Since the mid-1990s, Sarah Morris has been internationally recognized for her complex abstractions and films, which are derived from close observation of the architecture and psychology of urban environments. In the paintings she uses colors and geometries that she associates with a city's unique aesthetic vocabulary and palette, as well as its character and history. Morris' films operate in the realm of documentary, biography of a city, and non-narrative fiction and focus on the importance of architecture, the role of the state, critique of power, and the aesthetic tension between the commercial and the political.
The Lenbachhaus is now premiering Sarah Morris's seventh film. This is the second time (since Robert Towne, 2005) that Morris decided to shift her lens from the wide panoramic view of a city to an intimate portrait of an individual citizen of that city. Georg Sieber was the head psychologist of the Olympic Police and the Munich Police in 1972. Sieber was present on Connolly Street on the tragic morning of September 5th, 1972 when members of the terror group Black September attacked and took hostage of the visiting members of the Israeli Olympic Team. Later that morning he resigned from his position. Sieber was hired by the International Olympic Committee and Munich Police to project possible scenarios that would jeopardize the safety of the Olympic Games and prepare the security training that they would require. One of the scenarios written by Sieber, Scenario #26, was an almost exact prognosis of what was to fatefully play out in reality. Contrary to the common perception that the Germans were not prepared, Sieber exposes a very different analysis of what occurred that day. Continuing her investigation of the concept of the 'peripheral' character, it becomes clear that Sieber had proposed an alternative method of navigating the situation that could have led to a different outcome. In 1972, Morris mixes police surveillance footage of demonstrators and archival photographs of the 1972 Summer Olympic Games, with shots of the impressive Munich Olympiapark and a candid interview of Sieber who has a long-standing career as a psychologist and is an expert on international security matters. The film, shot on 35mm, investigates the issue of projection and planning and its potential failures through this specific instance in history. It exposes a subjective parallel view radically different than the widely received ideas around the events of the 1972 Munich Olympics.
The Munich Games of the XX Summer Olympiad in 1972 were intended to present a new, democratic and optimistic image of Germany to the world, as demonstrated by the official motto, "the Happy Games," as well as Behnisch's and Otl Aicher's utopian and colorful design. This moment, represented in the Games of 1972, is one of the most important and televised political events in contemporary history. The media coverage of the failure of 1972 brought terrorism to the world stage and significantly altered its role in relation to the media and the cinematic moment.
The Städtische Galerie im Lenbachhaus and Kunstbau München is very pleased to present the premier of 1972.
Curator: Matthias Mühling
A catalogue with an essay by Diedrich Diderichsen will be published on the occasion of the exhibition.