Rainer Ganahl: Artist Talk

Rainer Ganahl’s work probes freedom of speech, censorship, and the relativity of truth in media representations of current events. He explores the outcomes of cultural prejudices and stereotyping, political bias and the danger of the increasingly repressive measures that protect ‘homeland security’ in the so-called ‘war on terror’.

Ganahl is concerned with communication and educational systems, the politics of learning, the production of knowledge and the political role of the intellectual in the modern world. A major part of Ganahl’s practice since the 1990s has been the study of foreign languages, including Arabic, Russian and Chinese. His interest lies in the social and political dimensions of language and the value systems that are inscribed therein.

Ganahl is also fascinated by the social interface of the bicycle, a modernist machine which paved the way for mass mobilization and has once again become a utopian vehicle, as a cleaner and healthier alternative to the car. In his practice Ganahl embraces performance, photography, video and painting, as well as the apparatus of academia and pedagogy.