions is much more commonand more ordinary experience than is usually assumed. Such anexperience occurs, for example, when people are confrontedwith a situation in which all existing opinions fail. The same situa-tion can, however, also arise when people no longer want tohave opinions, when they have definitely had enough of opinionsas such, the market of opinions, and the creation and dissemina-tion of opinions. When they suddenly notice that all existingopinions cancel one another out. Then they find themselves onthe zero level of freedom of opinion again – and become con-scious of their own mediality. The freedom of opinion becomesthe abandonment of opinion: people are equally free of all opin-ions, all opinions equally abandoned. What are they to do then?How are they to react to this state of the complete abandonmentof opinion? Religion and philosophy offer different answers tothis question, or so it seems at first. Philosophy believes that insuch cases people have to invent a new opinion, a new truth, tolead them out of the state of opinionlessness. Religion, by con-trast, considers such a reaction too superficial and optimistic,because a person who thinks in religious terms anticipates fromthe outset the next step in which the new truth is absorbed bythe market of opinions. Instead, religion offers another solution:insisting on this lack of opinion, connecting to the long history ofthe absence of opinions that is, ultimately, the history of religion.Religious people are not people of opinions, representatives orproducers of opinions; rather, they are media people, people asmedia.

Caring for the lack of opinion – whether of individuals or a col-

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Rabih Mroué

On Three Posters.Reflections on a

Video Performance2006

(Rabih Mroué/Elias Khoury:Three Posters.

Ayloul Festival, Beirut 2000)video (colour, sound)

18 mincourtesy of

Sfeir-Semler Galleryphoto: Lina Gheibeh

Alexander Kosola-pov

This is my body2002

lightbox82 ×150 cm

courtesy Guelman GalleryVG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008

Sang-Kyoon Noh

Twin Jesus Christs2001

sequins on polyester resin and fiberglass267 × 265 × 78 cm

courtesy Sang-Kyoon Noh photo: Eun-Kyung Yeom

For the Worshipers2008

sequins on polyester resin and fiberglass

dimensions variable courtesy Sang-Kyoon Noh

photo: Sang-Kyoon Noh

>

>>

Nira Pereg

Sabbath 200820081-channel video projection(colour, sound)7 min, loopcourtesy Nira Peregproduced in cooperation with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

Anri Sala

Uomoduomo2000video (b/w, no sound)1:41 min, loopcourtesy Sammlung Goetz

Wael Shawky

Al Aksa Park2006computer animation (b/w, sound)30 min, loopcourtesy Wael Shawky

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lective – demands a special place, a heterotopia, as Foucaultcalled it. This is a place outside the space of opinion, outside themarket of opinions. There the distinction between true and falseand between good & evil is neutralized. But that is preciselywhat makes so distinct the line between the quotidian market ofopinions and a sacred lack of opinions. Those who advocate cer-tain opinions can easily position themselves in public space.Those who insist on a lack of opinions, however, need a differentspace, namely, a sacred space, and another time, the repetitivetime of ritual. Thus it is also inevitable that they connect to cer-tain places in rituals that in the past were defined as other,sacred places, as heterotopias. Those who enter such spacesand participate in such rituals leave their opinions at the coat-room by the door. The space of the temporary suspension of allopinions needs an outer boundary in order to guarantee its free-dom from opinion.

Hence this lack of opinion is first and foremost conservative. Itremains the same through time, whereas opinions change withtime. The resulting aversion to all possible opinions often seemsintolerant and even irrational, because it is difficult to justifyrationally. The question is often asked what it really means towant to be religious. What objectives are set, what opinionsdoes one want to assert? The answer is: to finally be rid of objec-tives and opinions altogether. Or, to put it another way, to findoneself, to free oneself from the obligation to have opinions, theservitude to opinions and objectives – to celebrate one’s puremediality, one’s pure ability to reproduce and be reproduced.Now, however, it gets difficult when the traditional sacred placesare lost, when the reflection on one’s own mediality no longerhas a place or time. At that moment the effect of the religiousimpulse is no longer conservative but instead extremist.Because when sacred spaces are lost or go unprotected, theyhave to be created by force. A piece of territory has to bereclaimed from the global market of opinions in order to createanother space, a heterotopia. Then one subjects oneself to vio-lence & transforms one’s own body into a site of the sacred, aplace of the silent, repetitive martyrdom, as happens, for exam-

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ple, in Mel Gibson’s film The Passion of the Christ (2004). Or thecross is used as a weapon, as in Roberto Rodriguez’s film FromDusk till Dawn (1996), to defend the human body, which is alsoshown as a silent body, as a place of indifference and boredomwith respect to all conviction or ideology – as a body beyond allopinion.

Thus to the extent that religion is the site of a revelation of themediality of humanity, religion can be understood as the avant-garde of our present world, determined as it is by the mass media,just as the artistic avantgarde functioned as the revelation of themediality of art. Yet the interest of the mass media in religion is notsimply a theoretical one, for the revelation of the mediality ofhuman beings is also an event, a piece of news, that can andshould be communicated. Without the mass media this newswould be suppressed; the revelation would remain secret. Sitesof the sacred are by definition closed, hidden, dark places. Andthere are still such places in our globalized world. First, theyinclude the still well protected sites of traditional religions. Sec-ond, ever new sites are emerging: of secret conspiracies, violentseparations from the general public, places of dark individual andcollective ecstasies.

These places incessantly draw the attention of the media,because it is precisely the hidden, closed, dark, and marginal thatinterests today’s media. The media are quite naturally striving tobring the hidden and marginal to the light of the general audi-ence. That is why the media are repeatedly fascinated and pro-voked by the inaccessibility of sacred rituals. For decades therehave been novels written and films made about the secret loveaffairs of priests. Today it seems the Da Vinci Code has beencracked once and for all, finally making Christ himself a star, acelebrity, who of course cannot be thought of as such without adisclosure. The mass media are constantly to outdo revelation bydisclosure – and in doing so they demonstrate their essentialrepetitiveness. The greatest opportunity open to the massmedia is a new good message, a new good news, which is thatthings are announced to the mainstream that were once margin-al and hidden. It is constantly writing a new gospel that may per-

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Wael Shawky

The Cave2006

video (colour, sound)12:45 min, loop

courtesy Wael Shawky

Jalal Toufic

The Sleep of Reason.This Blood Spilled in

My Veins2002

video (colour, sound)32 min, loop

courtesy Jalal Toufic

Vadim Zakharov

Der See der Vergessen-heit / Lake of Oblivion

2000video installation

(colour, sound)30 min, loop

courtesy Vadim Zakharov

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haps contradict the old gospel on the level of opinion butnonetheless repeats the familiar ritual of revelation. The machin-ery of disclosure in the mass media today is merely the technicalreproduction of the religious ritual of revelation. Religion is anurmedium that always celebrates its return when news is dis-seminated and believed.

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Documentary Installations

Osma Bin Laden

Paul Eugene

Jerry B. Jenkins & Tim LaHaye

Kajri Jain

Maxim Kononenko, Natalia Struchkova AlexeyNaumen-kov, Timur Yudin

Alexei W. Schtschussew

Dorna Safaian

Gregor Schneider/Natalia Schmidt

Tom Cruise

Joshua Simon

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Kajri JainBazaar Religious Images

assorted religious printson paper, postcards,stickers, calendars,DVDs, 1 mantra boxcourtesy Kajri Jain

Shri Purna Giri Devijipilgrimage map, Indiaprint on paper32 ×22cmcourtesy Kajri Jain

God’s Generals

2008documentary video material,found footage (color, sound)15 min, loopProduction ZKM | Center forArt and Media Karlsruhe,2008

Osama Bin Laden,

Osama Bin Laden, Video Messages (Usama ibn Muhammad ibn Awad ibn Ladin)

20012004video (colour, sound) 5:00 min, loop5:40 min, loophttp://de.youtube.com/watch?v=ADhfC6KjcJQ (15.10.2008)

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Jerry B. Jenkins & Tim LaHaye:

Left Behind. Eternal Forces

2006Computerspiel,

Videocollage und 12 Romane

PC game, video collage and 12 novels

production ZKM | Centerfor Art and Media Karlsruhe,

2008

Lenin-MausoleumDocumentation

Maxim Kononenko,Natalia Struchkova,Alexey Naumenkov,

Timur YudinVirtuelles Lenin-

Mausoleum[Virtual Mawsolej

W. I. Lenina]1998/2008

3D computer model VRML /Parallel Graphics

courtesy Maxim Kononenko,Natalia Struchkova, Alexey

Naumenkov, Timur Yudin

Alexei W. SchtschussewLenin-Mausoleum

1924/20085 historical photographs

(inkjet print)30 × 40 cm

Geneviève ZondervanLenine [Portrait of Lenin]

1953oil on canvas, 27 × 22 cm

courtesy Sarah Wilson

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Gregor Schneider

Cube Documentation2005–2008selected documentary material courtesy Gregor Schneidercuratorial conception: Natalia Schmidt

Gregor SchneiderCube Venice2005graphic elaborationcourtesy Gregor SchneiderVG Bild-Kunst, Bonn 2008

Michèle und Mischa KuballBlack Cube/Apple NYC20063 photographs (inkjet print)14 x 11 cmcourtesy Michèle und Mischa Kuball

Natalia Schmidt,Boris Burghardt,David HowolthCube Collage2006video (colour, sound)23 min, loopcourtesy Natalia Schmidt,Boris Burghardt, David Howolth

Dorna Safaian

After being interpreted by a machine (the blind;the dead; realism)2008video installation (colour, sound)runtime variable, loop Schnitt | Editing: Kevin Mateewcourtesy Dorna Safaianproduced in cooperation with ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe

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Internal Scientology videos

Tom Cruise, Scientology(Medal of Valor)

2008video (colour, sound)

0:53 min, loophttp://de.youtube.com/watch

?v=H-C-wupe76E&feature=related (15.10.2008)

Tom Cruise, ScientologyVideo (Monologue)

2004videos (colour, sound)

9.35 min, loop http://de.youtube.com/watch

?v=UFBZ_uAbxS0(15.10.2008)

Joshua Simon

Shahids2003–2008

video collage (colour, sound)

20 min, loopSchnitt | Editing: Oded Bajayo

courtesy Joshua Simon

Gospel Aerobicswith Paul Eugene

ca. 2005–2008video (colour, sound)

19:30 min21:50 min, 32 min 24:30 min, 24 min

loophttp://de.youtube.com/results?search_query=

gospel+aerobic&search_type

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Symposium: Religious Challenges, Challenging Religions

Saturday 20th June, 2:30pmCanis Major, Clarion Hotel, Sligo

This public symposium brings together diverse speakers todiscuss religion, religiosity, philosophy, art and politics today.

Speakers include:

Dr Felix Ó Murchadha, Lecturer in Philosophy, Department ofPhilosophy, National University of Ireland, Galway, IrelandMediating the Unmediated: In Excess of Religion.Ó Murchadha contends that within religion there exists irreligioustendencies that are often beyond mediation. This ambiguity will beexamined in relation to the institution of religion, revelation and ritual.

Professor Hubert Knoblauch, Lecturer in General Sociology,Technische Universität, Berlin, GermanyPopular Religion: Are we witnessing the resacralisation or eventhe desecularisation of modern society?Professor Knoblauch argues that there is not a “return of religion”.Rather, religion is being transformed and adapting to thetransformations in contemporary society.

William Blair, Head of Museum Service, Mid-Antrim Museum, TheBraid, Ballymena, Northern IrelandExploring Faith: Local and global perspectives on religiousidentity.Blair will examine the approaches the Mid-Antrim Museum is exploringtowards sensitive issues of religious identity.

Barbad Goshiri, Artist, Tehran, IranHallowed be Beams of BlueGoshiri will discuss the ideological apparatus of post-revolution Iran,concentrating on television where a blue screen/curtain is used as abackdrop behind major political scenes broadcasted on Islamic TVchannels.

Chair to be announced

Admission Free but booking recommended

For bookings, phone 071 914 1405

For full info visitwww.modelart.ie/mediumreligion_symposium.html

24.05. 2009 – 16.08.2009

Model SatelliteModel Arts and Niland Gallery

9 Castle StreetSligo, IrelandTel.: +353 (0)71 914 1405 www.modelart.ie

Opening HoursTues - Sat: 12 - 6pmThu: 8pmSun: 12 - 4pmClosed Monday

www.modelart.ie/mediumreligion.html

RELIGION