The landscape imagery in the photographs and videos of the Punishment series recall the paintings of the Romantic period: craggy mountains, deep gorges, the sea, and mountain lakes. These are large- format, classical motifs of nature, in which one sees a lone person with a whip. Julius von Bismarck is energetically whipping a small piece of the majestic landscape to the point of physical exhaustion. The artist and his whip are dwarfed by the powerful background.
The work was originally exhibited as a video, to which the Swiss writer Dorothee Elmiger wrote and recited a poem that underscores the rhythm of the whip. The text makes reference to the Persian King Xerxes I, who in 480 BC had ordered that the sea be whipped as a punishment for having destroyed a recently built bridge during a storm.
The series was later continued in a different setting. On Liberty Island in New York the artist began whipping the base of the towering Statue of Liberty and was soon arrested.
Source:http://juliusvonbismarck.com/bank/index.php?/projects/punishment-I/