Artists Statement

Participative performance project

In the public performance project macghillie_just a void, urban sites are visited by a figure, clad in a camouflage suit, who reveals neither the traits of an individual, or even of a person. The so-called Ghillie Suit was originally invented in the nineteenth century for hunting, and has been
used as camouflage for soldiers in military conflicts ever since the First World War. Its camouflage results in the anonymisation and the neutralisation of the person who wears it in public. The figure oscillates between the hyperpresence of a mask, and visual redundancy. It traverses the modern urban environment in which conspicuity holds ambivalent currency, wavering between cumbersome affirmation and visual arbitrariness.

• knowbotic research (Yvonne Wilhelm, Christian Hübler & Alexander Tuchacek) was formed in 1991 and is based in Zurich, Switzerland. The artist group has been experimenting with urbanity, construction of knowledge and political representations in mediatised public spheres. Most recently, kr have been investigating the construction of meaning and communication in a series of ‘test cases’ that raise important questions about the constitution of subjectivity under the conditions of an information society.

Full text (PDF) p. 54-58