{"id":654,"date":"2025-06-26T16:39:49","date_gmt":"2025-06-26T16:39:49","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/?p=654"},"modified":"2025-06-30T09:07:26","modified_gmt":"2025-06-30T09:07:26","slug":"before-and-after-war-or-peace","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/before-and-after-war-or-peace\/","title":{"rendered":"Before and After \u2013 War or Peace"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><strong>Johannes Birringer<\/strong><a href=\"#end\" name=\"back\">*<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<h5 class=\"wp-block-heading\"><strong>Abstract<\/strong><\/h5>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"abstract\">This essay reflects on the politics of memory, trauma, and artistic responses to historical and ongoing wars. Framed by the commemorations of the 80th anniversary of World War II\u2019s end, the essay introduces the exhibition <font class=\"no-italics\">Vorher und nachher \/ Krieg oder Frieden<\/font> at Gallery Puzi\u0107 in Saarbr\u00fccken (Germany), which juxtaposes archival and contemporary documentary images of war-damaged cities, and refers to performance interventions and architectural visions of reconstruction. Central themes include the impossibility of art to heal or resolve, but its power to illuminate and disturb; the persistence of violence and aggression (Ukraine, Gaza, Sudan, Syria) and the tension between remembrance and forgetting. Birringer draws connections between photography, landscape, architecture, and literature \u2013 also evoking Walter Benjamin\u2019s comments on the \u201cangel of history\u201d and Ada Palmer\u2019s <font class=\"no-italics\">Terra Ignota<\/font> \u2013 to explore how layered histories of destruction and recovery complicate notions of progress, peace, and cultural resilience. The essay ultimately questions whether \u201cbefore\u201d and \u201cafter\u201d are meaningful distinctions, as violence continues to return like a haunting, cyclical force in human experience.<br><br><strong>Keywords:<\/strong> War, destruction, architecture, photography, landscape, concepts of history<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In the beginning of May 2025, many commemorative events took place throughout Germany and Europe to remember the end of World War II, the surrender of the German Reich on May 7\/8, 1945 \u2013 80 years ago \u2013 and the liberation from National Socialism. In England, the memory of the victory is marked with annual contemplative festivities; this year, the oldest living veteran was 110 years old. The Dutch celebrated Liberation Day (Bevrijdingsdag) on \u200b\u200bMay 5 and remembered the victims of the war and occupation on May 4. In Moscow, a massive military parade was held on May 9 to commemorate the victory in the Great Patriotic War.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"453\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image1-5.jpg?resize=800%2C453&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-655\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image1-5.jpg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image1-5.jpg?resize=300%2C170&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image1-5.jpg?resize=768%2C435&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">\u017deljko Jan\u010di\u0107 Zec, <em>The Bare Island (Goli otok)\/Vision in the Shadow.<\/em>&nbsp;\u00a9 ZJZ. Film still. Exhibition <em>Vorher und nachher \/ Krieg oder Frieden,<\/em> Gallery Puzi\u0107, 05\/13 to 06\/26, 2025<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Different people have different memories, of war and destruction, of flight and liberation, of loss. Some of us, even those of different generations, may carry with us difficult, unresolved wounds. If they fled Ukraine or have family and friends in Israel, Palestine, Syria, or Lebanon, then they suffer from very fresh, unhealed wounds.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Art is, of course, not therapy. It cannot heal wounds or force new perspectives on our memories. It can only inspire, instigate, open viewpoints or uncover symbolic documents, hint at discreet psychological profiles, perhaps disturb with drawings or installations. However, there is enough disturbance in the daily news, and the gallery should not submit itself to expand on this constant stream of negative reports and catastrophes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><em>Before and After \/ War or Peace<\/em> approaches its difficult subject rather cautiously, with a few excerpts from the stream, and also aims to offer a glimpse of hope, even though art, like architecture, can only point to some trails. This year\u2019s Venice Architecture Biennale, for example, was given a promising motto by curator Carlo Ratti: \u201cTo face a burning world, architecture must harness all the intelligence around us,\u201d and the French pavilion responded by designing a very broad scenographic palette (<em>Vivre avec\/Living With<\/em>) with various subthemes to be explored in an open, temporary space (next to the pavilion&#8217;s renovation site):<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\">\n<li>Living with the Existing<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Living with Proximity<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Living with the Damaged<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Living with Vulnerability<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Living with Nature and the Living World<\/li>\n\n\n\n<li>Living with Collective Intelligence<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>What was striking was the large number of invited projects from French and international teams, including the Kharkiv School of Architecture (Ukraine), which focused on Odessa, on \u201cliving with war on the Black Sea coast; Ukrainian cities and citizens live daily with the risks and damage posed by Russia&#8217;s ongoing war against Ukraine. This project examines past, present, and future conditions at four levels of intervention: sea, city, neighborhood, and home, and develops visions and strategies for Odessa&#8217;s recovery and transformation towards a resilient urban future\u201d (Institut Fran\u00e7ais, <em>Vivre Avec\/Living With<\/em>, press kit, 2025).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>But in the face of war and climate disasters, and a burning world, can such repairs \u2013\u201cliving with the damaged (ab\u00eem\u00e9)\u201d \u2013 even be imagined? What would they look like in Gaza? Perhaps like President Trump\u2019s bizarre references to a \u201cbeach resort\u201d? Could this give the people of Gaza a false sense of faith in a future? O should one rather collect donations for refugees or provide humanitarian aid to people trapped in concentration camps?<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"600\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image2-7.jpeg?resize=800%2C600&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-656\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image2-7.jpeg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image2-7.jpeg?resize=300%2C225&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image2-7.jpeg?resize=768%2C576&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Leon Amelung plays at the opening of the exhibition <em>Before and After \/ War or Peace. <\/em>Photo: J. Birringer<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>The risky new exhibition at Gallery Puzi\u0107 in Saarbr\u00fccken does not offer such suggestions, but it opens up a space for reflection and perhaps also for mutual understanding. Upon entering the gallery on opening night, visitors experienced a performance by a young musician, <a href=\"http:\/\/https:\/\/vimeo.com\/1088819631\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"(https:\/\/vimeo.com\/1088819631\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Leon Amelung, playing Albinoni\u2019s Adagio in G minor on his cello in the front room<\/a>. On the wall behind Amelung, there is a photograph of the magnificent National Library in Sarajevo (as it appeared before the bombing and after its restoration).<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"500\" height=\"630\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image3-9.jpeg?resize=500%2C630&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-657\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image3-9.jpeg?w=500&amp;ssl=1 500w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image3-9.jpeg?resize=238%2C300&amp;ssl=1 238w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 500px) 100vw, 500px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Dome Hall of the National Library of Sarajevo. Archival image. Below: Hall of the National Library of Sarajevo during the bombing in 1992, with cellist Vedran Smailovi\u0107. Photo: Mikhail Evstafiev<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Below hangs the remarkable picture by Mikhail Evstafiev, who photographed the partially destroyed National Library during the war in 1992, with cellist Vedran Smailovi\u0107 sitting among the rubble. During the siege, which, at 1,425 days, became the longest siege of the 20th century, Smailovi\u0107 played Albinoni&#8217;s Adagio for 22 days, beginning on May 28, 1992, in honor of 22 civilians killed the day before by a mortar attack. They were waiting for bread outside a bakery on what is now Ferhadija Street. He also often performed at funerals, which were frequently targeted by Serbian snipers; this photo shows him in the National Library, destroyed in August 1992. This emphatic performance of resistance became a symbol for those trapped in Sarajevo.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This pairing of photographs begins in the front room with a series of archival photos dating back to the end of World War II and the devastated old town of Saarbr\u00fccken (1942-1945), a gesturing towards local memory and how such photos may reposition our familiarity with urban reality today. The images of the rubble and fires (including the Jewish synagogue in smoke and flames, set ablaze during Kristallnacht in 1938) are tracked by Saarland artist Andr\u00e9 Mail\u00e4nder, who revisited and rephotographed the locations using almost identical camera angles. One sees the Luisenbr\u00fccke, the Palais Freital on Ludwigsplatz, the Old Saarbr\u00fccken city center which was completely destroyed by air raids in 1944, the main train station, and the rebuilt synagogue on Beethovenplatz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>At the same time, Mail\u00e4nder exhibits three illustrated books he conceived and published during the past few years: <em>Woven Places<\/em> (Urban Fabric), vol. I; <em>Woven Places<\/em> (Green Facility), vol. II; and <em>Woven Places<\/em> (Succession), vol. III. He added a brief note to these photography books, explaining what his intense landscape photographs actually refer to: namely the invisible behind the visible, traces imagined in an overgrown earth, brushwork and trees concealing secrets. In some scenes, these interweavings through nature-growth can be seen with great intensity, dramatized by subtle lighting: hidden in the \u201cDaarler Wiesen\u201d in St. Arnual, Mail\u00e4nder explains in his note, lie the remains of the destroyed old town, rubble that was dumped there, along with construction debris from the unfinished airport in the 1970s.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background has-small-font-size\" style=\"background-color:#e3cacc2e\"><p class=\"has-background has-small-font-size\" style=\"background-color:#e3cacc2e; margin-bottom:0px; padding-bottom:0px;\">&#8220;A secluded area, accessible only via a few entrances. On one side, a meadow, on the other, covered with bushes and half-grown trees. \u2018successional vegetation,\u2019 a bird sanctuary. A strange case of an Arcadian landscape. A year-round dog walking area, in the summer a rumored nudist area on the fringes of social convention. The edge of civilization? Originally planned as an industrial park, canceled in the 1970s; an intact, but nameless bridge leading into the void testifies to this. Formerly the site of the city\u2019s first airport \u2013 an unfortunate location, due to the high groundwater level in the floodplain. The city\u2019s bomb debris brought here after the war. Later, construction rubble and the material excavated from the river straightening were added. Layer upon layer was piled up. A meaningful mixture. Symptoms of the war, mixed with symptoms of the ongoing repression of the traumas afterward. Left to time and to itself.&#8221; <\/p><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-right has-background has-small-font-size\" style=\"background-color:#e3cacc2e\"><a href=\"https:\/\/andremailaender.com\/Woven-Places-Text\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/andremailaender.com\/Woven-Places-Text\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">Woven-Places-Text<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image4-10.jpeg?resize=800%2C533&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-658\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image4-10.jpeg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image4-10.jpeg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image4-10.jpeg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Andr\u00e9 Mail\u00e4nder, from <em>Woven Places (Urban Fabric),<\/em> vol. I, 2013. Photo:&nbsp;Andr\u00e9 Mail\u00e4nder<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"400\" height=\"597\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image5-5.jpeg?resize=400%2C597&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-659\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image5-5.jpeg?w=400&amp;ssl=1 400w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image5-5.jpeg?resize=201%2C300&amp;ssl=1 201w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 400px) 100vw, 400px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Andr\u00e9 Mail\u00e4nder, from <em>Woven Places (Urban Fabric),<\/em> vol. I, 2013. Photo: Andr\u00e9 Mail\u00e4nder<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Mail\u00e4nder&#8217;s outline of the project with its focus on layers of local history also evokes Paul Klee\u2019s Angelus Novus, which the philosopher Walter Benjamin (who took his own life in Portbou, Spain, in 1940 while fleeing German racial policies) so fascinatingly interpreted in his 18 \u201cTheses on the Concept of History.\u201d We shall return to the ninth thesis later. Without a doubt, concepts of history, both political and local, economic, social, and environmental, are crucial to the standpoint of the exhibition <em>Before and After<\/em>. However, the symptoms of current wars or refugee crises in recent history are more difficult to cope with, because we live directly in the eye of the maelstrom. The debates on \u201cremigration\u201d (the dubious term used by the political far right for the expulsion of immigrants and refugees) are echoing through the media every day. The \u201csuccesional\u201d in history, here in the German context after the last war and the Holcaust, and the annexation of the former GDR after the fall of the Berlin Wall, has nothing lightly \u201cfloating\u201d about it as Joseph Vogl imagined in his aesthetic homage to lightness and fluidity (<em>Meteor,<\/em> 2025), a wishful study of perceptual processes with gazes upwards toward the sky.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Wim Wenders once made a much-admired film about angels and the sky above Berlin (<em>Wings of Desire<\/em>). This year, the director celebrates his personal return to Reims, traveling to the French city and the high school where, in the secret map room, the Allied High Command signed the German surrender on May 7, 1945 (<em><a href=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=m2LhQIgSqrk&amp;t=246s\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=m2LhQIgSqrk&amp;t=246s\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">The Keys to Freedom<\/a><\/em>). The camera glides through the present-day classrooms, past young students as well as old archive photos and film footage, and Wenders paces through it all, while we hear his solemn, narrative voice: \u201cThe darkest period in Europe&#8217;s history is thus coming to an end&#8230;\u201d There is something oppressive about the pathos-laden tone. One is embarrassed by Wenders\u2019 self-stylization, the way he inscribes himself into history in front of the camera.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Avoiding any pathos, the photographic pairings in <em>Before and After<\/em> address the present and past madness in our world, the fear of an unchanging, ongoing horror, repeatedly triggered by military conflicts, aggression, civil war. This is also due to humanity\u2019s universal failure to find models of participation and coexistence that could lead to Earth&#8217;s society unlearning war and destruction (as Ada Palmer describes it in her science-fiction tetralogy <em>Terra Ignota<\/em>). This future remains a utopia.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In Germany, after 1945, people spoke of \u201cnever again.\u201d It was compulsory pedagogy in the schools. Later, foreign policy debates often referred to a \u201craison d\u2019\u00e9tat\u201d (in all questions regarding Israel) based on collective responsibility for guilt. But these phrases now seem to have reached an end point and are almost empty, or they are facing sharp, sometimes even contemptuous, criticism. An AfD politician, for example, spoke of a \u201ccult of guilt\u201d and described the Nazi dictatorship as merely a \u201cbird dropping in the long history of Germany.\u201d War, autocracies, and new fascisms are frighteningly alive, the \u201cnever again\u201d has expired, and global crises pose an ever-growing threat to self-determination and coexistence in multicultural communities, to a vision of a sustainable world. Under what sieges are we experiencing our coming of age today? And how do we survive the hardest nights?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background has-small-font-size\" style=\"background-color:#e3cacc2e\">&#8220;Dead philosophers, like fictional characters in novels, may not be able to repair bridges and sidewalks, but they can still sit beside us on the hardest nights and help us endure them.&#8221; (Ada Palmer, <em>Terra Ignota<\/em>)<br><br>&#8220;The narrator explains at the beginning of the film that this is not a war that has already been fought, nor one that will be fought, but just any war. \u2018These soldiers you see are preserving our language and our time, but they have no fatherland but their spirit.\u2019&#8221; (Stanley Kubrick, <em>Fear and Desire<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The \u201cwe\u201d from the perspective of a gallery and its visitors in southwestern Germany (where uninterrupted peace, growing prosperity, and social security have dominated expectations since 1945, i.e., for 80 years now) is perhaps presumptuous; it is a form of hubris. Nevertheless, one can use the plural, for we share a common fate of humanity, and also the shame and disappointment about the dehumanization we have to endure (and which the recently deceased Holocaust survivor Margot Friedl\u00e4nder often spoke of). The daily bad news and the flood of images from the internet \u2013 they are almost impossible to cope with; the German-Ukrainian writer Katja Petrowskaja, who has just published the anthology <em>As if it Were Over: Texts from the War<\/em> (Suhrkamp \u200b\u200b2025), is also aware of the difficulty of her task of making suffering and horror comprehensible to those not directly affected.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"449\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image6-1.jpg?resize=800%2C449&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-660\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image6-1.jpg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image6-1.jpg?resize=300%2C168&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image6-1.jpg?resize=768%2C431&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Cover image, Kerstin Holm, \u201cSpellbound by the Gold of the Burning Towers,\u201d <em>FAZ<\/em>, May 5, 2025. Photo: Oleksandr Gimanov<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>In a review of this book, I was struck by the cover photo of the article, a Caspar David Friedrich-like view from behind \u2013 two young women in the foreground gaze at the Law Academy in Odessa, whose roof was completely gutted by a rocket attack in April 2024. The women stare at the towers glowing gold in the fire and the sea beyond, and of course, we do not know what is going on in the minds of those observing this unreal, real scene. The image itself also distances us, in a sense; it trivializes the events in the same way as the photograph I recently saw of a family (recognizable only in silhouette) excitedly taking selfies with the glowing lava masses of an Icelandic volcano eruption in the background. You can see from the body language of the \u201ctourists\u201d that the desire for sensation outweighs the horror of the natural disaster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Gallery Puzi\u0107 presents a very reduced exhibition this time, without paintings or sculptures. At the center: a small sized documentary relay of paired photographs that pick up the theme (<em>After the battle all generals are fucked<\/em>) of the destruction and burning of life that audience was confronted with in 2024 when the Croatian\/Slovene artist duo \u0160umonjak\u0161e (Bojan \u0160umonja &amp; Marko Jak\u0161e) visited and brought their enormous battle canvas, <em>After the battle\u2026 <\/em>It still hangs in the gallery\u2019s entrance hall \u2013 a kind of <em>Menekel<\/em>? The photographic series shows cities and regions (Sarajevo, Ukraine, Gaza, Aleppo, Karthoum) before and after war disasters. This is, however, a problematic proprosition, as the wars in Ukraine, the Gaza Strip, and Sudan are still ongoing; the conflict between India and Pakistan is simmering; and there has been no peace in Syria despite the successful rebellion against the Bashar al-Assad regime at the end of last year. Perhaps the biggest shortcoming of the selection is the almost complete absence of people, with the exception of the photographs of the civil war in Sudan. There, one can see the impact on citizens \u2013 they are refugees, people seeking protection, looking for a way out.<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"242\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image7-1.jpg?resize=800%2C242&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-661\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image7-1.jpg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image7-1.jpg?resize=300%2C91&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/image7-1.jpg?resize=768%2C232&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">Before \u2013 After images from Gaza \/ videostills:&nbsp;<a href=\"https:\/\/www.n-tv.de\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">n-tv.de<\/a><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter size-full\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"800\" height=\"533\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/featured-2.jpg?resize=800%2C533&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-664\" srcset=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/featured-2.jpg?w=800&amp;ssl=1 800w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/featured-2.jpg?resize=300%2C200&amp;ssl=1 300w, https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/featured-2.jpg?resize=768%2C512&amp;ssl=1 768w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 800px) 100vw, 800px\" \/><figcaption class=\"wp-element-caption\">The destroyed hall of the National Library after the 1992 attack (left) and the same hall after its renovation in the Bosnian capital Sarajevo. Photos: Dado Ruvic\/Reuters<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p>Another problem is the connection between Saarbr\u00fccken (i.e., the local connection) and the geopolitical conflicts and upheavals we are experiencing today, especially the wars in Ukraine and Gaza\/Israel that directly affect us. Ukrainian, Russian, Jewish, and Palestinian people live with us in the country where the gallery is exhibiting the documentation. However, the images cannot draw comparisons between the destruction and dehumanization.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Saarbr\u00fccken is not Sarajevo. Beirut is not Aleppo. Sarajevo is not Mariupol. Khartoum is not Gaza City. Comparisons are not necessarily intended, but destroyed buildings, streets, bridges, train stations, or airports suggest such associations. With a handful of documentary images, of which there are hundreds of thousands available online, no concrete historical or contextual investigation of the subject matter can be conducted without providing descriptive analyses, texts, testimonies and differentiated perspectives. Or without more closely examining the dark twilight of postwar families of silence, i.e., guilt by association and the nature of guilt by association, for example, in Germany, France, or Israel, especially with regard to accusations of genocide against Israeli military policy. However, the photographic pairings can provide clues, as Mail\u00e4nder suggests in his search for traces of the buried and the overgrown.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Over the course of the exhibition, the documentary section was expanded, supplemented by two short films \u2013 <em>Blind through Life<\/em> (2011) and <em>The Bare Island (Goli otok) \/ Vision in the Shadow<\/em> (2018) \u2013 by the Croatian artist \u017deljko Jan\u010di\u0107 Zec, which deal with escape and repression and are conceived with an autobiographical approach, as the artist himself appears in his films (just as Wenders is seen in the airplane flying to Reims, the striding through his short film).&nbsp;\u017deljko Jan\u010di\u0107 Zec studied multimedia art in Amsterdam, and later moved to Vienna; he has had numerous exhibitions in Europe and abroad; working as a photographer, video artist, and painter, he is known for his surreal-expressionist paintings and animated films. In his work he tends to explore existential questions about life, human existence and the complexity of the universe in which we live.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Adequately addressing such complexity is, of course, not easy. The works in the exhibition, one could argue, are directed toward the future: they perhaps also delve into the hopeless drama of staying, of waiting for Godot, as Beckett dramatized it, although this Godot never appears or is explained as to who he, she, or it might be. They touch on the drama of anxiety, of great uncertainty. In that time when we knew nothing of one another. In order to bring knowledge about other places a little closer, the gallery arranged for a film evening on May 27 (2025) to screen the Oscar-winning documentary <em>No Other Land<\/em> (directed by Basel Adra, Hamdan Ballal, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor), followed by a debate on antifascism. Short readings were also offered from novels by Bosnian author Nenad Veli\u010dkovi\u0107 (<em>Night Guests<\/em> [Kona\u010dari] 2025) and Silesian-Polish author Szczepan Twardoch (<em>The Zero Line: A Novel from the War<\/em>, 2025), followed by two short stories read by Russian \u00e9migr\u00e9 writer Natascha Denner.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The idea of \u200b\u200ba literary introduction to the topic brings two scenarios into polyphonic harmony, which are also suggested photographically in the exhibition. One scenario is the \u201cnight guests\u201d seeking shelter in the Sarajevo City Museum during the siege of the city, told from the perspective of an 18-year-old girl, Maja, the daughter of the museum director. Outside, there is war, constant thundering, grenades raining down on Sarajevo. Inside, in the basement of the museum, a community of helpless survivors has gathered to defy the horrors: the vegetarian mother with a penchant for esotericism, the grandmother and her jealously guarded suitcase, the half-brother and his pregnant wife, who is nursing her hypochondria, the father, two partisans, and a dog. Maja writes down her experiences, laconic and with unusually dark humor (the book was originally published in 1995), as if she is yet unable to fully grasp what is happening. The author succeeds in evoking the daily demands through the eyes of the young woman without any false pathos.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>On the other hand, in <em>The Zero Line<\/em>, there are the exasperated men engaged in trench warfare in the Donbass region, southeastern Ukraine. They are fighting on the \u201cbad\u201d side of the Dnipro River, which marks the line between Russian and Ukrainian troops, their artillery and drones. The men are each introduced by their <em>nom de guerre<\/em>\u2014such as \u201cJagoda,\u201d \u201cMalpa,\u201d \u201cLeopard,\u201d \u201cKo\u0144\u201d (horse), or \u201cRat.\u201d An unbearably visceral prose work slowly emerges, a still life of war experience, masculine war culture, and trauma from which there can probably be no return.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>With this sense of inescapability, I return to attempts at flying\/flight and Walter Benjamin\u2019s commentary in \u201cOn the Concept of History.\u201d In the ninth thesis, he attempts to create a portrait, a mental image, before our eyes, derived from Paul Klee\u2019s <em>Angelus Novus<\/em>, a watercolor drawing from 1920 (not even 30 x 25 centimeters in size), which Benjamin acquired in 1921. Klee\u2019s drawing, we learn from press reports, only survived because Benjamin hid it along with other papers in the Biblioth\u00e8que nationale in Paris before his escape. From there, along with parts of his estate, it was rescued by Bataille and Adorno, then sent to Jerusalem (to his friend Gershom Scholem), where it now resides in the Israel Museum. Strikingly, the fragile Angelus Novus painting is currently on display at the Bode Museum in Berlin, in the exhibition <em>The Angel of History: Walter Benjamin, Paul Klee, and the Berlin Angels 80 Years After the End of the War<\/em> (until July 13, 2025).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>As the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.smb.museum\/museen-einrichtungen\/bode-museum\/ausstellungen\/aktuell\/\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"https:\/\/www.smb.museum\/museen-einrichtungen\/bode-museum\/ausstellungen\/aktuell\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">museum\u2019s website states<\/a>, in addition to this watercolor by Klee (which, as a great exception, was borrowed from the Israel Museum in Jerusalem) and the manuscripts of Benjamin\u2019s theses (three German copies and one French autograph), the exhibition also brings together other angels from Berlin museums that were damaged or burned during the Second World War. Furthermore, excerpts from Wim Wenders\u2019s <em>Der Himmel \u00fcber Berlin <\/em>(1987) are shown, a film in which two angels watch over divided Berlin and which explicitly references Klee\u2019s watercolor and Benjamin\u2019s interpretation of the work.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Benjamin writes the following about the picture:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-background has-small-font-size\" style=\"background-color:#e3cacc2e\">&#8220;A Klee painting named \u2018Angelus Novus\u2019 shows an angel looking as though he is about to move away from something he is fixedly contemplating. His eyes are staring, his mouth is open, his wings are spread. This is how one pictures the angel of history. His face is turned toward the past. Where we perceive a chain of events, he sees one single catastrophe which keeps piling wreckage and hurls it in front of his feet. The angel would like to stay, awaken the dead, and make whole what has been smashed. But a storm is blowing in from Paradise; it has got caught in his wings with such a violence that the angel can no longer close them. The storm irresistibly propels him into the future to which his back is turned, while the pile of debris before him grows skyward. <em>This<\/em> storm is what we call progress.&#8221; (Walter Benjamin, 9th Thesis, <em>On the Concept of History<\/em>)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>This highly imaginative image evokes the dramatic and unresolvable (unredeemed) history of destruction and progressive dehumanization hinted at by the documentation at Gallery Puzi\u0107; it also implies the seemingly unstoppable destruction of the Earth and our environment through the devastating climate crisis, which is clearly addressed at the Architecture Biennale, but seems non-negotiable (Stop building! is what it says somewhere in Venice, yet the exhibition is full of projects, full of construction methods that are imagined to be more efficient and better with the help of artificial intelligence and sustainable materials\u2026). Similar to the inexplicable, hidden layers of history in Mail\u00e4nders\u2019s <em>Woven Places<\/em>, labyrinthine and overgrown, a certain end point of the visions seems to have been reached here, as history lives on underground, but our generations, both old and young, perhaps no longer trust the Earth\u2019s memory.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The ambivalence of a \u201cbefore\u201d and \u201cafter\u201d \u2013 as if there were such a clear distinction \u2013 is just as unbearable as the uncertainty and stale assertion of a \u201cnever again.\u201d Consequently, we may well be lost; the war keeps coming back to us, this Scheherazade of death, and should she stop talking for even a moment, it is already too late, the angel\u2019s neck twisted.<a name=\"end\">&nbsp;<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-small-font-size\"><strong>Note<\/strong>: It is perhaps not entirely coincidental that other artists remember Benjamin\u2019s comment on the \u201cangel of history\u201d: &nbsp;as it happens, during the 53<sup>rd<\/sup> Venice Theatre Biennial (2025) both Romeo Castellucci as well as the Greek theatre collaborators Evangelina and Mary Rantou cited the 9<sup>th<\/sup> thesis in their scenographies. Castellucci evoked the storm blowing away the angel in his staging of <em>I mangiatori di patate, gruesomely enacted amongst dark ghostly corridors of the abandoned 14<sup>th<\/sup> century <\/em>Lazzaretto Vecchio, whereas the Rantou sisters created the meditative performance <em>Mountains<\/em> at Arsenale \u2013 with a single dancer quietly moving across the stage filled with the rubble of stones, building a pile here, or moving next to an empty place there, conjuring the body as an archive, a repository of history and the present.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<hr class=\"wp-block-separator has-alpha-channel-opacity is-style-wide\"\/>\n\n\n\n<figure class=\"wp-block-image size-full alignnone\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/Johannes-Birringer.jpg?resize=150%2C150&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"\" class=\"wp-image-663\"\/><\/figure>\n\n\n\n<p><a name=\"end\" href=\"#back\">*<\/a><strong>Johannes Birringer<\/strong> co-directs the Design and Performance Lab with Mich\u00e8le Danjoux, and has taught Performance Technologies at Brunel University London. He has created numerous dance-theatre works, video installations and digital projects in collaboration with artists in Europe, the Americas, China and Japan. He is also the founder of an annual<a href=\"https:\/\/interaktionslabor.de\" data-type=\"link\" data-id=\"http:\/\/interaktionslabor.de\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"> intermedia laboratory<\/a> held at a disused coalmine in southwest Germany. DAP-Lab\u2019s recent dance installations,\u00a0<em>kimospheres III\u2013V\u00a0<\/em>(2016\u201319), explore the convergence of physical-sensory and augmented VR spaces. The dance performances\u00a0<em>Mourning for a dead moon<\/em>\u00a0(2019) and <em>The river of no one<\/em> (2022) address the climate crisis. Birringer\u2019s publications include\u00a0<em>Performance, Technology and Science,<\/em>\u00a0<em>Dance and ChoreoMania, Tanz der Dinge\/Things that Dance;\u00a0<\/em>his latest book,\u00a0<em>Kinetic Atmospheres\u00a0<\/em>(Routledge) probes the implications of environmental immersion and mixed reality digital architectures. Website:\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/dap-lab.brunel.ac.uk\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\">https:\/\/dap-lab.brunel.ac.uk\/<\/a><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\">Copyright <strong>\u00a9<\/strong> 2025 Johannes Birringer<br><em>Critical Stages\/Sc\u00e8nes critiques<\/em>,\u00a0#31, June 2025<br>e-ISSN: 2409-7411<\/p>\n\n\n<div class=\"wp-block-image\">\n<figure class=\"aligncenter\"><a href=\"https:\/\/creativecommons.org\/licenses\/by-nc-nd\/4.0\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noreferrer noopener\"><img data-recalc-dims=\"1\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/03\/88x31.png?w=800&#038;ssl=1\" alt=\"Creative Commons Attribution International License\"\/><\/a><\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n<p class=\"has-text-align-center has-small-font-size\">This work is licensed under the<br>Creative Commons Attribution International License CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":664,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-654","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-international-reflections"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/32\/2025\/06\/featured-2.jpg?fit=800%2C533&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=654"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":852,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/654\/revisions\/852"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=654"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=654"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.critical-stages.org\/31\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=654"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}