Rote Zora is a militant women’s group that carried out over twenty attacks and various other offences in Germany in the eighties. They fought against atomic, gene and reproduction technologies; the corresponding targets of their attacks were companies such as Bayer, Schering and Siemens, research institutes and property of the “representatives of the patriarchal order” (RZ 1983). Rote Zora formed a radical political opposition to the existing power which they carried out through a politics of property damage. It was their principle to avoid injuring anyone. Numerous texts and letters claiming responsibility from Rote Zora show that they were an “armed group who, however, battled often enough with the typewriter” (Oliver Tolmein). Whereas some persecuted the women as “terrorists” and continue to do so today, others consider them undoubtedly heroines.

The central element of the video “Die Rote Zora” is an interview with Corinna Kawaters that took place in summer 2000. Kawaters is the only woman from the Rote Zora who was sentenced by a court for “membership in a terrorist organization” (§129a). In addition, a conversation was held with the social scientist Erika Feyerabend, who, like the other members of the Gen-Archiv Essen, became caught in the whirl of police investigations against the Rota Zora at the end of the 1980s.

The video offers room for the personal stories and perspectives of the women, allowing a picture of social revolutionary “terrorism” to arise which distinguishes itself from the hegemonial medial representations with their feigned objectivity.

Rote Zora, Oliver Ressler, 28 min., German/Engl., 2000

A contribution by Oliver Ressler to the exhibition “Modell, Modell…” by the Neuer Aachener Kunstverein in Germany, which took place at various institutes of the RWTH Aachen in spring 2000.

“Focus on Companies” referred to an exhibition taking place at the same time in Aachen, “Focus on Genes”. “Focus on Genes” is a travelling exhibition put together by the socio-culturally agile Hygiene-Museum in Dresden which attempts to represent genetic engineering “in a popular scientific and experience oriented way.”

According to the announcement of the project, the “fundamental contents of the exhibition, ‘Focus on Genes’ are dealt with in great detail in a richly illustrated catalogue which was published in the framework of the ‘Gene-Worlds’ project in 1998.” Similar to this preceding exhibition from the Hygiene-Museum, once again knowledge about genetic engineering should be presented for “forming your own opinion” and coming closer to the goal of “weighing out the chances and risks which the use of genetic engineering offers from a medical, ethical and social perspective.”

To provide a counterpoint to the five “Gene-Worlds” (“Gen-Welten”) exhibitions shown in Germany and Switzerland, in 1998 I simultaneously realized the project “antiGene Worlds: Oppositions to Genetic Engineering“.* In a text published in the context of this project** I pointed out that the concept of “Gene-Worlds” is based on the false assumption that individuals can contribute to the decisions made about which technologies are implemented and which are not. The decisions about these things are not made in a democratic way, but, rather, in connection with powerful financial interests and the political pressure from companies. In both “Gene-Worlds” and “Focus on Genes,” the exhibition’s role consists solely in creating acceptance!

The project “Focus on Companies” therefore put those companies which advance genetic engineering research and product development at the center of critique.

The starting point for the print series on aluminum produced for the exhibition in Aachen were current publications from companies such as Novartis, Schering, Bio-Rad Laboratories and Roche, which appeared as sponsors for “Focus on Genes”. Selected pages from company reports and brochures were chosen whereby the original texts which thematize the various areas within genetic engineering are replaced by black framed yellow text fields.

In contrast to the “warning signs” of the “antiGene Worlds” project, the dangers which arise from the technologies themselves are not at the center but rather the ecological and social logic of genetic engineering and its global, socio-political effects. For such areas there is no place either in the publications of the companies or in “Focus on Genes”.

Therefore, the texts of the companies’ brochures are covered over with a political commentary which takes up various themes from the exhibition (Xenotransplantations, Gentech-rice with Vitamin A, anti-squash tomatoes) and takes on other perspectives.

* Oliver Ressler, geGen-Welten: Widerstände gegen Gentechnologien, Edition Selene, 1998, 84 pages.

** Various versions were printed in the “antiGene Worlds”-publication, in the magazines ak – analyse & kritik, iz3w – Blätter des Informationszentrums 3. Welt and in the GID – Gen-ethischer Informationsdienst.

The project “Sustainable Propaganda” (Nachhaltige Propaganda) confronts “sustainable development”, the main theme of the world fair in Hannover (June 1 to October 31, 2000). Under the motto “Human – Nature – Technology” the Expo 2000 propagates that threatening environmental, developmental and population problems can be solved by technology. Although science and technology are indeed named as “causes” of the ecological crisis, at the same time they are considered part of the solution.

Since the 1992 Rio Summit at the latest, the ecological question has been articulated almost exclusively in terms of the world wide debate on sustainable development. The discourse flows from questions of modernization, down-sizing, efficiency, population control and future technologies. Utopian ideas are replaced by the technocratic management of nature. The sustainability debate is marked by an exclusion of the dimension of domination; the ecological relations are separated from relations of domination (i.e. between “North” and “South”).

In a gigantic self-display of capitalist power, the future viability of the system should be proven at the Expo 2000. For the first time in the world fair’s history, the central exhibition area in Hannover is not the exclusive presentation platform. So-called “world-wide projects” in various cities and countries should also show solutions to ecological and economic problems. The Expo offers itself as a symbolic battlefield to make other social developments and designs visible.

In the project “Sustainable Propaganda”, the ideologies displayed in the Expo theme parks will be analyzed and alternative models of thought and action presented. The models for a sustainable future are thus exposed as domination strategies. In this aspect the project ties in with my project “100 Years of the Greenhouse Effect” which I carried out in 1996 in Salzburger Kunstverein.

The project “Sustainable Propaganda” consists of diverse elements:

Computer produced visual material of the Disney-like settings in the theme parks forms the starting point for a series of digital prints. The Expo’s future designs are overlapped by a number of commentaries based on a leftist analysis of hegemonic concepts of sustainability. The commentaries are designed as dialogue boxes in the print series which inform the computer user about problems. In the project “Sustainable Propaganda” these “error messages” point out the flawed programming of the content of the Expo 2000 and the inherent systematic errors of the concept of sustainability.

In the video “Sustainable Propaganda” the drafts for an ecologically sustainable reformed global capitalism are criticized in additional facets. Jörg Bergstedt (author of the book “Agenda, Expo, Sponsoring”, 1998), Sonya Schneider, Kai Kaschinski from the magazine Alaska and mamba – working group for feminist Expo critique, present their points of criticism in the conversations recorded for the video. In the second part of the video, writer Christoph Spehr explains an alternative concept for development which was discussed in the ’90s in connection with BUKO under the motto, “Winding down the North!” and places it in contrast to the future scenarios of the Expo planners.

The exhibition setting is supplemented with bricks layered on top of each other which point out the shaky foundations of the Expo planners’ economic ideas. On the bricks and parts of the wall are superficial traces of a “green wash”. At the exhibition entrance current flyers, campaigns and copied texts about the Expo and sustainability are available in an info-area.

“Sustainable Propaganda” is not an Expo project!

• Nürnberger Kunstverein, Nuremberg 20.5. – 11.6.2000
• Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, 28.7. – 13.8.2000
• Ausstellungsraum Konstantin Adamopoulos & mak – Museum für Angewandte Kunst/digital craft, Frankfurt/Main, 16.8. – 27.8.2000
• Kunstbüro 1060, Vienna, 6. – 24.9.2000