The West Is Alive

"Goblin's Chants" is a starkly reductive and hypnotic work, structured around a single charged image. Klaus vom Bruch's torso is inscribed with a rotating computer generated construction (in real: a handmade wooden model put on an ordinary turntable); creating a composite image that metaphorically describes a collapse of the private and public space of vitual media. This spectacle of technology imposed on the human body is accompanied by a haunting soundtrack of traditional songs of the Pygmies. Ultimately, the artist turns his butt onto the viewer, communicating with fundamental body language.

Documentary film footage of ground personnel starting the propeller of an American B-17 bomber is repeated in a tightly edited, rhythmic structure. The obsessive fragmentation of the young soldiers lifting the propellers renders their action an exercise in frustration; A study in memetic repetition by Klaus vom Bruch.

"Pastiche of a Vermeer painting and the ongoing theaters of war."

The Schleyer Tape is a compilation of television and news footage comprising two hours of media accounts regarding the infamous Baader-Meinhof gang. Klaus vom Bruch's material begins with the September 1977 kidnapping of Hanns-Martin Schleyer and the dramatic news reportage from the scene of the car accident in Cologne where Schleyer was abducted.Vom Bruch then proceeds to chronologically relay footage from official press conferences, talkshow speculation, public interviews and the news, giving a broad and detailed account of the events leading up to the final downfall of the left-wing terrorist Red Army Faction and group suicide of Andreas Baader, Ulrike Meinhof and other RAF leaders.

"Hedy Lamarr in a beautiful loop and dialogue with the viewer... Watching a plane taking off in the cold..."