Shards
by Çiğdem Üçüncü & Steffi Weismann

in rememberance of: Ferhat Unvar, Mercedes Kierpacz, Sedat Gürbüz, Gökhan Gültekin, Kaloyan Velkov, Hamza Kurtović, Vili Viorel Păun, Said Nesar Hashemi, Fatih Saraçoğlu

After the racist attacks in Hanau, two artists practicing in different fields enter into a dialogue and develop a collective audiovisual work. The materiality of broken glass and sounds developed from it form the basis with which actions and memories are interwoven: The first part of the work shows a performative intervention on the street, which consists of the empathic gesture of repairing the commemorative posters of the victims of the Hanau attack. The second part of the video involves a text that reflects on the childhood memories of a girl with foreign origins in Hanau and addresses injuries that have become brutally visible through the terrorist attack. The work combines abstract artistic methods with messages in different languages. German, Kurdish, Turkish, Bulgarian, Romanian and English voices are interwoven and do not allow a passive gaze. They rather seem to ask: When is the point reached where I make the decision to get involved?

video part1: Memorial placards in Berlin, Prenzlauer Berg, May 2020, performance: Steffi Weismann, camera: Mario Asef
voices: Ahmet, Andrei, Aylin, Bengisu, Birte, Bora, Çiğdem, Emre, Georg, Hümi, Hülya, Johannes, Lili, Mario, Oliver, Özlem, Serra, Selda, Senta, Serpil

sound: Steffi Weismann, text: Çiğdem Üçüncü
translatons: Azad Zal (kurdish), Nuray Sakarya (turkish), Biliana Voutchkova (bulgarian) Andrei Cucu (rumanian)
voices: Çiğdem Üçüncü, Filiz Akcan, Aylin Kızıl, Eylül Caan, Erim Caan, Binnur Aloğlu, Thomas Teggeman, Fatma Çelik, Hüsamettin Bahçe, Andrei Cucu, Biliana Voutchkova

fotos: Çiğdem Üçüncü, Trauermarsch nach dem rechtsterroristischen Anschlag in Hanau, February 2020
composition & editing: Steffi Weismann
video with sound 9:44 Min. (HD 1080)
produced in the context of AARC (Artists Against Racism Collaborative)
Thanks to Apartment Project & Errant Sound & all contributers Berlin May-June 2020