The Boy Scout Project

Research- and archive project: Starting point of the Boy Scout Project was a red Boy Scout uniform jacket, which Hammer purchased in a thrift store in Hamburg, Germany. The project consisted of two different methods: »Recherche 1« and »Recherche 2«. In »Recherche 1« the artist investigated the origin of the red jacket, which is signed with the name „Jimmy Crawford“. On the backside of the jackatt is a blue patch: “Staten Island, Catholic Retreat, 1968. Through interviewing different people, who somehow participated at the retreat in the late sixties, photographing the original sites and collecting divers material, the artist got a close insight into the past events, connected to the red jacket. In »Recherche 2« Hammer rekontextualized and thereby transformed the photographs documents and objects by juxtaposing them with other matching images. By following those traces, he linked the private circumstances of the 1968 retreat with a global historical context. Later the documents and images were arranged on several large bulletin boards. By focusing mainly on the images and reappearing motives, a structural and basically metaphorical reading emerged.