People’s great trust in their photographic reproductions of reality was what motivated me to develop the *Image Fulgurator*. A camera can be used as a personal memory tool, since people do not doubt the veracity of their own photographs. Hence, photos can reproduce the reality of an individual environment or public space. At sacred or popular locations, or those having a political connotation, an intervention with the Fulgurator can be particularly effective. Especially objects with a special aura or great symbolic power are good targets for this kind of manipulation. In other words, with the Fulgurator it is possible to have a lasting effect on those kinds of individual moments and events that become accessible to the masses only because they are preserved photographically.
In this context the Fulgurator represents a manipulation of visual reality and so targets the very fabric of media memory.
Video of the first test of an image fulguration in public.
Context:
This video shows an Intervention at the Checkpoint Charlie in Berlin. (former border of east and west Germany)
The target of the manipulation was the famous "YOU ARE ENTERING THE AMERICAN SECTOR" - sign.
The manipulation created a link from the former East / West border to the US / Mexican border in order to reimagine the dramatic situation at worldwide borders today.
The message was addressed to the tourists on location, that can travel easily over every border without risking their life.
A short documentary by Richard Wilhelmer
about Julius von Bismarck and his
Image Fulgurator.
18 min. 2008
Riots at May 1. 2009 in Berlin Kreuzberg.
Wowereit powered by "O2"
Klaus Wowereit (mayor of Berlin) at the opening of the art fair "ART FORUM 2008".
Fulguration of "the Magritte dove" on the Mao Zedong portrait at Tiananmen Square in Beijing
Barack Obama's speech in Germany in front of Berlin's Siegessäule. July 24th 2008
Foto of the Reichstag in Berlin.
The Image Fulgurator projected
a fire on one of the Reichstag
windows.
The manipulation on the picture
creates a link back in time to the
year 1933 - the year of the
"Reichstagsbrand" (Reichstag fire).
Kontakt:
Julius von Bismarck
Maienstrasse 4.
10787 Berlin
jvb (et) maienstrasse.de
