Das Duracellband

In this dynamic collage, vom Bruch assembles powerful metaphors for threat and force, using fragmented, repeated images from media advertising and archival documents from World War II. The central image, appropriated from a popular TV commercial, is both riveting and ironic: A Duracell battery snaps together with a loud crack. This violent action, which is repeated over and over again, is intercut with flash-frame glimpses of the Nagasaki explosion, an American bomber pilot, aerial views of wartime destruction, victims of the nuclear bomb, and the artist’s face. Vom Bruch constructs a landscape of associations through mediated images, building relational discourse on the violence of war and capital. Through the aggressive confluence of advertising, World War II destruction and self-images, vom Bruch positions contemporary identity within the context of the representational and historical apparatuses of the military and the mass media, as signifiers of collective memory.