In the interval between two archival images from the same war footage (Saipan in 1945), Klaus vom Bruch fleetingly inscribes, upon German memory, his own face: a pregnant recurring image, his gaze upon historical memory. This self-portrait is constructed around a conflictual space between two registers of images, two opposed temporalities colliding in an impossible fusion.

This work, based upon repetition, pulls the gaze into a spiral, a helix, which progressively undoes the image. The artist often uses archival images of war machines (here the propeller of a B17) the better to include himself in the flux of that reality and attempt to act upon, to interfere with the infernal progress of mechanised, anonymous violence it represents. This obsessive intrusion into the body of war machinery extends beyond the duration of its occurrence, making historical representation its own mirror. Propellerband plays upon the mechanisms of hypnosis, displaying and deconstructing the workings of the propaganda film where one image always conceals another, more powerful image, a subliminal flash overlapping its contours.

Stéphanie Moisdon

Translated by Phoebe Green