4.1 INTRODUCTION

Faces appear on and behind transparent blocks. If you listen, you will learn that these people are military personnel who have served in Bosnia, Kosovo, Iraq or Afghanistan. They speak of how their physical and mental health suffered during their service. Some are sure to die of cancer, prematurely. You learn about their children, who suffer from birth defects or serious illnesses. In numerous interviews, subjects tell the artist about the effects of uranium ammunition. The technology is designed to penetrate massive armor; nano-particles thus released attach themselves to human cells, changing their structure. As they answer the artist’s questions, these people know that their bodies are going through a constant and aggressive transformation.

Bogomir Doringer has shifted the invisible physical changes to the external world, in the form of a sculpture made of ferrofluid, a highly magnetic liquid. It changes before the eyes of the public, and leads us inevitably to thoughts of what cannot be perceived: terrible, unseen physical changes. In his installation, Bogomir Doringer stages this scenario of latent threat, this paranoid atmosphere that has long ago taken over body and soul. The translucent screen actually even reveals ghosts, the so-called undead who report back from that intermediate realm, a place from which they may no longer escape. The artist is loath to convey the recounted horror through images, which tend to curdle into visual clichés. He prefers to tap into the power of uncanniness, a presence that only arises in the imagination, as a hint of the real terrors that exist in this world.

Text by Brigitte Felderer (The Digital Uncanny / Das Digitale Unheimliche)

4.4 GOLDEN BIOPSY

In Progress