[Still photos 1-6: Krzysztof Zielinski, www.zielinski.photography]

Black Flags is many ways of saying nothing - ways that in order to say nothing are dependent on each other. It is a cancellation until there is only time passing between us. "He uncapped a black marker and, rings clacking made a quick sketch on a pad in front of him… Lagerfeld ripped the drawing from the pad, crushed it in his hands, and tossed it into a large wicker hamper... ‘I throw everything away!’ he declared. ‘...I keep no archives of my own, no sketches, no photos, no clothes – nothing! I am supposed to do, I’m not supposed to remember!'" John Colapinto, ‘You’ll Think I’m a Madman’, The Observer Magazine, 27 May 2007 - I.W.

“Black Flags, like IBIZA ..., effects a ‘state of interference’ in our reception of its content as the artist, wearing a billowing grey tunic, attempts to speak into the physical force and noise of a wind machine and against a series of fanfares that play over loud speakers at the same time. Behind this baroque layering of movement and noise, another automated PowerPoint presentation displays the pages of a book hand-painted with black squares in different configurations until the image suddenly switches to the grainy video footage of a private sex tape. The anonymous subject of the film appears, masked, in a domestic space (it is the artist’s living room). Blindfolded and deafened by headphones, he is being pick-pocketed by a hand from behind the camera that is recording the scene – a role-play in which the man’s personal possessions are taken from him without his being able to feel it happening.” - Catherine Wood

First performance: February 2009, Tate Modern, London

Subsequently:

July 2010, daad galerie, Berlin