Blutsbrüder / Blood Brothers

The documentary materials of Blutsbrüder / Blood Brothers are evidence of the failure of a transmission. The photographs and letters bear witness to the attempt of a young fan—Christian Jankowski—to perform the act of blood brotherhood with his childhood idol, the French actor Pierre Brice, known best for his role as Winnetou in the film adaptations of Karl May’s books. This ritual union of two unrelated men, brought about by the intermingling of their blood, serves to irrevocably mix up what are actually closed cycles. The result marks the pure form of giving and taking, of appropriation and inscription. Through the blood of Brice, Jankowski would be elevated to a living sculpture—and at the same time, it would be the striking proof of his true allegiance.

However, the effort that the artist invested to get through to Brice—such as procuring a medical certificate confirming his safe state of health and a photo of Jankowski at a hard-to-find filming location of Winnetou somewhere in former Yugoslavia—did not pay off: in the end, he got rejected by the actor’s simple “no” during a brief meeting in Bad Segeberg, a small town in northern Germany. Disappointed, Jankowski comissioned the Western novelist Jack Slade (a pseudonym under which Horst Friedrichs writes here) to turn this drama into a pulp fiction novel.

And yet the rejection did not mark the end of the story. Originally planned as an artistic contribution to the 48th Venice Biennale, Jankowski alternatively developed the video work Telemistica (1999), for which he asked fortune tellers on Italian television about a possible art career and his success at the Venice Biennale and which ultimately paved the way for his international breakthrough as an artist.

Blutsbrüder / Blood Brothers is a loan by courtesy of Thomas Wollheim.