The Settlement | Besiedlung

(…)The image refers to an image of which there is none. Yet it is part of a collective image library in many people's minds. The event to which it refers lies in the past. More than 80 years ago the resistance group Die Weisse Rose printed  leaflets which called for the active resistance to the Nazi regime during the Second World War. 
In February of 1943 they spread their leaflets in the University of Munich, the papers falling down from an inner  balcony inside the building, floating through the air. They were caught.
Siblings Hans and Sophie Scholl, as well as Christoph Probst were executed after an unjust showtrial only four days after their arrest. Other members of the Weisse Rose, Alexander Schmorell and Kurt Huber,  were executed a few months later.
Some 75 years later the right winged youth movement Die Identitäre Bewegung appropriated the image of which there never was one. Well aware it is the exact political opposite of their message.
Excerpt from a performative reading during the presentation ‘An image of an image where there never was one’ at Uqbar/ ABA Berlin 2024, kindly supported by the Mondrian Fund

In 2017 the German branch of the right-winged European youth organization ‘The Identitarian Movement’ (‘Die Identitäre Bewegung Deutschland’ in German, or IBD) purchased a house in the center of the East-German city Halle. The house, situated right across from the University's Faculty of Humanities, was a bold, physical manifestation of a new self-consciousness the so-called ‘New Right’ started to display. This was the starting point of my project The Settlement | Besiedlung, a follow-up to my earlier work (in matters of) Karl. In the years since the IBD has been classified right-extremist by the Federal Office for the Protection of the Constitution, after this the group vanished out of direct sight.
Settlement | Besiedlung is an examination of the IBD movement and related organizations, its ideologies, and the ways in which they use visual, activistic and linguistic strategies to convey its message and shape its image.