Maxim Biller, Dietrich Diedrichsen,
Sue Golding, Boris Groys, Dagmar Leupold,
Eva Meyer, Stefan Rieger, Slavoj Zizek u.a.

"With the events of 11 September, it was not only the Twin Towers that came tumbling down, but also the last of the old codes. The last old code includes identity. The world has always thought that, with identity, the problems would be solved for centuries or even millennia. In the 20^th century and even more so in the 21^st it has been found that identity itself is the problem. These codes, man-woman, the binary codes, black-white, top-bottom, whatever, have broken down. And the last of these old codes, identity, broke down when the planes crashed into the Twin Towers. The most obvious thing about this event, so to speak, is the fact that the identity policy of the West or America for example is no longer serviceable, no longer appropriate in its impact, no longer appropriate to reality.

Of course, the codes began to break down at the beginning of the 20^th century, with the invention of the automobile, with Art Nouveau in which all forms become fluid, the cinema comes, the image starts to move, the word moves via the radio and this becomes firmly established. Psychoanalysis decentralises the ego, Einstein comes and replaces the firmly constructed, identical and – in terms of identity politics – correct Newtonian world with his theory of relativity. Speed, time and flow suddenly play a quite different role, and the whole world picture begins to waver. And so at the beginning of the 20^th century, when all this goes into a state of flux, the old codes go into a spin. And, however absurd this may sound, this culminates in 11 September, when the last of the old codes breaks down. Yes and this can be seen in the Twin Towers, which themselves are binary, which themselves functioned on the principle of heaven and hell, man and woman, black and white, identity and difference, centre and periphery, artificiality and authenticity, in other words like all these binary codes.

When we invite the artists to think about how they want to present their statements on identity in the 20^th century, this also has something to do with forcing them to distance themselves as it were from their own projects, forms of presentation and identities, in other words to be the difference themselves, to distance themselves from self, to be not even married to themselves. This happens at precisely the moment when I think about how to present myself. At this precise moment I take leave of myself and live the difference that I am, so to speak. Hence the aesthetic notion of the artists' themselves thinking about how they wish to present their statement on this question of identity in the 21^st century, because with this a process of self-distancing begins"
(Statement Thomas Palzer 09.11.2001).

Idea: Thomas Palzer / Martin Zeyn
Realization: Thomas Palzer

BR/intermedium 2