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Projection in Mexico concerning undocumented Workers Projection in Mexico concerning undocumented Workers Projection in Mexico concerning undocumented Workers Projection in Mexico concerning undocumented Workers Projection in Mexico concerning undocumented Workers Projection in Mexico concerning undocumented Workers
Essay by Mark Vallen

Polish artist Krzysztof Wodiczko creates art by projecting images upon the monumental architecture found in large cities. His ephemeral projection pieces last only a night or two, but they reclaim the city streets as places for discussion and heated debate. In the image directly above, the artist projected a photograph upon the domed Centro Cultural Theatre of Tijuana. The domed theater is where a documentary tracing the history of Mexican civilization is screened daily. The projection's theme was the undocumented Mexican workers who risk their lives to cross into the United States in search of jobs. The image used in the projection shows a Mexican worker with his hands clasped behind his head, as if being arrested by La Migra (the INS).

The artist spent half his life behind "the Iron Curtain" and the other half in Canada and the United States, so he has a well developed critique of power and it's abuses. The artist's early projection pieces utilized regular slide projectors placed on the ground, but with time more powerful projectors were used from flatbed trucks or scaffolds. Wodiczko's art is profoundly democratic. It forces the viewer to reexamine the function of architecture and to reconsider the political nature of the steel and concrete caverns of commerce that make up large cities.

In 1987 the artist projected a controversial image onto the Martin Luther Church in Kassel Germany, one of the few buildings to have survived the allied bombings of World War II. It was a great irony that in 1987 the city of Kassel experienced an "evacuation alert" due to the threat of industrial pollution from nearby factories. Some months after that alert, the artist projected upon the Church the image shown at right. The artwork is of a person praying in a hazardous materials protective suite. Deeply influenced by the German photomontage artist, John Heartfield, Surrealism, and the French Situationists of the late 1950's, Wodiczko said this about his projections. "The attack must be unexpected, frontal, and must come with the night when the building, undisturbed by it's daily function, is asleep and when it's body dreams of itself. This will be a symbol-attack, a public, psychoanalytical seance, unmasking and revealing the unconscious of the building, it's body, the medium of power."

The Artist's projection on a Church in Germany The Artist's projection on a Church in Germany
The Artist's projection on a Church in Germany The Artist's projection on a Church in Germany
The Artist's Gulf War projection in Spain The Artist's Gulf War projection in Spain
The Artist's Gulf War projection in Spain The Artist's Gulf War projection in Spain
The projection at left was made in Madrid Spain just days after the outbreak of the first Gulf War, in January 1991. The images were beamed onto the triumphal arch celebrating the victory of fascist Generalissimo Francisco Franco in the Spanish Civil War. Wodiczko projected a pair of death hands... one grasping an M-16 machine gun, the other a gas pump nozzle. At the top of the arch the question ¿Cuantos? (How much?), was projected. In a 1988 interview, Krzysztof Wodiczko said this of his projections. "My work reveals the contradiction of the environment and the events actually taking place there. It is to do with politics of space and the ideology of architecture. City centers are political art galleries."

The photos in this essay were taken from, Public Address, the compiled works of Krzysztof Wodiczko. The book is an amazing 175 page journey through the artist's various international public projection projects. Beautifully illustrated with photos of the actual projections on city streets, the book is an informative and inspirational guide to what is possible regarding public art.

Cover art for "Public Address."