We are Medi(evil)

In 1994 artist Georg Herold invited a number of British and German artists to participate in a project called Karaoke (Fußball-WM) (Karaoke Football – World Cup) for Portikus, Frankfurt. In so doing he hoped to create an “exchange of cultural differences … with predefined rules of the game” by introducing a Karaoke element that would “break up and expand the predefined and tightly marked-out field” of art. The exhibition, timed to coincide with the 1994 World Cup, followed an earlier exhibition that had transformed Portikus into a bar and videotheque for the 1990 World Cup. Bulloch and Gillick rejected this curatorial directive and chose to take a “pre-football, before Karaoke” stance. This action involved digging a hole decorated with bunting and protected by a Herold-like wooden structure outside the main entrance to the space; planting a meadow on the land surrounding the building; and producing a video-manifesto at the Frankfurt Sportverband Hostel where all the British artists were housed. This “counter-context” position expressed their skepticism about reinforcing national identities in order to transcend them once more: a strategy of détournement conceived by the artists as a kind of “Medieval conceptualism.”

Angela Bulloch and Liam Gillick's video We are Medi(evil) (1994, 19 minutes) is presented on e-flux Video & Film as the September 2022 edition of Staff Picks.

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