Krzysztof Wodiczko


  

Wodiczko proposal is to disturb the new order of things creating political, site specific works the employ

 ' stratagies of disarticulation'.

Wodiczko is well known for his nocturnal, outdoor, photographic light projections of leftist, propagandistic imagery.








At the beginning of his artistic career Krzysztof Wodiczko work that involved the projection of images onto gallery walls, working with the particular architecture of the venue. 
Since the late eighties, he has developed a series of nomadic instruments for both homeless and immigrant operators that function as implements for survival, communication, empowerment, and healing.

This forces the viewer to re-examine the function of architecture and to reconsider the political nature of the steel and concrete caverns of commerce that make up large cities.

 

 Installation view of ...OUT OF HERE: The Veterans Project

Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston, Massachusetts
November 4, 2009 - March 28, 2010

He recently created an video and sound installation: 'OUT OF HERE, The Veterans Project'. The space is completely dark except for projected industrial type windows at the top of the wall. Clouds and blue sky drift by. You can hear a helicopter passing by  near and far. You can hear people in conversation., women and children. 

..Suddenly there is chaos. A bomb goes off close enough to break several of the windows. You hear the rattle of gunfire and the shouts of American soldiers who evidently have been ambushed. Shots break more windows, and some penetrate the walls beneath them, letting in light through ragged bullet holes. One of the soldiers is downed, and so is a child. “That kid’s been hit!” yells a soldier. “Leave the kid, let’s go!” shouts another. The Americans motor off leaving women wailing in grief.
This work has recieved mixed opinions which is a success in itself!

His works have involved projections in over a dozen countries, and have included a three-piece corporate suit onto the Bank of Montréal Tower in Halifax, Nova Scotia (1981), a nuclear missile onto a nineteenth-century columnar military tribute in Stuttgart, West Germany (1983), a Swastika on the South African Embassy in London, England (1985), and a gigantic eye projected onto the pediment of the Swiss Parliament building in Bern (1985).

Wodiczko has also taken his art into galleries, and collaborated on public intervention pieces such as an exhibition with Jana Sterbak called The Homeless Projection: A Proposal for the City of New York (1986). 

« The Homeless Projection Civil War Memorial », 1987,
 Barcelone, Fondation Antoni Tapies, 1992

This involved reflecting images of the homeless onto public buildings, echoing the reality of homeless life on an enormous scale by placing people back onto the architecture that defines their space every day. 

In 1988 Wodiczko created the Homeless Vehicle, a mobile shelter based on a shopping cart. It provides shelter, safety, and a means of income for users- the vehicle is designed for collecting and storing cans, bottles and other materials- and this in turn provides a '' legitimized status for its users in the community of the city''.

Homeless Vehicle Project 1988-1989

This vehicle is neither a temporary nor a permanent solution to the housing problem, it articulates the fact that people are compelled to live on the street and that this is unacceptable. through discussions with those people in new york city, a proposal for a vehicle to be used both for personal shelter and can and bottle collection and storage was developed. an earlier design was shown to potential users and modified according to their criticism and suggestions. it is not put forward as a finished product, ready for use on the streets, it attemps to function as a visual analog to everyday objects of consumption, such as food vendor carts. it bears a resemblance to a weapon, the movement of carts through new york are acts of resistance.

He created two pieces concerned with the issue of immigration and communication, in 1992 devising Alien Staff, and in 1994, Mouthpiece. Mouthpiece was a work that fit onto a person's mouth and spouted pre-recorded speech, denying the real act of communication to the wearer. 

In 1985, Wodiczko projected a swastika on the South African Embassy in London, underneath which was a boat with the words Good Hope. This was at the time of Apartheid. Realizing the downfall of the Nazis as racists perhaps South African laws and beliefs could eventually change.

Krzysztof Wodiczko, [Projection on South Africa House, Trafalgar Square, London], 1985

Wodiczko had permission to perform a projection only on this latter monument. Yet even in this case, the artist violated his agreement with the authorities: instead of projecting nothing but two large hands, he showed a huge intercontinental ballistic missile wrapped in barbed wire, with tank treads underneath the massive lions at the base of the column. The swastika projection lasted for two hours before it was interrupted by the arrival of the police. As it happened, while Wodiczko was in London preparing for the performance, Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher approved a large donation of money to the government of  South Africa, despite the country’s legal discrimination based on race under the apartheid system. A group of demonstrators protested Thatcher’s decision outside the South African embassy  in Trafalgar Square. On the second and final evening of the Nelson’s Column Projection, Wodiczko rotated one of his projectors and trained it on South Africa House. He projected an image of a swastika over the pediment relief of a boat, which reads “Good Hope.” Although this guerrilla work lasted only two hours, images of the event were circulated and published in the press the next day.

By introducing the technique of an outdoor slide montage and the immediately recognizable language of popular imagery, the public projection can become a communal, aesthetic counterritual. It can become an urban night festival, an architectural “epic theater,” inviting both reflection and relaxation, where a street public follows the narrative forms with an emotional engagement and a critical detachment.

                                         


In August 1999, his first "Public Projection" in Japan was held in front of the A-Bomb Dome. Motion images of the hands of fourteen people, including survivors of the atomic bomb (Japanese as well as Koreans) and the youth of Hiroshima, were projected upon a river embankment below the Dome along with their voices.

                                                        Interview: Hiroshima Project