The Wonderful World of Absence - Monochrom's Zeigerpointer

monochrom is an Austrian art-technology-philosophy group active since 1993. Through the years, monochrom has collected Zeigerpointer images in the form of newspaper clippings, in an operation of media-cultural archaeology. Zeigerpointer is a term used to describe images used by printed media – especially local free magazines – to illustrate the aftermath of crimes and accidents where only the witness is left, showing emptiness. Instead of the object of the article, Zeigerpointer images portray witnesses who point at the place where something happened. In the project The Wonderful World of Absence, a selection of these printed pictures has been painted in oil to be shown to the public. An ordinary media event is lifted from its pure consumer usage in daily life. The single image is isolated from the flow of information and constitutes an aesthetic event and an artistically designed artifact. The project is about the poetry of presenting the non-present and its philosophical implications.