Kunsthalle Tallinn
28.10.2006 - 10.12.2006


Artists: Bigert & Bergström (SWE), Ashley Hunt (USA), Mark Raidpere (EST), Oliver Ressler & Martin Krenn (AUT), Alejandro Vidal (ESP), Danh Vo (DEN / VIE), Laura Waddington (GBR/ BEL)
Curator: Anders Härm


„Crime and Punishment” is an exhibit, in which the center of interest is criminalization processes under the circumstances of societies of control, in which prison systems are becoming a capitalistic neo-liberal industry. Contrary to Deleuze, who believed that with the transition from a disciplinary society to a society of control, prison systems would disappear in the long term, they are currently actually expanding and growing. Only the production method for criminalization has changed. The precondition is the massive capitalization and privatization of prison systems, especially in the US and Great Britain, and the ever-increasing number of detainees (since every enterprise needs customers) and the use of all conceivable measures for preserving order, including the criminalization of problems that earlier belonged to the political sphere.

The power technology of a society of control differs radically from the ideals of the educational and training goals of a disciplinary society, as it was described by Foucault. The normalization technologies of a disciplinary society are replaced by direct control mechanisms, which are not only external, but also internal, and which operate on the individual as well as societal plane, and pertain to social relations and language. Through metaphoric models, one can understand that the “Panopticon” described by Foucault is replaced by the “Matrix”. Deleuze indicates that static-based exclusion and tracking technology is replaced by coding and internalization. A watchword is replaced by a password as he summarized with a clever metaphor. At the same time, it should be added that the operational mechanisms of a society of control include rudiments of earlier power technologies.

However, it is very clear that all of this is quite distant from Dostoyevsky’s treatment of crime as an act of free will and punishment primarily as obedience to the internal torments of conscience. Practice shows that often “free will” has nothing to do with becoming a criminal, which rather results from an increased production of criminalization, or at least, the implementation of structural violence and control mechanisms.
The artists participating in the exhibition deal with the theme of “crime and punishment” on quite a wide scale, starting with the esthetics of crime and criminals (Vidal, Raidpere) and the symbolic ritual of the last meal (Bigert & Bergström). At the same time, the mapping of criminalization / the punishment industry (Ressler& Krenn, Hunt) and its testing either directly (Vo) or indirectly on oneself (Waddington) is also dealt with.


Special thanks to: the Cultural Endowment Foundation of Estonia, Estonian Ministry of Culture, Austrian Embassy in Estonia, Galerie Adler in Frankfurt & New York, Merete Jankowksi & Danish Art Agency, Copenhagen.


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