ipadriedio - My fathers and I

In the 20th century the father generation started to educate the daughter generation to be self-conscious women. This has been part of the process of emancipation. Still women are the providers of care while working full-time. Men in return profit from this shift in workload. What remains in the male hand is legacy and inheritance. Instantly women are not allowed anymore to take responsibility and take the familiy’s legacy into the future. What statistics tell us enters our personal live. For Theresa Maria Schlichtherle the only solution can be a radical one, to eliminate the fathers, to kill the system in which they operate.
Having decided for vendetta, it has to be understood that this concept of action is in fact a very male concept. Traditionally revenge is considered something violent and in fact has to end with a kill. TMS questioned herself, how can her revenge and hence a female revenge look like? The decision has been made to instead of a one-time, violent act to choose for a more time-based, prolonged process.
Ice in nature creates itself but inevitably has to melt some time. A bust of ice has been created. The bust serves as representation of the fathers - grandfather, uncle and father - and therefore has been made from a mask of TMS’ father himself.
The violent act here consists in the witnessing the inevitable melting of the bust. At the same time the unnatural act of intervention by speeding up the process with a heater has to be committed. Revenge is not a natural process but something that has to be induced for creating change. How her fathers taught her, TMS takes the matter in her own hand.
The important thing is that this story is not special. It is quotidianità, alltäglich.