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The exhibition
Enemy Image investigates mechanisms of how the notion of the enemy is constructed
in the United States and elsewhere. Most societies perpetually construct
an enemy image in order to affirm and define their own identities. The
controversial philosopher Carl Schmitt claimed that the "friend-enemy" distinction is not only formative
but constitutes the core of political existence. Yet from the psychoanalytic
perspective of Freud, the enemyisn't the opposite of friend, but instead
a mere manifestation of the self. For Freud, creating an enemy allows an
easy escape from a problematic encounter with the self, translating an
internal conflict into an external obstacle.
These theories
do not neatly coexist, and the works presented as part of Enemy Image
reflect that complexity. Moreover, acknowledging the spectacular changes
that the image of the enemy has undergone during the last decade, the
artists comment on the enemy's difficult re-defining. Immediately after
the end of the cold war's “red threat,” the US had no clear
image of an enemy for more than a decade. But now we find ourselves in
a period of dynamic image building, dominated by a logic of unqualified
difference.
The artists presented in this show find the enemy image in print media,
in cinema, and in political rhetoric. Several of the artists capitalize
on today's definitions of the enemy and the US's relationship to specific
enemies; others emphasize historical dimensions, drawing on the official
imagery and propaganda in the United States during times of war and political
conflict. Yet it may be those artists who engage with images from our media
saturated lives who find the most troubling ways in which the enemy (and
its antithesis, the inviolable hero) becomes a natural and unquestioned
part of our culture. The exhibition not only directs our attention to the
complexities of these constructions, but also to the current struggle for
a new canon of extreme antagonisms and the new escalation of official enemy
images.
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