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General Schwarzkopf at the “Desert Storm Parade”, Daily News, 11th June 1991
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Markus Draper
WOW!
28. April bis 10. Juni 2023
Dienstag bis Samstag 12-18 Uhr
POLL Galerie + Kunsthandel in Berlin GmbH
Gipsstraße 3, Quergebäude, Parterre
10119 Berlin-Mitte
In a shower of confetti for those returning home from the Gulf War, the lead photo of the Daily News of June 11, 1991 shows General Schwarzkopf, with the title of the exhibition emblazoned above him as a headline. During the “Desert Storm Parade,” the commander-in-chief jerks his left arm in celebration, toilet paper rolls and scraps of paper flying through the air. The parade, with which the USA celebrated its victory in the first Gulf War, is part of a tradition that goes back to 1886.
When the Statue of Liberty was dedicated on Oct. 28, 1886, the pageant passed along the New York Stock Exchange on Wall Street. The stock exchange traders threw bundles of paper strips of the news ticker, invented shortly before, out of the window to express their joy. Since the global financial crisis following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers in 2008, however, the papers thrown down from office towers have also been seen as an indication of threatening instability.
This arc of tension from ecstatic joy to abrupt collapse is the motivation for Markus Draper to deal with the oscillating symbolism of the ticker tape parades.