Under Arms: Fire & Forget 2

Weapons exert an ambivalent fascination. They embody power and superiority while also reminding us of pain and death. Whether they are carried as a means of maintaining the public order, for the individual or collective application of force, for personal safety or as sports or work equipment, weapons and the threat they pose are always bound up with social structures. They are among us—whether we see them or not, whether they arouse fear or pleasure or both at the same time.

The exhibition Under Arms: Fire & Forget 2 at the Museum Angewandte Kunst in Frankfurt will follow the traces left by weapons and the military aesthetic in fashion, design, art and everyday culture. Under Arms will thus complement and expand on Fire & Forget: On Violence, a show focussing on how contemporary art responds to weapons and violence, presented at the KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin in 2015.

On 1,200 metres of exhibition space, in an architecture that will exaggerate the formal language of art and arms fairs for the museum context, the Frankfurt show will present bizarre and beautiful, informative and disturbing objects from art, design and the media: works by Barbara Kruger, Korpys/Löffler, Omer Fast, Timo Nasseri, Nedko Solakov, Timur Si-Qin and others will each reflect on weapons and physical violence in their own way. Bomber jackets by Helmut Lang, camouflage prints, perfume bottles and dildos in the form of a hand grenade and designs by Philippe Starck all make use of the emotions associated with weapons for their own purposes. The reference to the military aesthetic plays with provocation; at the same time, however, these objects condense the fears and longings of a society within themselves.

In design and art alike, Under Arms will offer scope and a setting for an unbiased approach to the topic. The sensorily perceivable forms of the various objects on view are intended to trigger emotions directly, and will thus demonstrate—both visibly and physically—the ambivalence of the phenomenon between attraction and fear.

The exhibition will be accompanied by a bilingual Distanz-Verlag publication entitled AMMO, which will present widely differing forms of art, advertising, design and fashion in a glossy magazine aesthetic. From the perspectives of fields such as military history and psychoanalysis, contributions by renowned guest authors—among them Olaf Arndt, Richard Brem, Klaus Günther, Andreas Hofbauer and Barbara Vinken—will address the subjects of non-lethal weapons, camouflage and the justification of self-defence and seek an explanation for why military references are so popular in fashion. AMMO will also feature hitherto unpublished notes by Friedrich Kittler on a seminar concerned with literature and war and a small drawing from the media theorist’s estate.

Under Arms is being funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The Formation of Normative Orders, a cluster of excellence at the Goethe-Universität Frankfurt am Main, is the cooperation partner and moreover responsible for the accompanying programme of lectures and discussions with the cluster’s social sciences and humanities scholars.

Artists to be featured in the exhibition 
Ron Amir, Michael J. Baers, Julius von Bismarck, James Bridle, Roy Brand, Ori Scialom, Keren Yeala-Golan, Marcelo Cidade, Omer Fast, Robbert&Frank Frank&Robbert, Clara Ianni, Bernard Khoury, Shinseungback Kimyonghun, Korpys/Löffler, Barbara Kruger, Ives Maes, Kris Martin, Rami Maymon, Rabih Mroué, Timo Nasseri, Neozoon, Jon Rafman, Julian Röder, Martha Rosler, Timur Si-Qin, Nedko Solakov, Sharif Waked, Ala Younis

Designers and labels to be featured in the exhibition
5.11, adidas Originals and Kanye West, Alpha Industries, Assad Mounser, Dafne Balatsos, Walter Van Beirendonck, Eddie Borgo, Brogamats, Defense Distributed, Dorothy, Extranight, Hasbro, Raffaele Iannello, Juan Cristobal Karich, Knucklecase, Helmut Lang, Gonçalo Mabunda, Mawi, MCM x Tobias Rehberger, Antonio Murado, Nike, Ted Noten, James Piatt, Sadak, Fannie Schiavoni, Philippe Starck, Viktor&Rolf, Peter Zizka

Director: Matthias Wagner K
Curators: Ellen Blumenstein, Dr Daniel Tyradellis and Matthias Wagner K
Curatorial assistance: Juliane Duft and Anna Gien
Press contact: Dorothee Maas
T +49 69 212 32828 / F +49 69 212 30703 / presse.angewandte-kunst@stadt-frankfurt.de