. . . to be continued

2018 | Digital photo on canvas (250 x 150 cm), riding boots, single channel video projection (58 sec loop)

The work starts out from the famous Waldheim horse that was built to protest at Kurt Waldheim’s candidature for the Austrian presidency in 1986. Text material—in a variant of Futura which narrowly escaped becoming the Nazis’ go to font—has been fitted into the silhouette of the head and allowed to also become a mane.

The text, which is continued outside the image, is addressed to a civil society that is recovering from a serious health problem. To fill in the recuperation period the text traces the story of the social developments in Austria and the rest of the Western world along with the political and economic background that has lead to the present state of affairs.

From time to time a looped, 3-second film sequence is projected onto the canvas ‘screen’. It is from ‘The Rocking Horse Winner’ (1949), a film version of a short story by D.H. Lawrence. In it a boy discovers he can predict the winners of horse races by obsessively riding his rocking horse. The monetary winnings in themselves, however, mean nothing to him. They are the vain attempt to win the love of his frustrated mother.

Dear civil society, the text ends, I hope I will soon be hearing of your return to full health.

(Anton Lederer)