Now (Heart of Darkness), 2001

A specially shaped LED stock exchange data flow should be installed at the wall of an art institution (exemplified at the Museum für Moderne Kunst –MMK-, Frankfurt).
The data flow displays day and night nonstop actual stock exchange data from the major world trade centers, like DOW JONES, DAX, FTSE, NIKKEI, or HANG SENG.

Ressembling also a vein or a crack in the wall, the shape of the data flow actually quotes the shape of the river Mekong which plays an important role in Asia, not only economically for trade and transportation of goods but also on a political and spiritual level.
Seemingly quite abstract and unreal but actually very real in its consequences, the data flow delivers individual symbols and value information of an economic system that entirely determines human fates.
The observer situation in front of the installation is like watching single celluloid frames of a film running mechanically through the projector in the backroom: - the movie itself delivers its story somewhere else, in the screening room.

The title Now refers to Francis Ford Coppola’s film Apocalypse Now (an adaption of the novel Heart of Darkness by Joseph Conrad) where the „Yellow River“ is the setting for a journey to origin, abyss and doom of the human psyche.

LED, shaped aluminum guideway, computer, DSL internet stock exchange connection.