Josephine Meckseper: 0 % Down

Josephine Meckseper’s video 0% Down is a monochromatic montage of car commercials from 2008, the year of a major global crisis in the automobile industry that resulted in the collapse of “The Big Three,” General Motors, Chrysler and Ford. Meckseper recontextualizes the seemingly alluring devices of the television car commercials to reveal their disturbingly confrontational sales tactics and the car industry’s complicity in the military-industrial complex. In her video, a jet morphs into a car before hurtling out of a hanger, linking together military technology with a civilian automobile in a terrifying collage.

The full impact and her deeper point is achieved by the addition of a sound track: “Total War” by Non from the album titled God & Beast (1997). This heavy, industrial track sets a new furiously confronting beat to the choreographed images, and draws a chilling connection between her inherited German history and her video’s context: America’s devastating war with Iraq (2003–2011).  Suddenly these gleaming commodities crystallize the unholy alliance between industry and oil, commodity production and the military machine, consumer culture and American triumphalism. (Josephine Meckseper)

Selected by Inke Arns (HMKV), proposed by Stefan Panhans & Andrea Winkler

 

Josephine Meckseper

New York City based artist Josephine Meckseper is known for her large scale installations and films that challenge the conventional reading of familiar cultural imagery and the systems of circulation and display. Her work, which encompasses a variety of media ––simultaneously exposes and encases signifiers such as art historical references, advertising and everyday objects, to form an investigation into the collective unconscious of our time. Her extensive film and video works were included in prominent international biennials such as the Yerevan Biennale, Armenia (2020); the NGV Triennial, Melbourne, Australia (2017); the Sharjah Biennial, United Arab Emirates, (2011); the 2nd International Biennial of Contemporary Art of Seville, Spain, (2006); and the Whitney Biennial, New York (2006 and 2010).

Meckseper’s works have been featured in numerous solo museum exhibitions worldwide, including the Frac des Pays de la Loire, Nantes (2019); the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich (2009); the Indianapolis Museum of Art, Indianapolis (2009); the Museum of Modern Art, New York (2008); and the Kunstmuseum Stuttgart (2007). Her works are in the permanent collections of major institutions, including the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, the Museum of Modern Art, and the Metropolitan Museum, all in New York. Meckseper was awarded a Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship in 2022.

Find out more about the artist:

Instagram: @josephinemeckseper