Korpys/Löffler The Nuclear Football 2004 DVD still from video

I almost couldn't tear myself away from a video by André Korpys and Markus Löffler shown by Karlsruhe's Meyer Riegger Galerie at the Armory show. And when I did, it was only to come back each time I passed near its images or heard the refrains of "Hail to the Chief" on its soundtrack.

A sexy male voiceover whisper accompanies a thirty-minute newscam-like documentary of Bush's lightening-fast 2002 visit to Berlin, framed by the arrival and departure of Air Force One. The visible security systems are the stars of the video. Barry and I think we heard something like "secret service men make me hot," but we could be wrong. The title refers to the leather bag which always closely accompanies an American president, the one which holds his special nuclear cellphone.

Dr. Sabine Maria Schmidt's press release for Korpys/Löffler's exhibition at the Wilhelm Lehmbruck Museum in Duisberg is slightly more helpful.

Generally speaking, political events such as the state visit by George W. Bush in 2002, provide the starting point for their investigative art, which places the strategy of artistic formal analysis in a new context. The artists weave fictional and biographical threads into their documentary analyses, which serve to further underline contradictions and revelations, and to construct new associations and opinions. Yet which associations have any meaning whatsoever for historical events, and which are to be given priority?