„Jesus Christus als Perpetuum Mobile oder die Vermessenheit einer Idee“

Jesus Christ as a perpetual motion machine, or the audacity of an idea

In the summer of 2005, I came across a crucifix mounted on gears at a flea market in Eupen—an absurd image of a religious mechanism. This mechanism reminded me of the perpetual motion machine: a machine that is supposed to generate energy incessantly from itself, an old illusion of science.

The Catholic Church also functions like such a perpetual motion machine: a self-propelling system that has been feeding its power for centuries from rituals, dogmas, and an alleged divine energy. It claims eternal validity, producing incessant movement and expansion – regardless of the atrocities committed in the name of Christianization.

But as with perpetual motion, the crucial question remains unanswered: Where does the energy come from? Catholicism does not live from itself, but from exploitation, oppression, and fear. Its gears mesh like a machine of power that transforms the divine into an ideological construct.

The crucifix on gears thus becomes a metaphor for a church that sees itself as an eternal engine – but in reality is a construct that would long since have come to a standstill without constant sacrifice. Michael Schulze, March 2006

Michael Schulze, März 2006