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Christophe Draeger
Christophe Draeger is interested in the way the media communicates news
and dissects their mechanisms of re-presentation. Black September,
an installation which combines film, video and found objects, takes as
its starting point the present day confluence of international news and
international terror by referencing one of the first incidents in history
in which political violence played to an audience of millions through
television: the massacre of the Israeli athletes at the 1972 Munich Olympics.
Draeger’s installation includes a reconstruction of the actual room
in which a hostage died, excerpts from the live television coverage of
the day, and re-created footage of what might actually have taken place
inside the besieged apartment in the Olympic village. Blurring the lines
between fact and fiction, past and present, live and documentary footage,
as well as those between actual participants and mere observers, Draeger’s
installation asks key questions about the representation of such events.
To what extent can we distinguish between fact and fiction in the news?
Where does the truth end and myth begin?
Black September 2002 / Synchronised 2-channel video
installation / Courtesy Mullerdechiara Gallery,
Berlin and Galerie Anne de Villepoix, Paris. Installation view Alcala
31, Madrid
"Black September" in Berlin on September 5th
2002
The opening of Christoph Draeger’s “Black September”
in Berlin on September 5th 2002 fell 30 years to the day after the 1972
abduction and murder of eleven members of the Israeli Olympic team by
Palestinian terrorists during the XXth Olympiad in Munich. Around the
same time, the world also observed the one-year anniversary of September
11. These were two events in September, within the span of one generation,
which brutally rendered dramatic and enduring changes upon our world.
One is nearly forgotten, the other we have barely begun to process.
Christoph Draeger’s installation, entitled „Black September“,
presents a partial fictional presentation of the sequence of events as
they occured in the besieged room. The unfolding of these events in Munich,
a nearly forgotten early climax in global terrorism, was an absurd spectacle
encased within the theatrical set of the Olympic games. Even as the siege
was drawn out, the olympic community attempted to present a facade of
desparate, feigned normality. Moreover, as the German Democratic Republic
television broadcast live the preparations for an overthrow attempt dubbed
„Operation Sunshine,“ the terrorists as well as the hostages
were able to view up-to-the-minute reports on every step of the sophomoric
police action on the television set inside the apartment where the hostages
were being held. Draeger’s installation includes reworked exerpts
from the contemporary TV news coverage, visible from within a reconstruction
of the room itself. Fact and fiction are mingled and so are past and present,
as the line between live and documentary, between observer and participant,
are blurred.
www.mullerdechiara.com
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