The US Bill of Rights and monumental images of American landscape as seen through the eyes of Australian-German artist Mark Themann.

July 8 – July 31, 2004
Opening Reception Wednesday, July 7, 6-8pm

PASSED for EXPORT, a site-specific installation by Mark Themann, raises questions about the American Landscape, the Constitution and the Bill of Rights in times of political crisis. Two videos of monumental US landscapes are projected in unnervingly slow and steady takes on opposite walls. Any potential romanticism is forestalled by the cacophonous clashing of two audio tracks in which the narrators are each reading from the Amendments to the Bill of Rights and the Constitution, reciting with an extreme stutter.

Over monolithic landscapes that slide past each other, these documents are restructured within the unsteady articulation of stuttering, faltering, persisting voices. In PASSED for EXPORT, the Amendments to the Bill of Rights are further amended via the narrators’ stuttering. The voices struggling to articulate and maintain a continuity contrast with the steady camera pans.

Claire Montgomery, Founder and Director of Location One, says of the installation “We think it is crucial at this moment in US history to examine documents that are intended to define the nature of our society.”

Mark Themann (Germany/Australia) is an Artist in Residence at Location One.

PASSED for EXPORT has been commissioned by Location One with support from the Australia Council for the Arts and Arts Victoria.