Snoring in the USA
Kristina Leko & David Smithson
This catalog accompanied the exhibition of the same name at the nGbK, brought to Berlin by the travelling exhibition work group having been shown at Kunsthalle Zagreb. Over two decades, showing the “other America” beyond prevailing clichés had been a recurring theme in the nGbK program: AIDS activism, feminism, and anti-racism instead of Donald Duck and John Wayne. Snoring in the USA is a multichannel video installation by Kristina Leko and David Smithson. A visual essay in the style of a road movie, it documents seven days and nights of a journey in the United States. As well as key locations from cinema history like the Grand Canyon and Las Vegas, it also shows nameless small towns and gas stations, with television and radio broadcasts referring to current political events like the “war on terror” and the Iraq War. In between, we see a man and a woman sleeping in various hotel rooms, soundtracked with their breathing and snoring. The catalog presents the installation and the thematic reading room designed for the nGbK, while the essays take a critical look at the American Dream.
Ed.: nGbK
With contributions by: Naomi Hennig, Katja Jedermann, Kristina Leko, David Smithson