Berlin / Pékin

Berlin and Pékin, 1988.

7 televisions showing images from the Berlin Wall and Berliners facing at 7 televisions showing images from China and the Great Wall.

Activation: At the beginning of the exhibition, this piece must be activated.
A text is read on the telephone in Peking by a local person. Another text is read on the telephone from Berlin by a German woman. The two voices are heard simultaneously at the exhibition.

 

The purpose of this project was to create a symbolic and imaginary link between the Great Wall of China and the Berlin Wall. The wall, a spatial device designed to separate human beings, is a symbol of psychologial confinement and isolation.

Bringing together in a same space (the exhibition space) these two symbolic walls, distant in space and time, questions the validity of all barriers erected to separate people. It also questions the limitations of our own thought processes.

This installation was refused by the French Ministry of Culture in 1988 and could not be created. In 1989, the Berlin Wall was destroyed. In 1994, the call for freedom led by Chinese students was met by bloody repression.

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