MALTA AS METAPHOR, video installation by  Myriam Thyes, 2008

CONNECT. Art Between Media and Reality

Shedhalle Zurich, group show, July - September 2011

Malta As Metaphor - video installation at Shedhalle Zurich 2011

Malta As Metaphor as 4 channel video installation

Malta As Metaphor - video installation at Shedhalle Zurich 2011

Malta As Metaphor - video installation at Shedhalle Zurich 2011

Malta As Metaphor - video installation at Shedhalle Zurich 2011

Malta As Metaphor - video installation at Shedhalle Zurich 2011

photos: courtesy Joerg Weule, www.7b5.de


CONNECT. Art Between Media and Reality

An exhibition with media art from the Sitemapping programme by the Swiss Federal Office of Culture BAK, 2005 - 2011
14 July – 11 September 2011, Shedhalle, Zurich, Switzerland

Artists: Stefan Baltensperger, Maia Gusberti, Felix Stephan Huber, Esther Hunziker, Anja Kaufmann and Roman Häfeli, knowbotiq, Marcus Maeder and Jan Schacher, Norient (Thomas Burkhalter with Michael Spahr and Simon Grab), Max Rheiner, Myriam Thyes, Ubermorgen.com, Christoph Wachter and Mathias Jud.

Curators: Anke Hoffmann, Yvonne Volkart

The sea, spread quietly, with old warships, frigates, and galleys passing by or sinking, the Grim Reaper dancing on the beach, with heavy church music in the background. Gigantically enlarged, the ships take up the foreground until their ropes turn into barbwires and the wire mesh fences of deportation jails and the outer borders of Europe. Again and again, the video art installation 'Malta as Metaphor' features such cross-fades indissolubly intertwining pictures of the old Malta with present day Malta, intertwining the past with the presence. After a short stand still, the next scene, e.g. a refugee camp. By these cross fades and immersions, Myriam Thyes shows the island in the Mediterranean that is highly appreciated by tourists as a place that, for centuries, has been characterised by violence and death, isolation and restricted circulation. While Malta, today, tries to deal with the arrival of innumerable boat people from Africa and, at the same time, welcomes venturers from the west, the Knights Hospitaller, and the Knights of St. John of Jerusalem respectively, from the 16th to the 18th century, as some kind of Mediterranean police tried to defend the coasts of the western Mediterranean as well as Christianity against the Ottoman Empire and Islam. This is shown by the remnants of martial artefacts like military strongpoints, fortresses, canons, artefacts still nurtured and celebrated by Catholic practices that sometimes strike almost as military - their processions, rituals and dark pictures. The simultaneity of circulating cars, empty hotel blocks, and the deceased members of the Knights of St. John traditionally presented as 'live skeletons' can be experienced as mythical. 'Malta as Metaphor' stands for the 'fortress' Europe, a fortress built not solely, not just during the past decades.

www.shedhalle.ch