Judgment Day, 2006, chronicles the rise of fundamentalist religions around the globe, including audio and video excerpts from Pat Robertson and Jerry Falwell of the Christian Right in the U.S.; Ian Paisley of Northern Ireland; Islamic fundamentalists Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama Bin Laden, and Ayatollah Khomeini; Daniella Weiss and Eliezer Waldman of Israel’s Gush Eminum; and Hindu nationalists Bal Thackeray and L.K. Advani. The video depicts their desperate, increasingly violent, and sometimes successful attempts at establishing theocracies. Further leveling the terrains of religious and political extremism, Judgment Day blurs the already indistinct lines between civil necessity and fanaticism, and the shattering consequences thereof. The video also contains the only original footage in the exhibition, an excerpt from the artist’s own video of the World Trade Center collapse.

 

The series’ culmination, Xanadu, 2006, is a three-channel video that begins with George W. Bush’s post-9/11 address to the nation, in which he declares the end of the “feel good” era and the beginning of a new one. This era, the artist suggests, is Xanadu—a conglomerate of our fears, paranoia, and prejudices—an envisioned Apocalypse in the process of being actualized.

 

* Judgment Day is also exhibited as a single-channel video.