Recreation of the Berlin Wall

[SeeKer]

A British artist, Martin Butler, has an idea to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin Wall. On November 9th, he hopes that 33,000 volunteers will form a line for 1/2 hour along the 29 mile path that the wall used to stand.

 

Here is a transcript of what one commentator,Andrei Codrescu, said about the idea.

 

Twenty years have passed and yes, the ex-commie fiefdoms and their petty tyrants are gone. There are supermarkets where lines of people once stood like walls waiting for food. Yes, the masses are free to travel and they do, often choosing not to return home, which has a lot of Western Europeans worried that yes, the brick wall is gone, but walls of people keep on coming. There are walls and walls. Between the Great Wall of China built to keep invaders out and the Berlin Wall build to keep people in, there are a variety of walls with mixed messages, like the U.S.-Mexican border wall that claims to keep immigrants from entering. But mostly keeps Lou Dobbs in business.

 

And then, there are the countless anonymous walls that people were lined up against and shot. These are the walls that keep me from fully digging Butler's wall. Thirty-three thousand people all lined up - not on your life. I will be waiting 15 minutes for a bullet. Well, that's art, you might say, experiencing for 15 minutes what some people experienced for a lifetime - a bit like a minute of solitary at Alcatraz as opposed to 50 years. But time is subjective and even one minute of hell is too long.

I find his take on the temporary arty monument quiet cynical and brilliant

[MAXIMUS POWERS]

Originally posted by SeeKer:

quiet cynical and brilliant

Isnt this an oxymoron? lol

[SeeKer]

^Are you saying pessimists cannot be smart?

[MAXIMUS POWERS]

no i was merely asking if the inherent contridications in your critique of this art display was an oxymoron.

[SeeKer]

^Not to be obvious to your oblivious nature dear but first off its not my critique of the art display. Second off you quoted that one phrase leading me to believe that the terms cynical and brilliant are the contradictory terms in the oxymoron.

 

Now would you like to rephrase the question please?

[Allamagan]

The Wall was eracted by DDR (East Germany) ment to prevent access to the West Berlin from East Berlin and adjacent areas of East Germany. This wall was encircling only West Berlin. What a memory back! I experienced this physical barrier between germans in their own city, Berlin and all these check points regulary crossing from east to west and vice versa. It was hard you gotto have your papers with you all the time. It was hard and quite unbearable for everyone let alone the germans who were fed up with this barrier in their own city, cannot go to the west of the same city they living in, this barrier was for the E.germans and was dividing germans alone no one else, This reminds me the jewish wall, exactly the same as the germans, the palestinians are regretably going thru the same and in their own homelands with various checkpoints and restrictions. I was also there when the wall was finally falling down. What beuatiful memories there, in Berlin!!

[hodman]

I wonder how much this thing is going to cost. Does any one know?

[SeeKer]

^The people are volunteers. So apart from maybe getting police protection and traffic management I doubt it is gonna cost anything.

 

Allamagan, how do you feel about the human wall then?

 

It is sad that Palestinians have the walls that keep them in and have to go through checkpoints just to get from one side to the other but isn't human civilization always been about divisions and segregation?

[hodman]

Then I think it's a good idea if its not going to cost a ton of money. You are right about the divisions and segregations, it seems people are always coming up with new boxes to put people in