OAK, »Extinction to Go / The [Nuclear] Football«, 2024/25 , Mixed Media

»The potentially most dangerous object on our planet. Officially referred to as the „Presidential Emergency Satchel,“ this atomic briefcase enables the President of the United States to authorize a nuclear strike. It allows for the launch of individual strategic missiles or even a global nuclear attack. In American parlance, this powerful case is euphemistically called „The [Nuclear] Football.“

Since the 1960s, this bulging leather briefcase has always remained close to the president >never more than an arm‘s length away< under the watchful eye of a specially assigned military aide. A briefcase as a symbol of power and global deterrence, balancing politics and responsibility >>> “The Football“ is by no means just a piece of luggage but rather the control unit for a potential worldwide nuclear Armageddon, ultimately dependent on the decision of a single individual.

The work transforms this historical object into a surreal monument of responsibility and delirium. 3D-printed in polished material, it retains the sleek design language of authority and control, yet reveals its true anatomy: beneath the smooth surface lies a morphing “football” whose form echoes a human skull, its veins and cranial lines visible like a map of concealed catastrophe. The object becomes a reliquary of extinction >>> a portable altar for the end of civilization, always ready for transport, always beside the throne.

The sculpture is not an accusation but an unveiling. It materializes the latent violence of political aesthetics, the way power disguises annihilation as efficiency, and apocalypse as protocol. Extinction to Go is both artifact and omen: a product of the modern age and a prophecy from within it.

By turning the “football” into a skull, the work inverts the myth of heroic leadership. It reveals that beneath the polished symbols of governance lies the most fragile and terrifying truth of all >>> that the end of the world has long been held in human hands.