The Loop
(Bridge Projects)
The Loop situates objects from The Wende Museum of the Cold War (Los Angeles, California) within a monumental Soviet-style blockade pedestal, collapsing the distance between relic and monument, archive and altar.
Artifacts from the Soviet Union, the German Democratic Republic, and Eastern Bloc Romania are arranged not as historical documents but as residue — the material aftermath of ideologies that promised socialist societies – only to leave behind the detritus of broken bureacratic systems.
A Soviet telephone, when lifted, delivers an interpretive audio guide, implicating the viewer in the very apparatus of state communication.
The work is less concerned with the collapse of the Cold War than with its persistence — the compulsive, unresolved loop of its return.
The Loop, 2022
Installation with objects from The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California (objects listed below); steel, aluminum, birch, hard-coated EPS foam, acrylic, waterborne alkyd paint (pedestal); digitally modified Soviet payphone, 1970s, cast iron, plastic, 8 audio tracks; 85 7/8 x 154 x 34 in. (pedestal); 12 1/2 x 8 1/2 x 4 3/8 in. (phone)
Objects from the Collection of The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California:
Left front row:
Novaya Zarya (maker), To the Cosmos (perfume), undated.
Glass, liquid (fragrance) (bottle); felt, plastic, fabric, paper (box); 2 3/4 x 2 in. (bottle); 4 1/2 x 3 x 3 in. (box). Soviet Union.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California.
Left back row:
Unknown, Untitled (portrait of Erich Honecker with metal grate over the image), 1990.
Paper, wood, metal; 36 5/8 x 27 9/16 x 1 9/16 in. (framed). East Germany.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California.
Middle front row:
Unknown, Cut Socialist Republic of Romania flag, 1989.
Polyester; 39 1/2 x 55 1/2 in. (framed). Romania.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California.
Middle back row:
Yuri Panfilov and Andrei Vishnevski, Leave No Trace on This Earth, 1989.
Tempera on fiberboard; 28 3/4 x 41 3/4 in. (framed; horizontal); 41 3/4 x 28 3/4 in. (framed; vertical) (work can be oriented both horizontally and vertically). Soviet Union.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California.
Right front row:
VEB VERO Olbernhau (maker), Plattenbau model, 1970s.
Plastic, paint, adhesive, paper, ink; 8 1/2 x 5 1/2 x 4 1/2 in. East Germany.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California.
Right back row:
Aleksandr Vasil'evich Lozenko, Oracles (left); Oracles No. 2 (right), 1991.
Tempera on fiberboard; 36 1/2 x 49 1/2 in. (framed; total 2-paneled work); 36 1/2 x 24 3/4 in. (framed; each). Soviet Union.
The Wende Museum of the Cold War, Los Angeles, California.
Exhibition: Here After, May 7–July 30, 2022
Bridge Projects, Los Angeles, California
Exhibition Installation Images: Robert Wedemeyer
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