Ignored in public, 2024
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Performance and exibition,
R17 Experimental zone, Leipzigerstr and Mehringplatz, Berlin
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Museo Patio Herreriano,
Valladolid, ES, 2025
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Photo credits: Benjamin Sauer, Víctor Hugo Martín Caballero
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It is very difficult to take a good photo of a victory column with a mobile phone.
You have to stand very far back so that it looks straight and you capture its entirety.
You can hardly see the figure on top. It is too high for the eyes.
It is usually a golden figure representing a woman with wings and a crown of leaves. If it is sunny that day, the sun’s reflection on the gold of the figure blinds you and it is best to wear sunglasses or a cap.
There are so many victory columns that almost no one knows which one represents what.
Sometimes a victory column represents multiple victories. A kind of two-for-one. This way you avoid having to build two next to each other and avoid the discussion about which one should be higher; which one should be made from granite and which one should be from marble.
A victory column is usually very tall, large, vertical, imposing, stable and solid. Because it is so high, everyone admires it and takes photos of it, regardless of what city it is in or what victories it refers to.
Travel photo albums are filled with columns of victories.
In the middle of Mehringplatz square in Berlin, there is one of these Victory Columns. It is a monument that represents a historical event.In another part of the square, there are fragments of other columns that are also historical monuments, but they do not have a name. They became a monument when they were destroyed. Before, they were not. They were granite columns that supported buildings forming a portico.These columns do not represent any event but are there to remember what the architecture was like before the war.If you pass by, you cannot tell what it is because they have no explanatory plaque or name.How can you remember something that cannot be named?
One of these columns has been cut in half. The other half is now a tombstone in the Bergmannstraße cemetery. It is a bit sad to see this half-column without its other half. I sometimes sit there to keep it company.The other three columns are no more than two meters tall.Nobody takes pictures of them.They are not in the center of the square and they are not tall enough.If they were taller, perhaps someone would photograph them, and their image would now be in travel photo albums.If they were taller, perhaps someone would remember them, even without knowing their names.
I once rode through this square on my bike. It was full of rubbish and broken glass I had to avoid. There had been a party there.There were remnants of confetti, a bottle of prosecco, and a crow rummaging through a kebab wrapper.It was winter and there was a frozen puddle with a plastic cup stuck in it.The ground was grey, but the rubbish gave it an impressionistic touch. The reflection of the broken glass made the ground look like it was covered in diamonds and glitter.You could see the decay of this city in the fragments of a collective action.
