Opening: Friday, 19/08/2022 – 08.30 pm
Exhibition: 20/08/2022 – 23/08/2022
Opening hours: daily 0-24 h
Kulturbahnhof Kassel

In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us: “Make us your slaves but feed us.”

Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoyevsky

Dostoyevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov contains a dialogue between the brothers Alyosha and Ivan about a fictitious second appearance of Jesus in Seville, which, though glorified by the people, is radically nipped in the bud by the resident cardinal. The reason: the desire to maintain centuries of power and financial and social control over the faithful.

Dependencies—bondage—are tattoos of the common people, engraved with the colours of origin, gender, upbringing, class, migration, etc., social status, shaped from childhood. The state is the tattoo studio, and its power apparatus serves as the tattoo artist. Since the beginning of Russia’s “special operation” in Ukraine, gas is the most recent synonym for addiction. Not a day goes by without dozens of reports about gas delivery interruptions, gas turbines, gas boycotts, gas price caps or gas storage levels. But it seems the religion of GAS—our long-standing opium of the masses—may be crumbling.

And what do we do? We celebrate the return of Jesus, scold the cardinal, hate on the rules he sets, and yet end up saying, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.”

(english translation Rosalyn D‘Mello)