We are currently living in a time in which the decolonial discourse has resonated strongly enough to induce public funding sources to allow for critical positions and to support them financially; it’s still, however, not strong enough to change school curriculums that replicate a universal history without offering a variety of perspectives, still not strong enough to lead to permanent interventions in public monuments, or to trigger top-down examinations of its foundations, or to demand an official admission of its colonial shadows.

Das Zentrum von gestern, die Splitter von heute is carved into the path leading to the Bismarck Memorial as a message manifested in the ground: a structural crack, a wound, a hole to be filled. By digging into the path that leads to the monument, the message works as a counter-verticality that seeks to shake the ground and reflect deeply on the connotations and values monumentalized and conserved by the memorial.

Das Zentrum von gestern, die Splitter von heute describes an outdated center that has been built at the cost of fragmentation, resulting in historical fractures that continue to break people and territories apart to this day. The “center” refers to Bismarck’s colonial military regime and the centralization of information and historicization in a hegemonic power based on specific values and principles established more than a century ago. It also refers to a center that manifests in today’s systems of values and hierarchies: a center that privileges certain lives, worldviews, and territories over others. And yet whenever the passage of time erodes the monument, it is restored and further conserved.

MONUMENTAL SHADOWS

Documentary – Rethinking Colonial Heritage
Various & Gould
SAVVY Contemporary The Laboratory of Form–Ideas