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# taz.de -- Dresden’s 'Monument’ artwork: The protective barrier
> Manaf Halbouni commemorates war and destruction with buses next to the
> Frauenkirche. The forecourt has become a place for communication.
Bild: Manaf Halbouni and his hat with the battered brim
DRESDEN taz | As people hold hands in Dresden, Manaf Halbouni sinks into a
chair in his art studio. He pulls off his cap – he believes that nobody
recognises him when he’s wearing it. “Crappy day“, he says, “crappy moo…
They are waiting to catch him alone, he is sure of that. ‚They‘ being the
agitators, rabble rousers and nazis who know his face; so he withdrew from
the place where his most imposing artwork to date is standing. It consists
of three buses that Halbouni has errected in the square in front of
Dresden’s Frauenkirche. He wanted to ensure peace, and yet today war
prevails in Manaf Halbouni’s head. “Sometimes I wish that I had made such a
colourful fuss that people would just say: 'how beautiful’“.
It is the evening of 13 February, the day on which people in Dresden
commemorate the victims of the 1945 air raids. And it is the seventh day
that Manaf has been provoking them with his art. Halbouni, 32 years old, is
a small man with the face of an adolescent; he often wears a hat with a
battered brim which is meant to conceal that face, and evokes the artist
Joseph Beuys. And the artistic colossus Christo, with whom Halbouni has
been compared for days by those who see great art in the three buses.
Others see Halbouni as a terrorist – not because there are signs of this,
but because it is a fitting narrative. Neumarkt, Frauenkirche’s forecourt,
is for the Germans a place of survival and overcoming the past. Why should
Syrians be commemorated here as well? That is the question that many ask in
the square.
## The Syrian victims
It all started with a photograph. Aleppo, an urban canyon and three buses
standing upright; a protective barrier against snipers. The people, as
shown by the photos, scurrying along behind it, the scrap metal making life
possible. Halbouni decides to imitate the protective wall. First he
convinces a small museum, then some of the region’s important charitable
trusts and finally the Mayor of the City. Then a mob appears at last week’s
unveilin. They roar “shame“ and “traitor“, even when the pastor of
Frauenkirche is giving a speech. Later the mayor, Dirk Hilbert, receives a
death threat. Since then policemen have been guarding Hilbert’s residence,
and Manaf Halbouni’s phone doesn’t stop ringing.
They are circulating on the Internet and everyone in Neumarkt knows about
them: pictures of the buses in Aleppo, and a flag is waving on top of them
– a flag from the militia Ahrar ash-Sham. Germany classifies them as a
terrorist organization. Then they investigate Halbouni’s earlier works and
find maps showing European cities with Arabic names. It is a thought
experiment – how the world would look if the Ottomans had colonised the
world, instead of the Europeans. “He wants Europe to submit to Islam,“
claims the mob and then even the people in front of the buses follow suit.
“It's incredibly brave that the city has decided in favour of it“, says
Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz about the monument. She is the artistic
director of the Kunsthaus, an urban gallery in Dresden. She was convinced
by Halbouni’s idea and organised the realisation. She believes it takes
courage to bring the Syrian war to Germany, to this place – especially on
those days when the city disputes, year after year, how to commemorate the
victims of the bombing attacks on the city. For Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz
the installation is about artistic freedom “for which we have worked so
hard“, she says. “For a long time it has not been self-evident in many
European countries“.
She worked with Manaf Halbouni in 2015 for the first time. Back then he was
a student and Pegida was still a new movement. Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz
feels that the mood in the city is changing and beginning to address the
new issues. Halbouni, then, comes along with a packed car that symbolises
escape and the few things the fugitives have left, alongside the marches of
the far-right. He calls it 'Saxons on the run’. However, Pegida is growing
and Dresden is becoming a symbol of rowdy far-right populists. Art cannot
do anything to put a stop to this.
## The artist defends his piece
It's Sunday, the fourth day since the unveiling. Manaf Halbouni gets onto a
concrete block and 150 people cluster around him, looking at him. “No“, he
says, he is not an Islamist – after all, he does drink German lager.
Laughter ensues. No, he does not want to interfere in politics. After all,
politics is complicated and he just wants to remember war, peace and
Aleppo. This peace could stop, he says, so young people should not forget
that. People applaud. He apologises for not having noticed the flag during
his research. It is a rare moment: the artist defending his work of art.
After all, when was the last time, when a work of art attracted so much
attention? Saxony’s economy minister argues with citizens in front of the
artwork, satirist Jan Böhmermann pokes fun at the protests and journalists
bring the story to the whole world. Halbouni’s father calls to say that his
neighbours have heard of the buses. He lives in Damascus, in the midst of
the war which his son is now commemorating in Germany – Syria is Manaf
Halbouni’s birthplace.
In 2008, he decided to leave his land. Like every student, he had to do his
military service after graduation. He did not want to spend two and a half
years in Assad’s army. He uses his German passport, comes to Dresden, his
mother’s hometown, and is assessed by the German Armed Forces; the Syrian
State would still recognise this military service. Then he is waiting to be
called up for service, but instead of an invitation the Army writes a
letter to him, saying that he is currently not needed. Therefore Halbouni
must remain in Germany longer than planned. He begins to study and work
again, until civil war breaks out.
Two men are standing in the sunshine, in front of the installation. One
talks to the other and speaks of 'those darkies’ who have everything given
to them and get away with everything. There is a piano on the other side of
the buses, its music spreading over the square. A father takes his two
daughters to the square. They eat candied apples while he tells them that
they would not get a high mark at school for such work. After all, they are
neither Syrians nor Afghans and the buses are not even originally from
Aleppo, yet people make so much fuss about it.
## The German perpetrators
Something is happening in the square. People come and take pictures, attach
flowers and light candles, even at night, in the freezing cold. Strangers
are engaging in dialogue, initially because they often agree that the
installation is wrong; then they talk about their own stories. About life
on benefits. About the changes that have taken away their sense of
security. About sickness, unemployment and anger towards a society that
ignores their sense of hopelessness. About a time when Dresden was burning
and they endured days in their cellars – and about the many years, when
Neumarkt was just a pile of rubble.
Two students with flyers from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland
must heed the warning words of a survivor: that Dresden’s victims must not
be remembered without thinking of the German perpetrators. The old man who
talks about 'darkies’ so loudly is rebuked by a young man into
reconsidering his language. And so Dresden’s people stand together behind
this wall of old metal sheet, talking and arguing for the first time in two
years. The buses have also become their protective barrier.
The war in Syria has made Manaf Halbouni an artist with thoughts on the
major social issues, but it was Pegida that gave him a voice. Dresden, says
Halbouni, is like a black hole for him; it sucks him in. He, who was the
German in Syria and is now the Syrian in Germany, makes a subject of
discussion out of the suffering of foreigners in front of the Frauenkirche.
It inspires him to use big words: „The atmosphere at the monument reminds
me of the ancient world, when philosophers and citizens came together and
talked about art and the world“.
It’s been hours since night fell. A man stands in front of the Monument and
throws light on the undersides of the buses with a slide projector. A peace
sign, a dove of peace. The mayor’s statement that caused plenty of outrage:
Dresden is not innocent. And so he stands there, on his own and without an
audience. “We have to do something about the situation,“ he murmurs and
then he goes home. He wants to print more slides.
Original in German/auf Deutsch: [1][Der Schutzwall]
6 Feb 2018
## LINKS
[1] /Das-Kunstwerk-Monument-in-Dresden/!5380764
## AUTOREN
Christina Schmidt
## TAGS
taz international
## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA
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