Dumb Show

The installation »Dumb Show«, presented in a digitized version in the exhibition, was conceived by Peter Weibel in 1969 as a film or slide installation. Instead of on a screen the images were projected onto water vapor rising from four bathtubs. In the installation, a six-minute sequence of various photographs from concentration camps can be seen on the ephemeral projection surface of the vapor, which dissolves into nothing after a short time. The repression mechanism, the traumatization by the crimes of the Holocaust, is made visible. As in his other works from this period belonging to the area of Expanded Cinema, Peter Weibel’s »Dumb Show« explores the conventions of cinema; here it is the white screen. In this way he expands the possibilities of filmic representation by interweaving real and virtual elements, and utilizing new materials and devices. It is only in this way that he can adequately commemorate the crimes committed in the concentration camps, the representation of which since Theodor W. Adorno condemned. Kant had already rejected the depiction of disgusting things, war, etc. in art. Conventional cinema revels in the depiction of violence. Weibel evades this apparatus-based simulation.