| Power and the poetry of money, the increasingly narrower latitude available for political action, the role of the self-generating war, the iciness of society, the execution of nature—these are the themes to which Malachi Farrell draws our eye, as well as to a bunch of cables, hoses, aluminum sheets, contraptions, and electronic parts everywhere, to which movement and sound are added. The result is loud and wild. The machinery is visible; it is meant to be visible. The artist, who was born in Ireland and raised in Paris, reveals to us what holds the world together at its core, but he does so very much from the perspective of a rapper version of a French artist-intellectual who has declared his support for the principle of political responsibility to society. |  |
Martin Schick
Power and the poetry of money, the increasingly narrower latitude available for political action, the role of the self-generating war, the iciness of society, the execution of nature—these are the themes to which Malachi Farrell draws our eye, as well as to a bunch of cables, hoses, aluminum sheets, contraptions, and electronic parts everywhere, to which movement and sound are added. The result is loud and wild. The machinery is visible; it is meant to be visible. The artist, who was born in Ireland and raised in Paris, reveals to us what holds the world together at its core, but he does so very much from the perspective of a rapper version of a French artist-intellectual who has declared his support for the principle of political responsibility to society. What is commonly called an “installation” in an artistic context here turns into the dramatization of a politically engaged Gesamtkunstwerk (synthesis of the arts) with a tendency to become a world machine, an artistic firework that does not shy away from a symbolic and mechanical explanation of the world. In truth, it is no longer an exhibition. What we see is a theater for robots, machines, automated puppets, and everyday objects set in motion, driven by pneumatic compressors, hydraulics, motors, and dancing mechanics. “Can’t you do anything domestic?” is frequently the reaction of collectors and curators, who like to instrumentalize artists as remote-control interior decorators or theory designer.
Already in the entrance a heavily armored mechanical police dog barks at the visitor; next to the dog two beggars, whose rags identify them as impoverished politicians, shake handouts into each other’s cup, until finally everything slips away. It is an absurd comedy on distributive justice, since meanwhile a few yards away the fat bundles of cash are following their own choreography. They are suburban kids whose identities have been reduced to the sneakers they wear, and who dream of becoming big gangsters, appear as a symbol of the culture of drugs and rap, and perform a touching marionette theater. The constantly wet shoes dance to the music’s rhythm, rising up, and fall again with a splash on the wet floor of reality. Talking bombs reveal their attributes, which suggest various disasters of war. The other bombs reply to the shouts of the “general” with the cry “Oui, chef!” and the chained bollards that protect the war memorial, which are themselves bombs, join in. At the end of the performance the monument begins to smoke, and the bombs ask, “What’s next?”
Electric Chairs is also a kind of mechanical theater, a play within the play, even to the point of having a stage curtain, which is also a suggestion of real executions. Horror and laughter run hand in hand in this comic showdown: the effect is immediate. Most of it requires no explanation. But nothing takes place without distance and humor in Farrell’s work. At the same time spectacularly, ironically, and almost triflingly, he treats the themes of sculpture in contemporary art, or perhaps what art has been since Marcel Duchamp made sculpture, including the war memorial. Even the artistic patricide of the grandfather of the machine art, Jean Tinguely, is evident: too “domestic” for Farrell. The 32-year-old knows his roots, but he has chosen forms of expression that tear down the picket fence of their own system of reference and dog the heels of the madness of everyday life. His conception of art is a plea for an honest, genuinely free art and for a self-confident public that stops short of its shadow manipulated by the terror of purely economic interests. Perhaps art, at least, can escape the vortex of manipulation.
Excerpt from the foreword for the exhibition catalogue: Malachi Farrell Manipulation, Galerie Stadt Backnang, Germany, Revolver, 2002.
