Diego Castro Memories of Heidelberg: Kriegsblind Und Friedenstaub
Total Page：16
File Type：pdf, Size：1020Kb
presents: Diego Castro Memories of Heidelberg: Kriegsblind und Friedenstaub Opening: May 5, 19H Duration of exhibition: May 6 - 28, 2011 Thursday – Saturday 14 – 18H Die Erneuerung des Kniefalls von Warschau (2010). Super-8 transferred to DVD. Still. In a solo-exhibition in Gitte Bohr, Diego Castro shows videos, drawings and an installation from a series of works, which deals with the re- turn of an expansive and warlike Germany in the globalised context. In the works, he sardonically makes ambiguous connections between Germany’s foreign deployment of troops and politically incorrect references. A renais- sance of restorative national politics is being approached with acid-tongued humour. Special guests: Erika Steinbach, Willy Brandt, Carl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, Pablo Picasso, Horst Köhler, Rudolf Hess, Nicole, Blondi and others. ooo On February 6, 2003, the then U.S. Secretary of State, Colin Powell presented the UN and the world with so-called evidence of Iraqi possession of weapons of mass destruction. This became the basis for the invasion of Iraq a little over a month later. In a strange and symbolic gesture, the U.S. government had opted for hiding the large tapestry reproduction of Picas- so’s Guernica that hangs in the vestibule of the UN building in which the presentation took place. The horrors of this famous anti-war painting were meant to remain un-associated with what was going on before its blindfol- ded eyes. But the more clear it became that the invasion was based on a lie, the more that curtain became not only a symbol of the veil of deception, but something that could be read as a gesture of acknowledgement of the power of art and the relevance of Picasso’s message with his painting and stated hin his famous quote: ”Il faut créer des images inacceptables.” The presence of the curtain only made the picture’s critical eyes more piercing. In the work Picasso Retrospektive Kundus (2011), the curtain hi- des a painted copy of the Guernica with slight modifications, showing the bull with the features of former Minister of foreign affairs, Carl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, and the frightened looking person shining a light on the scene looking slightly like Chancellor Angela Merkel. The painting, while retaining its original depictions of the bombing by the Germans on April 26, 1937 of the small Basque village, brings another level to this reference to German wars of aggression by linking it simultaneously to the country’s participation in the war in Afghanistan and especially the killing of civi- lians in Kundus. The artist, who refers to himself as a pacifist, sees in the bombing of Kundus not only history repeating itself, but also an unresolved conflict with the German constitution. With the quotes hanging next to the painting, Castro refers to a scan- dalous interview with the former Federal President of Germany, Horst Köhler, who stated the need for the country to defend its economic in- terests on an international scale – if necessary also with military means. The word “Retrospektive” written on the painting thus beco- mes an ambivalent memento of German warfare, disguised as a joke. The work Die Erneuerung des Kniefalls von Warschau (2010) uses a similar strategy of actualising a historical event with many and complex po- litical meanings for the German state. In the short clip, Castro re-enacts the so-called “Kniefall von Warschau” (the Warsaw Genuflection) of the then German Chancellor Willy Brandt on December 7, 1970. On the day when Germany and Poland signed the Treaty of Warsaw, which guaranteed the borders of Poland, he visited the monument to the Warsaw Ghetto. As he kneeled in front of it, he was the first German Chancellor to publicly show regret for the attack on Poland. The film was shot in Warsaw on Super-8 film in October 2010, in the context of the first German war of aggression since 1945 and in the midst of the scandal around the politician and member of the Bund der Vertriebenen (Federation of Expelees), Erika Steinbach, who had claimed that the Ger- man attack on Poland in 1939 was only an answer to Polish mobilisation. The performance-reenactment thus, on the one hand, acts out a frustration with the failure of learning from history, and on the other, it puts into pers- pective the question of Germany’s territorial politics. The collage film Republik der Gespenster (2009) deals with the per- sisting ghosts of authoritarian character in the German mind. Through mon- tage, it links clips from the filmDer Untertan by Wolfgang Staude that show the authoritarian chatacter of the fraternities in the Wilhelminian era with images from Germany, Year Zero by Roberto Rossellini. The latter shows the tragic story of a German boy, who, immediately after the war, experiences the aporia of the sudden disappearance of the ideals he was brought up with during the Third Reich. His fate is symbolic of a whole generation, brought up with authoritarianism and indoctrinated with absolute obedience. The images of the boy’s suicide in the rubble of Berlin are again juxtaposed with a clip of Rudi Dutschke responding to verbal assaults on his person before the attempted assassination of him on April 11, 1968. The subtitles show quotes from a letter Dutschke wrote while recovering from the assault to the offender Josef Bachmann, a Neo-Nazi, who had shot him three times in the head. Bachmann, like the boy in Rossellini’s film, later committed suicide. The result of the montage is a strong comment on the structural persistence of the psychology of National Socialism and its disasters, even long after the war was over. ooo The exhibition shows an attempt at and a belief in the possibility of crea- ting a political critique through images. Castro draws on both hegemonic and counter-images in works which exploit the many levels and contextual meanings that images always have, and the possibility of refracting and détourning their associations. His strategy works through a collision of images from different contexts that creates a dialectical moment in which a new thought can occur. Adding sar- casm, anger and the cartoon’s tactic of twisting images and words, he tries to overcome the stereotypical German post-war culture of contrition. By drawing historical images into a contemporary context, not only the tragedy of history’s repetition is made visible. Also the images’ potentials for the present time are activated. Thus, in the reenactment of Brandt’s kneeling, a wider meaning present in Brandt’s gesture, its place in the long history of German territorial interests, which did not end with that event, is poin- ted to. And this is underlined through the contextualisation with the other works in the exhibition. The exhibition uses these strategies to draw connections between the historical and political events and the ideas of which they are expres- sions. The show’s title refers to a recurring image of German restoration: Heidelberg, the romantic university town, which in popular culture has be- come symbolic of a construction of precious, positively connoted nationalism. In songs, or in Christian Kracht’s notorious novel Faserland, it appeals to an amnesic image of Germany, obscuring the blatant nationalism present in Heidelberg’s long tradition of fraternities. It is all put into perspective by the drawing of the singer Nicole, who, ac- cording to the magazine Stern, stood for the only victory of Germany in the twentieth century with her Eurovision song Ein bißchen Frieden. Schillerpromenade 7, D-12049 Berlin, www.gittebohr.de.