In 36,000 Ways

Karim Ben Khelifa

Artwork Description:

Hundreds of real missile shrapnel fragments, each collected from frontline sites in Ukraine by the artist, hang suspended over a walkable stage on individual nylon wires. After stepping onto the platform, visitors pick up a single fragment from a shelf. A cold light finds their hand. The artist's voice enters through headphones. Sensing technology originally developed for surveillance and through-wall detection reads physiological signals without contact. The visitor's heartbeat is returned to them, audible through the headphones, felt through a subwoofer beneath the platform. The body becomes the instrument the work plays. No photographs of war. No videos. No testimony. Only imagination, material, body, and the evolving distance between them. The title begins with a fact: one missile strike produces up to 36,000 fragments. Each travels at over 1,000 m/s in every direction. The blast kills within 70 meters. The shrapnel kills up to 500 meters away. The work does not illustrate this. It makes it present. Compassion fatigue is a failure of the mind, not the body. In 36,000 Ways does not ask audiences to understand war. It bypasses argument and goes straight for the visitor's senses, through weight, frequency, breath, and the cold reality of a razor sharp piece of metal in the hand.

Project Collaborators:

Production Director Enzo Leclercq Ukraine Producer Igor Burdyga Soundscape Felipe Sanchez Luna Creative Technologists Pascal Staudt & Max Weber Co-produced by Atelier Non-Fiction & KLING KLANG KLONG