New Dawn. 2008
Still from 6mins High Definition digital Video loop.
New Violence Exhibition. Galerie Dusseldorf, Perth, Australia
An angel is depicted there who looks as though he were about to
distance himself from something, which he is staring at. His eyes are
opened wide, his mouth stands open and his wings are outstretched. The
Angel of History must look just so. His face is turned towards the
past. Where we see the appearance of a chain of events, he sees one
single catastrophe, which unceasingly piles rubble on top of rubble and
hurls it before his feet. He would like to pause for a moment so fair,
to awaken the dead and to piece together what has been smashed. But a
storm is blowing from Paradise; it has caught itself up in his wings
and is so strong that the Angel can no longer close them. The storm
drives him irresistibly into the future, to which his back is turned,
while the rubble-heap before him grows sky-high. That which we call
progress, is this storm.
Walter Benjamin 1940. Theses on the Philosophy of History
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