Deus ex Machina

Rocco und seine Brüder are one of the most active collectives at the crossover between urban art and agitational activism. In terms of art-historical analogies, they could be described as Dondi White meets Klaus Staeck, with an added dash of Yes Men. Religious props and motifs have featured a number of times in the Berlin group’s work: a church pew in front of an ATM, a policeman in a confessional, a graffiti variation on the creation of Adam and, in 2019 at the World Heritage Site Völklinger Hütte, a church window depicting the graffiti-sprayed doors of a subway train. These works offer an allegorical dramatisation of other forms of social criticism or celebration of subcultures. By contrast, Deus ex Machina takes aim at the problematic nature of religion itself and – cautiously formulated – religion’s complicity in what human rights advocates would designate as “evil”: the benediction of weapons of war, the forging of new identities, the conquering of “holy” lands, the justification of genocide and the suppression of the freedom to pursue life as one sees fit. Here, the motif of the leaded church window makes a return on the tracks of a Wiesel tank. Let us therefore hope that the fragility of this construction will be confirmed on the plane of human history. If not, the god who made iron can continue to exult.

Robert Kaltenhäuser