Assembling Past and Future is an installation in the project Blood Sweat and Tears, which was conceived especially for the gallery at Körnerpark’s 100 years anniversary and grew out of a collaboration between peace activists and a network of creatives. It is anchored historically in the first International Women’s Peace Congress at The Hague in 1915, during which the participants debated the sociopolitical, economic, and intellectual prerequisites for a future lasting peace and ties together individuals who advocate for a peaceful world.
Through a video installation, the exhibition space became a virtual conference. Historical images and text are overlaid with contemporary statements and portraits, allowing different temporal planes and materials to permeate each other.
The projects’ collaborative approach probes the relationship between the participating individuals and the conditions on site. Most important subjects are nonviolent communication and community. By destabilizing boundaries between the actors, places, and periods of time, the project wants to show a new understanding of history. Boundaries between art and activism are constantly shifting and blurred within this work. Strict categories are suspended within the instillation: past, present and future; reality, fiction and virtual space; community and individual.
The videos take on the formal tactic of the moving portrait. Moving videos of actors performing speeches are overlayed against archival images from peace activists who participated in the conference in the Hague of 1915. These archival images are broken down and dissected within the moving picture plane, while simultaneously different actors reenact suffragette poses and positions.
