The late, late snow has finally disappeared from Berlin’s streets. Visible once again, here and there, are the “stumble stones” –Stolpersteine in German – with their brief, tragic messages.
Many Berlin tourists will enjoy the night life. They may also look upwards – at the giant TV tower, the Brandenburg Gate, at ancient and less ancient churches. There is a wide assortment of memorial monuments, some impressive, some uninspiring.
Chinese artist and activist Ai Weiwei has recreated the image of drowned infant Alan Kurdi that in 2015 became the defining symbol of the plight of Syria’s refugees.
For the recreation, Ai lay on a pebbled beach on the Greek island of Lesbos. His pose was similar to that of Kurdi’s lifeless body, which washed up on a beach near the Turkish town of Bodrum and was captured in a September 2015 photo.
Text taken from website:
By appropriating mementos of other people’s lives and placing them in an art context, Boltanski explores the power of photography to transcend individual identity and to function instead as a witness to collective rituals and shared cultural memories.
Doris Salcedo talked extensively with victims of the violence in Colombia. For the project titled Unland she spoke specifically with children who had witnessed the murder of their parents. This piece was a poetic response and representation of their testimony. Salcedo combined halves of tables together to make a whole. In the seam where the tables joined Salcedo meticulously sewed the tables together using white silk thread, dark hair and bone.
"This Ain't a Eulogy" is both a staged performance and a durational, outdoor, public performance that reclaims and takes public space. The artist statement is as follows: