In times of high technology, where lies the borderline between history and science fiction? Berit Zemke analyses this question in her work. By way of visual examples of a protest march the images might relocate us back into the middle of the Monday demonstrations in 1989. The image is flat. Information is reduced to the essential, to black and white. One associates the binary code – zero and one – as the work seems to be encoded in many aspects. A Morse appears. The information is encrypted and could mean anything. Slowly and gradually the demonstrators disappear. This gives the impression of the coming and going of people. In the end one demonstrator remains, he doesn’t vanish completely, flickering like a heartbeat.
Contrary to her habit not to use the word as a language in her work, Berit Zemke decodes the Morse at the end of the video work – for the recipients of the public projection. A quotation by Benjamin Franklin “Those, who would sacrifice basic liberties to receive temporary security, don’t deserve neither freedom nor security” is pointing out the consequences of a modern surveillance society. The demonstrators slowly become stronger again and the protest starts from the beginning.
Using the method of repetition the work achieves a strong suggestive impact, as we know it from Pop Art. The inverted shadows of the Borderliners integrate the pedestrians who are walking on the platform and as such, let them participate in a demonstration for a free, self-determined life.
[text Andrea Sunder-Plassmann]