Two Minutes of Standstill

Yael Bartana (DE/IL)

Commissioned work

A city comes to a standstill. People get up from benches, fall silent. Lessons are interrupted in schools and universities, the shop owner stops selling, assembly lines in factories come to a halt. Standstill.
Inspired by the Israeli memorial day Yom HaShoah, the holiday to commemorate the victims and resistance fighters of the Holocaust, Berlin-based artist Yael Bartana calls for a symbolic interruption of everyday life: “Two Minutes of Standstill” is a political act, a social sculpture, and a collective performance in the city of Cologne.
Historically the act of standstill and falling silent is a way to commemorate the dead. “Two Minutes of Standstill” calls upon us all to reflect on the present. To pause and think about the history and our future. About what it means to be German today, what it means to live in Germany as an immigrant, what the consequences of the Holocaust and its instrumentalisation are today.
Because the Third Reich and the Holocaust are not just historical events – they also have long-term global chain effects that reach into the present day. Not only is the founding of the State of Israel based on a UN-decision such a consequence, but so is the Palestinian “Nakba” in 1948. As are escape and expulsion in Europe and the Middle East up to the NSU murders, whose perpetrators clearly and unmistakably understand themselves in the tradition of the NS regime, and whose crimes have the goal of extinguishing all “aliens” from German society. This history is written, but the future depends on our acting.
And so, “Two Minutes of Standstill” is not only commemoration and performance but also a challenge to change the present. It is a proposal for a wide-reaching debate in Cologne and beyond, about what active remembering should look like today. A day of protest against violence and injustice today and tomorrow.

ON

discussion with: Astrid Deuber-Mankowski (Philosophin und Prof. für Medienwissenschaften an der RU Bochum), Mark Terkessidis (Psychologe, Autor zahlreicher Bücher über Rassismus und Migration, Journalist), Karola Fings (Historikerin, stellvertr. Direktorin am NS-DOK in Köln), Daniel Hoffmann (Prof. für Literaturwissenschaft Univ. Düsseldorf), Yael Bartana (Künstlerin) und Stefanie Wenner (Dramaturgin Impulse Theater Biennale). Moderation Elif Senel (Politikwissenschaftlerin, Journalistin und Moderatorin bei Phoenix, Funkhaus Europa u.a.)

www.zweiminutenstillstand.de

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