Reflection Chernobyl

Chernobyl is an event with no comparable extents, after Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It will always stay in me. It was important for me to do something about Chernobyl because of my profession as an artist whose priorities are mankind and reality.

Hurriedly abandoned houses, improvised measures to justify the living. That was my first impression in this small, almost soulless Russian village (Rowkowitschi) in the former USSR. After my interview with the juveniles my prejudice needed a little correction. During the catastrophe, Ivan, Lena and Natasha have been between six and eight years old. Now, ten years later, they reflect and maybe adjust their initial impression based on immature knowledge on life and on the event.

After losing a lot of friends and relatives through death or leaving the region, they recollected their memories, initial impressions and told me about their perspectives, and they were able to see this former event in a new dimension. That there was a great helplessness paired with a resignation to destiny, I had to conclude. But sometimes with a little bit of hope.

The mothers in Minsk brought me other messages. They expressed great hopelessness, isolation and also bitterness. One of the mothers even demanded to let them alone with their destiny. I received this as an accusation against the voyeuristic dealing with the concerned people - also against the artists!?

I was stunned and also helpless for a while. How can an artist like me with little resources help or encourage these children and juveniles to have better circumstances? Inspired by these personal contacts, my concept was to do an interpretation with a red sleeping bag, to show their fate by passing on through my work with performances and installations throughout the world.

I found a small room with utilities fixtures in Bremen Exhibition Shelter Osterholz/Tenever. There I found the suitable place for my installation consisting of handicraft gifts from children living in various places in the contaminated zone.

Statement
The utopian scheme of obtaining unlimited wealth based on the glorification of a concept of total industrialisation without considerations as to the well-being of Man and Nature will definitely lead to the destruction of culture and the suffering of the innocent (children).
This is the worst terrorism in these ages.

Curator: Insa Winkler