From September 11 to December 1, 2024, the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism will show the installation WIR SIND HIER by the artist Talya Feldman (b. 1990 in Denver, Colorado, USA), based on the eponymous digital cartography project. WIR SIND HIER remembers the victims of far-right violence through the voices and demands of their families and friends.
The project brings together multiple perspectives and evolved in close collaboration between the artist Talya Feldman and collective initiatives and individuals all over Germany campaigning for active remembrance in public space. As a living archive the project provides an overview of far-right terror and police violence in the Federal Republic of Germany and the former German Democratic Republic over the past forty years. WIR SIND HIER first went online as a digital platform in 2022 (wir-sind-hier.digital) and has been continually expanded since then.
It was inspired by an apartment-finder website in the United States that, through an accidental glitch in 2021, mapped the outlines of homes that had been destroyed to build highways. Whole communities became visible that had been priced out of their neighborhoods, thus revealing processes of gentrification and displacement, which would otherwise simply have been overwritten in urban space. In WIR SIND HIER Talya Feldmann uses these same techniques of rendering things visible and palpable to ask how remembrance in public space involving many voices might look.
The installation WIR SIND HIER at the Munich Documentation Center presents video and sound material from the digital project. It remembers Delfin Guerra, Nguyễn Ngọc Châu, Đỗ Anh Lân, Semra Ertan, Ferdane Satır, Çiğdem Satır, Ümit Satır, Songül Satır, Zeliha Turhan, Rasim Turhan, Tarık Turhan, Bahide Arslan, Yeliz Arslan, Ayşe Yılmaz, Şahin Çalışır, Burak Bektaş, Yaya Jabbi, Can Leyla, Guiliano Kollmann, Selçuk Kılıç, and Sedat Gürbüz all of whom were murdered in Germany from the 1970s onwards by far-right terrorists and as the result of police violence. The contributions to the project WIR SIND HIER are expressions of grief, pain, and loss as well as resilience and solidarity in the face of racism, antisemitism, and other forms of discrimination.
WIR SIND HIER employs listening as a political act and a gesture of solidarity. Through the voices and demands of the survivors and of the families and friends of the victims of far-right violence the project is an appeal for active remembrance. For this purpose WIR SIND HIER uses the spaces connected with the lives of these people. It focuses on their favorite parks, soccer grounds, schools, playgrounds, and restaurants and includes many people who were part of the everyday life of those who were murdered. Some of the people involved in the project have been campaigning for decades to be seen and heard as they fight for a fairer society and a more just future in Germany.
Talya Feldman’s works are interventions within a media reality that so often reduces extremist attacks to the day they occurred, to the attack itself or to those who committed it and rarely presents the perspectives of the victims. Her works brings together the personal and the collective and strives for a pluralist form of remembrance and bearing witness. WIR SIND HIER uses digital space for retroactive effect in urban and social space. It opens up a topography of many voices in cities such as Berlin, Hanau, Halle, Hamburg, Mölln, and Munich and encourages people to imagine a world beyond violence based on social and political change.
WIR SIND HIER is a project by Talya Feldman and evolved in collaboration with Cana Bilir-Meier, Zühal Bilir-Meier, and the Semra Ertan Initiative; Ngu Kim, Ngu Trọng, and the Initiative für ein Gedenken an Nguyễn Ngọc Châu und Đỗ Anh Lân; the Bektaş family and the Initiative zur Aufklärung des Mordes an Burak Bektaş; Aynur Satır and Bengü Kocatürk-Schuster; Orhan Çalışır; Abu Jabbi, Daniel Manwire and the Initiative im Gedenken an Yaya Jabbi; İbrahim Arslan, Özlem Arslan and the Freundeskreis im Gedenken an die rassistischen Brandanschläge von Mölln 1992; Alexander Chávez Guerra, Yasmani Torriente, and the Initiative 12. August; Sibel Leyla, Hasan Leyla, Gisela Kollmann, Yasemin Kılıç, Engin Kılıç, the Dayıcık family, the Zabërgja family, Patrycja Kowalska and the Initiative OEZ-Anschlag 22.7.2016 München Erinnern!; and Emiş Gürbüz, Selahattin Gürbüz and the Initiative 19. Februar Hanau.
Biography
Talya Feldman is a media artist from Denver, Colorado. She obtained her Master’s in Fine Arts at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg and her Bachelor’s in Fine Arts at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago. Through her intercultural and collaborative practice Feldman seeks to set in motion a process of social change via artistic and educational projects that offer an alternative narrative to violence. Her works against far-right terror, for which she collaborated with activist and research-based networks in Germany and abroad, have won her international recognition. Feldman has received many awards, including the Bundespreis für Kunststudenten in Deutschland (2023), the Berenberg Kulturpreis (2022), the Stipendienpreis des Deutschen Akademischen Austauschdienstes (DAAD), and the DAGESH Kunstpreis (both 2021).
Publication
A publication will be issued in conjunction with the installation containing transcripts of the contributions by the families and friends of the victims. It includes texts by Yasmani Torriente, Ngu Trọng, Zühal Bilir-Meier, Aynur Satır, Özlem and İbrahim Arslan, Orhan Çalışır, Burak Bektaş, Abu Jabbi, Sibel and Hasan Leyla, Gisela Kollmann, Yasemin and Engin Kılıç, and Emiş Gürbüz. The texts will be supplemented by an extensive selection of images from the project. The publication was designed by the graphics studio The Aliens.
Brief colophon
WIR SIND HIER by Talya Feldman is an installation of the Munich Documentation Center for the History of National Socialism
Director: Mirjam Zadoff
Artist: Talya Feldman
Curator & project lead: Juliane Bischoff
Educational outreach: Kerstin Baur, Nathalie Jacobsen, Martin Zehetmayr
Communications: Kirstin Frieden, Ilona Holzmeier, Julia Kessler
In-house technicians: Joseph Köttl, İbrahim Özcan
Online platform
The platform and the installation WIR SIND HIER is a project by Talya Feldman sponsored by the Verband der Beratungsstellen für Opfer rechter, rassistischer und antisemitischer Gewalt (VBRG e.V.)
Concept & video: Talya Feldman
Sound design: Carlos Ángel Luppi
Web & print design: Talya Feldman, The Aliens
Web development: Benedikt Hebeisen, Bryant Smith
Consultants: Cana Bilir-Meier, İbrahim Arslan, Rachel Spicker, Soligruppe 9. Oktober
Project coordination: Rachel Spicker, Esther Spicker, Dan Thy Nguyen
Administration: Studio Marshmallow
Accompanying program
A keynote address followed by a talk about the installation will take place every Sunday at 3pm.
