Critique of Pure Image - Between Fake and Quotation

The Exhibition

Curated by Dimitrina Sevova

Tim Zulauf

Eat Police, Eat ID

Video, 23’20”, 2003 (new editing 2005, with English subtitles).

Tim Zulauf, artist, theater author and director, art theorist, lecturer at the University of Art and Design Zurich, Zurich, Switzerland

Tim Zulauf was born in 1973 in Ulm, Germany. After graduating in visual arts from the University of Art and Design Zurich he elaborated art projects, among others with Yves Netzhammer and Zuzana Ponicanova, and worked as an independent art journalist. With «Die Stelle im Park» (The Spot in the Park) he had his first theater production at the Festival Hope & Glory 2002 in Theater Neumarkt, Zürich. «Migrantenstadl» (Migrant Shack), his second production, premiered in 2003 in the Fabriktheater Zürich and was invited 2004 to the Festival Impulse in Nordrheinwestfalen. It was followed 2004 by the theater production «Glamour Eiland» at Theaterhaus Gessnerallee, also in Zürich. Since 2001 Tim Zulauf has been working as an scientific collaborator at the University of Art and Design Zurich in the field of art and public space. als wissenschaftlicher Mitarbeiter an der HGK Zürich im Feld von Kunst und Öffentlichkeit.

The film «Eat Police, Eat ID» was elaborated with asylum seekers in the transit center of Kemptthal, canton of Zurich, over the course of two and a half months. Based on an initial setting of play characters and costumes, the asylum seekers defined a number of characters which they deemed typical of their individual situation. With these characters, different scenes, which are then thematically enchained in the film, were developed in improvisation. A great emphasis was put on the work with the children of the asylum seekers, who are equally affected by the precarious situation in the transit center and the insecurity of their parents. A central motive in the approach of the asylum seekers to the fictive roles was their relation to re-telling their own biographies, which during the procedure of the request for asylum is constantly being challenged and put into question by the authorities. Surveillance and punishment as well as the wish for security and empathy become apparent in the different scenes.