ULTRA VIOLE(N)T 2000

Appropriating, re-contextualizing and manipulating information are all techniques used to point to a constructed reality. So is the manner of display and use of different visual codes. In Ultra Viole(n)t (2000) for example, D. Meimaroglou has serially displayed the images of a street riot that took place in Athens and was broadcast on television. Colour-manipulated, the images begin from the cool hues of a blue colour and escalate to fiery reds thus turning, just like the media do, what was initially a real event into something “hyper-real”. In effect, Meimaroglou mimics media techniques to show how reality is turned to spectacle and how the media twists around the “violent” into “violet”, therefore serving to ultimately trivialize reality and numb our conception of it.