Paper short abstract:

25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, activists from the Centre for Political Beauty removed a memorial for Berlin Wall victims in order to protest EU migration policies. By exploring the multi-layered project, I discuss the blind spots in the institutionalized representation of displacement.

Paper long abstract:

In 2014, during the celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall, activists from the Centre for Political Beauty removed a memorial for Berlin Wall victims—fourteen white crosses—from its location near the German Parliament. Following a crowd-funding campaign, two buses drove 100 activists equipped with bold cutters to the EU's external border in Bulgaria in order to re-install the white crosses near the border fences and protest EU migration and border policies. The paper examines the activists' artistic and communication strategies, collaboration with migrants, media coverage, response by German authorities and Bulgarian police, legal investigations and subsequent debates about censorship and freedom of artistic expression, response by families of Berlin Wall victims and victim associations, and the ways political parties tried to gain leverage from the controversy. By examining the multi-layered dynamics the project has induced, the paper explores the political, aesthetic and ethical implications of appropriating a memorial and translating its symbolic value into the present. To what extent have the activists been able to mobilize the performative and trans-formative powers of representations of displacement? How have they explored the boundary between symbolic action and political activism? How have they been able to generate publicity, and to what end(s)? Who were their target audiences and stakeholders? What are the ethical implications of such an exploration? By discussing to what extent the artistic activism was able to re-politicize the public debate, the paper identifies blind spots within the institutionalized, often emotive and depoliticized representation of displacement.