A Fresh View on the Great War

Silence

Paintings © Sig Bang Schmidt and poems © Steve Dalachinsky

( Sig Bang Schmidt was born in Hockenheim, Germany, in 1958. He lives and works in Berlin and in Vienna.
Steve Dalachinsky was born and raised in Brooklyn, New York City, and he is still working and living there )

German abstract painter Sig Bang Schmidt works since 2002 on objects connected with the Great War. He chooses photographs from the war and over paints them digitally, cutting parts out, “rearranging” the pictures. This fragmentation makes new images arise, transmitting ideas and messages that were not (or not directly) visible in the originals.

Extraordinary are the poems that go with the paintings. The American poet Steve Dalachinsky did more than just add text to the images. His intense and sometimes heartbreaking poems are inextricably bound up with Schmidt's paintings.

Dalachinsky has been writing poetry for many years and has worked with jazz musicians. His last books are "Trial and Error in Paris" and "Quicksand". He knows Schmidt from the years (1991-1996) the German worked as an artist in New York City.

In 2004 Dalachinsky and Schmidt published together a book called Flying Home: an 21th century view on World War One. Their art was exhibited in art galleries and also in the Anti-War Museum in Berlin.

	Solo If there were only one star. one stone. one man.
	Advanced Statistics We are not figurines sprawled on a carpet
	The Big Angel It kills you while it's giving you life.
	City (the symphony of toys) City what city
	Crunch At night I am scared.
	Disjunct Battalion battle on at the edge of purgatory.
	Door The door to his insides opens like a canyon.
	Dreamtime We walk the swamp over the manmade bridge
	Fade (gas total) Fade into the bleeding skin of time's wall.
	French Poesie The green seaside is in the corner of a room
	Horse (call me no other) On the shore a horse lies
	Icarus in NO MAN's LAND In no man's land in the middle of a field
	Lost Between Lost between the lines
	Marching 1 Lost tribe lost & undervalued
	Marching 2 Borrow the road borrow the town
	Mirrors This is not something that has memory
	On Stage Handsome child & ugly child
	Rest There is no rest for one who is waiting.
	Somme (I carry you no longer) Thin slight sickly man I pray for you
	Spirits The land a white sheet on which we lie
	Stretched Stretched from star to star window to window
	Today Today my time has been wasted again petty promises, false hoopla
	Totems Diggin tunnels tied by tire & antenna
	Trenchpatrol My job was going from one to the other
	Wash Thgil ite wash ash thgil ite wash ash

• To an article (in German language) by Bernd Ulrich and Ernst Volland on The Great War as an Art Happening.
• To Sig Bang Schmidt's webpage.
• Read more on Steve Dalachinsky.
• To the Contemporary Art page of The Heritage of the Great War.
• To the frontpage of The Heritage of the Great War.