Deutsches Historisches Museum - Verf�hrung Freiheit. Kunst in Europa seit 1945 - Blog

Last week 15 young people from across Europe visited us with the idea of using their tour of the exhibition as the background for a discussion about freedom. The workshop was organised by the Körber Foundation. Much has happened during these four days and there is much to show you, because some aspects required their creativity. The artworks, for example, may not be photographed for copyright reasons, which presented us with the problem—as was the case with our #MuseUp—of wanting to talk about art without being allowed to show it. Ten workshop participants, however, didn’t let these little details get in their way and simply went about reinterpreting the works.

Our Tuesday Question for today is: What did our young Europeans do and what was the outcome?

"After the Second World War, the artist turned to the ideas of lifting off, expanding the horizon and experiencing the infinitude of the universe. With these concepts, Fontana wanted to create spaces for the intellect and show people a way out of their existential crisis with the experience of infinity.

Many borders we experience in life, whether they are ethnical, political or cultural, are “invisible” and basically made up by ourselves. This means that overcoming those borders is virtually possible, either now or in the future. Nevertheless, one border we are most likely to never overcome is the law of nature. Therefore, the following piece of art, based on the concept that nature’s laws are to overcome, boggled my mind. It symbolizes the fact that seemingly insurmountable borders can be overcome if we encourage ourselves in doing it."

"An artwork that I personally strongly connect with notion and issue of freedom is basically a big brown box divided to 10x10 smaller boxes with old alarm clocks in them, each showing a different time. For me these clocks are a perfect manifestation of human's own self-destructive nature.

Time as a category was invented by people and its basic ‘task’ is limitation. The issue I see is that we strive for some kind of freedom even though we are constantly limiting ourselves and others with our own ‘inventions’ and decisions and are thus depriving ourselves of freedom. This does not hold true only for the notion of time but also for social expectations of what is considered to be ‘normal’ (basically just ‘mainstream’), which limit people who are (by social definition) ‘different’. As people we set up limits and ‘borders’ in society and afterwards feel frustrated because of their existence, then consequently complain over them and cry for freedom.

We are the source of our own stress and frustration. Due to this fact we are also the only ones who have the ability and power to demolish our ‘borders’. We have the power to make our worlds more or less free and more or less pleasant. However, with such power there comes also responsibility towards other people since our actions and decisions might limit and influence their freedom too."

"There are no similarities between the words, apart from their first letter, and the link to freedom is at first hard to see. However, I believe that the message is that if you are not free or if you simply are limited in any way, even the slightest reminder of freedom, such as any word that starts with an a, causes pain. The absence of freedom, which is the ultimate road to happiness, causes pain, so eventually, the all-consuming pain is the only emotion left to feel.

It also shows the impossibility of communication if you simply don’t want to communicate. The different meanings of words disappear, and you, the poor person writing a personal dictionary, are left with the only thing you can understand – pain.

This art work shows the absence of freedom, and it defines freedom by what it is not, namely, it could never be the engrossing pain that is expressed on these sheets. Because in the end, everybody has different interpretations of freedom, but we should all be able to agree on what freedom is not. It can be uncomfortable, disturbing, unsettling, etc, but it should never, ever be an all-consuming feeling of pain."

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We were very pleased about the visit by these young Europeans. You can view all ten of their picture interpretations and read the articles by the other participants on their Blog. And take a look at the ‘Making Of’ if you would like to know more about how photographs like these are made.