Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson
Dschihad for Germany, 2016
Video (7 minutes)
Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson’s new work, Dschihad for Germany, takes the central impulse of the Halfmoon Camp and updates it.
Shot on location in Niederer Fläming, this work features actress Marie-Thérèse Fontheim spelling out the word DSCHIHAD using Rudolf Steiner’s Eurythmy alphabet. Surrounded by swaying wheat fields and windmills, Fontheim’s performance is accompanied by a newly composed folk song where the lyric “Dora-Siegfried-Cäser-Heinrich-Ida-Heinrich-Anton-Dora” conforms to the DIN 5009 (1996) Buchstabiertafel (spelling alphabet) which is currently used by the German emergency services.
Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Dschihad for Germany (still), 2016
Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Dschihad for Germany (installation view), 2016. Foto / photo: Christoph Assmann
Nick Crowe & Ian Rawlinson, Dschihad for Germany (installation view), 2016. Foto / photo: Christoph Assmann
Nick Crowe and Ian Rawlinson (*1968 and *1965 respectively, live and work in Manchester, UK and Berlin, Germany) started working together in 1994. Since then, they have been drawn to the ways in which power and authority articulate themselves through the grammar and rhetoric that surrounds them. Their works often combine densely layered visual and acoustic allusions to faith, politics, national identity and the environment. Recent solo exhibitions include MeWo Kunsthalle Memmingen (2016); Yorkshire Sculpture Park, Wakefield (2015); Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester (2013); Plataforma Revólver, Lisbon (2012); and SALT Beyoğlu, Istanbul (2012).