TROPICAL GIFT (2010) / PROTOKOLL (2007)
Three quarters of the income of the Nigerian government derives from the natural resources that are extracted from the Niger Delta. It is, quite literally, a dirty game: since the late 1950s about nine million barrels of raw oil have been spilled into the delta. The average life expectancy in the delta is 40 years, and 90% of the Nigerian population live in bitter poverty. In TROPICAL GIFT Lutz exposes the shadowy oil game with its losers and winners – to the extent there can be winners in this repellent game. Handshakes are exchanged among expats and local oilmen in the name of trade, and the soul and the country are betrayed for a quick profit.
In PROTOKOLL Lutz uses irony to analyse the environment in which political office-holders and other officials do their work. For three years he followed the official visits of a member of the Swiss Federal Council, in a world full of strictly prescribed protocols. The work shows how hierarchy and the theatre of power structure politics.
