Voices
Location: Kassel, Germany
Network: documenta fifteen
Typology: Installation
Client: public
Area: 35 m2
Status: Built, 2022, temporary installation
Materials: Textile, recycled wood
Collaboration: Students from Kassel, Winterberg, Versmold, Meschede, Berlin, New Haven
Voices is a collective installation against any form of hate and discrimination. It is a direct, bottom-up reaction to the anti-Semitism scandal of documenta fifteen, the world art exhibition that takes place in Kassel every five years. Everyone was invited to contribute by formulating a message of tolerance, acceptance, and solidarity. In fact, the outer shell of the pavilion consisted of hundreds of T-shirts with different statements designed as Voices of resistance, love, and hope.
Inside, many sharp-edged pieces of wood formed a large, dark wedge. They symbolized the countless messages of hate that are being spread around the world every day, separating people from one another. These millions of hate messages can end up becoming a dangerous and heavy force, which the massive wedge stands for.
The bottom-up installation confronts this danger resolutely and in solidarity. The diagonal wooden beams are metaphors of the resistance of those who prevent the wedge from falling and destroying freedom. At the back of the installation was set up an open space of communication and friendship, from which a part of the dividing dark wedge had already been removed.
More than three thousand schoolchildren, students and citizens took part in the installation and worked together in the occasion of preparatory workshops in schools, during the construction at the central square of Kassel Friedrichsplatz and had many open discussions with the artists and visitors of documenta fifteen.