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Friday, 21 February 2020 17:27

Paradise Lost - Refugeeism (Gallery and Film) Featured

Art Project by Jörg Berchem (alias Jay B Joyful) and Juma, Tapha, Amina and Abdi.

Room 1: Refugeeism

Room 2 (stalls): Letho has quit her job

Room 2 (gallery): Unlived life

The exhibition is free to see at Atelier 8, Wachsfabrik, Industriestraße 170, 50999 Cologne from 25. November to 2. Dezember 2019,  12:30 am till 11:00 pm Uhr.
www.Joyful-Life.org
Room 1 "Refugeeism

The doctrine of growth, faith in technology, worship of money, military interventions, political upheavals, destruction of nature, land theft, neoliberal colonialism and ignorance lead to people being forced to leave their homes or even never having had a home in their lives.

In the 21st century, humanity has so far failed to ensure that all people have a safe place to live or would even be entitled to one.

"Refugeeism" is a deliberately awkward construction of words that wants to describe the circumstance that the fact is known, but only managed, observed and fought against through number games and political interests of power. The fact that behind a number of more than 60 million refugees in this world there are just as many personalities with individual painful stories is completely lost in the dishonest and clumsy handling of the issue. The question of the causes and, above all, of one's own responsibility remains completely unnoticed.

The installation in room 1 symbolically shows the flight through dangers (e.g. across the sea).

During the installation, each flash of lightning symbolises a person in this world who is on the run: for this to happen, there must be 240 flashes of lightning every second, for seven days, for 11 hours each.

 

Room 2 downstairs "Letho has quit her job".

Letho is the Greek goddess of compassion and forgetting ...

The energy we send into the world through our violently enforced "prosperity" is never forgotten. Energy, as we know, is never lost. It returns to us: through refugees, violence, guilt, environmental destruction and hatred.

 

Room 2 upstairs "Unlived Life"

The blank canvas represents the many unlived lives of those who never had a chance or who were deprived of any chance to live their lives; killed in flight or enslaved after deportation, abused, mistreated and managed to death ...

Paradise Lost - The Film