EMPIRE OF EVIL (AT 2006, Harald Hund)

Harald Hund – EMPIRE OF EVIL

AT 2016, feat. Stephen Mathewson, 11’, English OV

Based on media representations of Iran, Harald Hund poses the controversial question of trust in image documents which suggest authenticity and thus present a prospect of truth. At that, the title – referring to Ronald Reagan’s and George Bush’s dichotomous terms of ‘Evil Empire’ and ‘Axis of Evil’ – already associates that, initially, Iran appears as a cultural area the political conflict situation of which serves as a projection surface for foreign, ‘western’ attributions.

“As early as in the initial sequences, the web of documentary evidence and fiction, of pictorial testimony and oral report is construed – a web along which EMPIRE OF EVIL turns out to be a critical narrative: images of the airplane’s interior, the view from above on a rugged, cloud-covered landscape, the information screen. As well, it is talked about ‘secret recordings’ and ‘atomic weapons program’, and without naming names it is obvious which country it is about, which one it has to be about. Hund consistently interlocks documentary codes and investigative signatures with elements on the level of the spoken word, of a voice over (with US accent) that increases into the absurd more and more, and with elements that give rise to doubts about the images and their information content evermore.” (Irene Müller)