Video Installation "Do You Have Murder Fantasies", photo: Michał Kosakowski, courtesy of Kunstpalais Erlangen
Michał Kosakowski began filming his interviews with people from different social backgrounds in which they share and stage their murder fantasies in 1996. Acting out what they desire and fear, the protagonists performances are visibly shaped by cinema and TV images. Ten years later the interviewees answer questions on their views on the morality of murder, torture, war and religion, their astonishing honesty and straightforwardness compels Kosakowski to create his first feature film Zero Killed. In it the contradictions between the people’s fantasy murder acts and their reactions to questions on real violence become apparent. “Zero Killed is my response to the continuous flood of uncommented depiction of violence in and by the media which daily undermines and erodes our capacity for empathy” the artist explains.
The gory interviews are the basis of Kosakowski’s video installation Do You Have Murder Fantasies? at the Töten / Killing exhibition in the Kunstpalais in Germany’s Erlangen. Featuring works by Jenny Holzer, Taryn Simon, Björn Melhus, Anri Sala, Yves Netzhammer, Kitty Kraus, Parastou Forouhar, Michał Kosakowski, Milica Tomic, Eva and Franco Mattes, Simon Menner, the exhibition explores the discrepancy between the omnipresence of various types of killings in today’s media and its absence from contemporary consciousness and discourse. It attemps to answer the question of how much relevance an artistic picture still has in view of the flood of images in the media. Panel discussions, lectures, guided tours, readings, conversations with artists, workshops and a conference run in parallel to the exhibition.
With its world premiere on the 1st of June 2012 at the Transilvania International Film Festival and its US premiere on the 31st of May 2012 at the Chicago Underground Film Festival, Zero Killed also screens at the Fright Night Film Festival in Louisville, Kentucky.
Michał Kosakowski – Born in 1975 in Szczecin, director, writer, producer, director of photography of numerous video installations, experimental and short films. Moving to Vienna at the age of ten, he set up his own independent film production company. His film projects with the with the Austrian artist and curator Uli Aigner were shown at renowned venues around the world from Centre Pompidou Paris to Multiplicidade in Rio de Janeiro. He lives and works in Berlin, Germany, where he is developing the feature films Dark Tourism and Visit from Poland and the experimental film So Others May Live.
Sources: Kunstpalais Erlangen, Michał Kosakowski website, Zero Killed website
Author: Marta Jazowska