A prototype for a machine guillotine.
2013. Helsinki
I cannot be entirely sure where the idea for a motorized quillotine originally came from and although at the time of it’s conception I had been occupied for a while with thoughts about politics in general, I can assure that it wasn’t a desire to chop off heads that gave seed to this monstrosity.
Firstly, I had been interested in mechanics and motion for a while when I started to think about constructing some form of a kinetic sculpture. Having been working with fire before a motorized instrument running on nothing less grandiose than a steam engine would have been the ultimate achievement in my mind at the time. Coming to grips with reality however forced me to scale down a bit but I never let go of the part about the mechanics with a motor as an option.
Now, it’s quite hard to justify building such a conceptually hellish device that I did. A fact which in hindsight served as the driving force behind the project for me at the time. It was yet again not the actual outcome, which I endeavored to be complete as functional as possible with the resources at hand, but the process of making the thing that served me as an artist.
During the manufacturing period I got to meditate on thoughts about the history of western democracy in light of the current global political turmoils of the world. Namely, the quillotine served to me as a symbol for the french revolution and the rise of modern political movements and their gruesome origins. It’d be easy to dismiss all warring factions around the world as barbaric by nature but I would suggest that it’s more productive in the long run that in some ways we all have blood on our hands.
