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Themesicon: navigation pathOverview of Media Articon: navigation pathSociety
 
Triangle (Iveković, Sanja), 1979Truisms (Holzer, Jenny), 1979Television Spots (Douglas, Stan), 1987
 
Monodramas (Douglas, Stan), 1991Homeless Vehicles (Wodiczko, Krzysztof), 1988
 

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In 1979, Sanja Iveković's action «Triangle»[48] showed how private space is kept under public observation, and how the state can see a private, sexually explicit act as a threat to public well-being. Barbara Kruger, Jenny Holzer and others took political criticism of stereotypical gender roles and the violence associated with them into outdoor urban space. Jenny Holzer has been working with language since 1977, above all with so-called «Truism»—disturbing statements, contradictory sentences, some shrewd and some annoying, maxims, clichés, prejudices. Holzer places these «Truisms» on various support media in public places: thus for example in 1982 on the seventy-five square meter advertisement display in New York's Times Square and in 1989 as a clip series on MTV. Stan Douglas' «Television Spots» (1987–1988) and his «Monodramas» (1991) fall into the same period; they were both intended to be broadcast during the commercial breaks in the normal television program. These series consists of twelve or ten short mini-fictions of commercial length in each case, which—

 

as they are shot in real time—seem to have been enormously slowed down in contrast with ‹normal› television, and thus disturb viewers' watching habits.[49]

Politico-artistic activism

In contrast with this, the works of Krzysztof Wodiczko, Jochen Gerz, Peter Fend and Ingo Günther explicitly intervene in political and social matters. The artist-engineer Krzysztof Wodiczko immigrated first to France from Poland, then to the USA. He made a name for himself in the 1980s with his large-format slide and video projections on public buildings and monuments. His «Homeless Vehicles» (1988) are part of a series of nomadic instruments that the artist developed for homeless people and migrants, with their cooperation.[50] The items involved are mobile, collapsible carts, with enough room to transport possessions or store accumulated tins with deposits on them; but they also offer protection against the rain or when spending the night outdoors. Wodiczko's aim is to

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