PASSAGES IN PORTBOU
WALTER BENJAMIN AND THE MEMORY OF THE NAMELESS
On inflatable boats across the Mediterranean, on foot, over meter-high barbed fences, in buses, special trains, thousands flee on life-threatening passages towards Western Europe. They flee their home countries to save themselves from war, poverty, persecution or ecological devastation. These people seek and need protection, but in many parts of Europe they experience imprisonment, hunger, impoverishment and violent, nationalist-colored defenses. This depressing situation in Europe will be the subject of the substantive discussion of the project.
A second dimension is linked to the Catalan border town of Portbou. For many people who fled from the Franco regime, the city, which had been rigorously tested by the Spanish Civil War (1936-1939), was the last Spanish place before the uncertain border crossing into France by the Vichy regime.
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WALTER BENJAMIN UND DAS GEDÄCHTNIS DER NAMENLOSEN
On September 25, 1940, Walter Benjamin, a German philosopher fleeing Nazi Germany, crossed the Pyrenees with a group of refugees and reached Portbou. Spanish border guards refuse Benjamin transit due to the lack of a visa from France, but allow him to stay the night in the border town, presumably because of his poor health. To be sent back out of desperation, he committed suicide on the evening of September 26th. He is buried in the old cemetery in Portbou, just above the sea. In 1994 a touching memorial was created by the Israeli artist Dani Karavan. A tribute to a great modern thinker who shared the fate of the refugees.
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FROM 24.06.18 - 8.07.18
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In the sign of flight, asylum to the new European right-wing populism and Walter Benjamin, young people from Saarbrücken, Lorraine, Nantes, Sarajevo and Targu Jiu are invited to live, dance and think for two weeks in Portbou (Spain). Housed in a school, the teenagers train daily in empty classrooms, the gym and the courtyard. The 60-minute dance-theater play was premiered for the first time in Portbou.
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IT IS HARDER TO HONOR THE MEMORY OF THE NAMELESS THAN THAT OF THE FAMOUS. HISTORICAL CONSTRUCTION IS DEDICATED TO THE MEMORY OF THE NAMELESS.
Walter Benjamin
PREMIERE
WHAT THE YOUNG PEOPLE HAVE DEVELOPED IS MOVING AND ARTISTIC. AND BENJAMIN'S DESTINY WILL BE JUSTIFIED IN A TOUCHING WAY.
Erdmut Wizisla, Walter Benjamin Archive
READOPTION 2019
