Make No Mistake About This

"Wolfgang Plöger’s work Make No Mistake about This delivers a powerful experience for museum goers. When the room is entered it becomes evident that the projections on the walls are text. This familiar visual experience from watching reel to reel film, and even reproductions of it where we see the hand written notes at the ends of the film, zooms past too quickly to actually read. Because Ploger has eliminated the reels and instead the film is traveling up to the ceiling through spools and back to the projector in a continuous loop, the visitor is afforded an opportunity to see the surface of the film and the text it contains. The gallery plaque then contains that last bit of information revealing the source of the text, death row inmates final statements that the artist discovered on line. The layers of removal should let the viewer remain comfortably distant from the source of the material. However the level of engagement to discover the work's content causes a connection to the very human voice being delivered. Whether it is the Lord's Prayer, an apology, a confession, or a defiant assertion of innocence the voices emerge. The cultural machine of the judicial system, prison system, and the death penalty is embodied through the ticking and rattling of the projectors as they endlessly consume the film with the last will and testament of those represented."
Chicago Museum Examiner
November 11, 2009

-Roula Seikaly