In life and work, Lutz Bacher—whose name was a pseudonym—challenged conventions of authorship and authenticity. Her wry, often elusive works examine how images are reproduced and consumed in the digital age, inviting viewers to locate traces of the otherworldly in the everyday.
Empire (2014) is a direct reference to Andy Warhol’s eponymous 1964 film, which consists of a single eight-hour-long shot of the Empire State Building. In Bacher’s video environment, images of the iconic skyscraper—illuminated by twinkling red, white, and blue lights—are fragmented through a prism of Plexiglas screens, turning a symbol of American modernism into something unruly, unstable, and fugitive. These screens are weighted down with sandbags, evoking those used to prevent flooding during Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New York two years before the completion of this work. The images lose integrity each time they are refracted or reflected. Paired with a discordant soundtrack, this work creates a hallucinatory spectacle suggestive of an era of deep uncertainty, marked by climate change and sociopolitical turmoil.
Organized by Erica Papernik-Shimizu, Associate Curator, Department of Media and Performance, with Abby Hermosilla, Curatorial Assistant, Department of Curatorial Affairs
