Copyright: Goethe-Institut
19 August 2010
Do You Copy?Rip-off, plagiarism, forgery – in modern western culture, copying has rather negative connotations. In eastern cultures, it’s different. Putting an original in a different frame creates something new – it’s the same but different. The exhibition Culture(s) of Copy held at the Goethe-Institut Hong Kong and the Hong Kong Film Archive (photo) attempts to examine the differences between cultures in the light of the phenomenon of copying. For instance, our seemingly steadfast belief in unfaltering playback of a remembered experience is utterly challenged by the three-channel video work Talk Show (2010) by the Israeli born Berlin artist Omer Fast. The work combines the children’s game of the “Chinese whispers” or “Telephone” with the TV talk show format. Although we begin with a detailed reconstruction of the murder of American journalist Steven Vincent, who was kidnapped and killed in Iraq in August 2005, after being copied and repeated many times over, the story ends with a lost political dimension. Such differentiating positions of copies are the focus of the exhibition’s thirteen other works by artists from China, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Finland and Germany. In addition to the claim that the reality shown by the media is truly genuine, other subject matter include theme parks and stories as archives. The exhibition will be shown from 27 November 2010 until 20 February 2011 at the Edith-Russ-Haus in Oldenburg.
