25 years ago we skipped school and climbed on the Berlin Wall at the Brandenburg Gate. From up there we were looking down at armed GDR soldiers who didn´t know anymore what to do. One day before they still had the order to shoot anybody from the East who wanted to climb over the wall to the West. And now everyone from the East was allowed to cross the boarder freely and we, the people from the West, were climbing up on the wall to celebrate freedom and the end of a dictatorship, to celebrate the success of the resistance movement and to welcome the people of the East. Very poignant memories.
Today there are still many walls in this world existing, separating and excluding people, between Palestine and Israel, between Mexico and the USA, last but not least on the outer boarders of the EU between Africa and Europe.
To fight the danger of an experienced commemerative culture that tends to forget about the current state of affairs the artists of the Center for Political Beauty pilfered the white crosses next to the German parliament reminding of all the victims who were shot at the Berlin Wall back then and brought them to the outer boarders of Europe, reminding this way of all the refugees who die today while trying to escape from war, despari and a life without any perspective to Europe.
A touching and arousing act of art in the tradition of Jean-Jacques Lebel and other political Happening artists of the 1960s like Joseph Beuys, Bazon Brock and Wolf Vostell, to name only some of the most prominent German ones.
Maybe Lebel is still right: The Hightest of All the Arts is Insurrection. The fight for freedom and a more humane world never stops. Not only for artists. Not at all.