This weekend, on the 9th of November Berlin will be celebrating the 25th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall – and this year they have pulled out all the stops. Thousands of people are scheduled to line the course of the former wall the separated east and west berlin and release thousands of the balloons filled with light (which you can see in the video above) into the night sky:
Mit jedem Ballon sind die Hoffnungen und Wünsche ihrer jeweiligen Paten verbunden. Die Botschaften gehen in die wirkliche und in die virtuelle Welt. Sie erinnern an alte und neue politische, soziale, mentale oder ideologische Mauern und Gräben an vielen Orten dieser Welt. Die Freude über den Berliner Mauerfall vor 25 Jahren soll sich mit der Hoffnung auf die friedliche Überwindung dieser noch bestehenden Mauern verbinden.”
“Every balloon is bound with the hopes and wishes of their respective patron. The messages enter the tangible and virtual world. They commemorate the old and new political, social, mental or ideological walls and trenches on multiple locations in this world. The joy brought about by the fall of the Berlin wall 26 years ago should unite itself with hope for peacefully overcoming present walls.”
Somehow modern sculpture tends to go hand in hand with commemoration. It must be the beauty in simplicity and its ability to strip away all distractions and frivolity and zoom in on form, and in turn, purity. It is this purity that seems to be able to support and highlight rather then distract and take away from the essence of whatever that modern sculpture is attempting to address. This is true for the Vietnam Wall, and this particular temporary installation dotting the previous path of the berlin wall is no exception.
sources:
fallofthewall25.com
fallofthewall25 on facebook
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