Merani Schilcher
after hours
Expanding Spaces — Summer 2020
autoantibody.1
Five Lines of Code (Short-term Project) — Winter 2019
autoantibody.2
Poetics of Repetition (Course) — Winter 2019
autoantibody.3 – Destruction of Self
Free Projects
Doom-Monger
Media Minimalism — Winter 2019
Life and Death of a Memory
Minimal Hacks for Big Statements (Short-term Project) — Winter 2019
Make Me A Weapon – Destruction of Context
Free Projects
Mephista – Destruction of Other
Free Projects
Nondescript Transitions
Constraints (Short-term Project) — Winter 2018
unclutter
Unstable Objects (Short-term Project) — Summer 2020
Union = Power
Carte Blanche — Winter 2018
Unknown Territories – Searching for Islands
Navigation, Orientation, Information — Summer 2019
Merani Schilcher — Make Me A Weapon – Destruction of Context
Free Projects
Many pacifistically inclined people would agree that in their own private utopias, weapons don't have any right to exist... and one of countless utopias circling within the heads of dreamers is that in which art is made for art's sake, not for it to be a tool to financially enrich people.
This installation is an attack on art dealers and collectors who manipulate modern art for profit, an attack on the commodification of art – tracking a loss of faith in existing structures.
Make Me A Weapon is also about the way objects define the space they occupy. An object of destruction was erected as an extension of this space as the mirror of a system speeding towards annihilation, turning itself into a quiet aggressor. It is not yet a weapon, rather still waiting to be activated.
What sets a real weapon apart from an artefact is whoever controls it. At the same time, this weapon-to-be is not captive to its environment, instead allowing anyone passing to control the next few seconds of the future of this space. By doing so, it also opens the question of why humans have a tendency to want to amplify certain actions even though it could mean that they themselves are potentially the ones getting hurt.