The performative sequence Für Morgen_standort_1-12 

(For Tomorrow_location_1-12) is difficult to grasp. Once built, a scaffold made of conventional metal rods and neon-orange ribbons stands by itself, only activated through the artist‘s performance, hanging in the frame for an hour at a time. She borrows the form and idea from the bronze figure “Der Schwebende” (The Floating One), which the artist Ernst Barlach created for the Güstrow Cathedral in 1927. The sculpture was at the time exhibited there with its eyes closed and arms folded, floating horizontally in a side chapel, where it was intended to convey „a heavy, resting immobility as an expression of never-ending grief“ arising from the death and suffering of the First World War. The result was a memorial that shifted away from current standards at the time: Instead of focusing on the heroic deeds of the soldiers standing on plinths, Barlach created a memorial image of mourning and guilt. This pacifist message prompted the National Socialists to decry the work as degenerate and melt it down in 1937. The hidden model of the work preserved the form of the sculpture, allowing it to be exhibited after the Second World War, first in the Antonite Church in Cologne and finally back in the Güstrow Cathedral. The post-war period and its burgeoning culture of reappraisal and remembrance led to Barlach‘s memorial being read as an increasingly relevant peace monument. 

In times of crises and wars, “Der Schwebende” becomes increases once again in its contemporary relevance. However, Finja Sander‘s engagement with Barlach does not only constitute a quasi activist demand for peace. In these ambivalent times, where urges for peace are approriated for expressions of ignorance and a distortion of history while calls for increasing militarisation are being made, Sander turns to the mechanisms of remembrance. She is less interested in an evaluation of peace and war than in the emergence and role of German monuments and the culture of remembrance, which gained importance in the context of the two world wars and the National Socialist crimes. In this interest lies the hope of emphasizing the relevance of remembrance for the present and developing new ways of dealing with the German past. 

In her interest in Barlach‘s memorial, Sander takes the floating posture of the sculpture literally and approaches it through her own bodily experience. The body thus becomes a site for the transformation of sculpture into a performative act. In her endeavor to become an object herself, to give up her own physicality and to subordinate herself to the resulting image, Sander draws on many of her earlier performances. 

Für Morgen_standort_ 1-12 was performed once every month at a total of twelve different locations over the course of 2023. This creates a repetitive rhythm that expresses the need to continuously engage with German remembrance culture. In an experimental manner, the artist confronts locations related biographically to Barlach or places that are charged with the National Socialist past as well as sites related to the work beyond these references. Sander posits that questions of memory and guilt are localized everywhere in Germany and the need to ask them is always present. Within the contrast between rigid objecthood and fluid humanity, Sander scrutinizes the role of memorials and at the same time develops it further with an understanding of a peaceful present and future that can only be found in an examination of the past and the mechanisms of remembrance. 

Text: Nikolas Geier