I Repeat Myself When Under Stress

Published in celebration of the exhibition I Repeat Myself When Under Stress at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit (MOCAD) in early 2009, this catalog presents photographic documentation, along with critical essays by the exhibition's curators Thomas Trummer (Project Manager for the Visual Arts, Siemens Siftung, Munich, Germany) and Trevor Smith (Curator of Contemporary Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts) along with a foreword by MOCAD's Director and Chief Curator, Luis Croquer. The exhibition examined the ways that contemporary artists compulsively duplicate visual, narrative and formal elements in their work. Repetition and reproduction have been recurrent themes in artistic practice since 1945 as a means of embracing medium hybridity and as a stylistic device revealing both the compulsions of consumption and the psychological constraints artists face in climates of economic and political uncertainty. The artists, Ceal Floyer, Hans Schabus and Tris Vonna-Michell, both individually and collectively, reflect and focus on repetition, a concept that acquires special significance in the context of Detroit the city where the assembly line was invented. Once a great symbol of modernity and automatization, this industrial process relied on an inherent linearity and repetitiveness that over time has, without significant adaptations, become virtually obsolete, particularly in an increasingly interconnected world. I Repeat Myself When Under Stress was curated by Trevor Smith, Curator of Contemporary Art, Peabody Essex Museum, Salem, Massachusetts, and Thomas Trummer, Project Manager for the Visual Arts at Siemens Arts Program, Munich, I Repeat Myself When Under Stress was presented in collaboration with the Siemens Arts Program (now Siemens Siftung) at the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit from February 13-May 3, 2009.