Ingo Gunther

Date: 15 October 1999 - 8 January 2000

The world is outlined on traditional globes using common, recognisable codes: lines depict borders, specific colours depict mountains or forests. Ingo Gunther's globes however, depict a large spectrum of statistical facts. Political conflicts, socio-economical factors, technological developments, environmental problems and spreading of disease; he charts all the characteristics of our internationalized society. It's remarkable that such hard facts often translate themselves into an aesthetic image.

Sometimes Gunther adds specific data to existing images, such as the word ‘ozone' added to the Antarctic, or arrows depicting streams of fugitives from one country to another. In other cases the traditional image of the world is distorted or formed anew, for instance by letting economical or political power, or consumptionpatterns, determine the size of a country. While working on a globe, Gunther constantly has to make choices, which in turn evoke new questions and choices. Do we depict density of popublation using black dots on a white background or white dots on a black background? Globes easily become tools for the manipulation of information.

World Processor (1989) is part of three projects that are a central point in his work and are constanly developing, such as Refugee Republic (1995), a project that mainly took shape on the Internet. It attempts to create a supranational and -territorial modelstate, that draws attention to the issue of refugees and statelessness. The Hague, a stage for many international political and judicial activities, forms a suitable background for the presenation of the 140 globes of Ingo Gunther.