The first time Nadia came across bird control spikes was in Paris, France. She did not know such appliances from Tunisia. Let it be because old architecture is not considered something in need of protection, or that the municipality isn’t aware of the erosive force of bird poop, or is it only that birds are loved more in North Africa than in Europe. Moving from Tunis to Paris and stepping into this totally different and much-accelerated mode of life, she read the bird control spikes as if they would tell some characteristics about European societies: all amenities are close at hand, but no one gets the time to profit and rest—hustle and bustle rules. Today, we would rather understand it as a typical phenomenon common to late-capitalist societies.
We produced this configuration of the two spike-covered benches arranged back-to-back in 2019, when reunified Germany existed one year longer than the country’s separation. We wanted to express the situation in a country consisting of two separate parts after losing its former line of control.
Both parts are not that different. They did not seriously look into the common dark history; they did not acknowledge what happened and went too fast to business as usual. The critical engagement with the past was symbolic, and support for research and memory was always motivated by diplomacy and the economy. People behaved similarly on both sides of the inner frontier. Still, their opposite ideologies let them look at the same history in two different ways.
And here we are again. Life is a study of perspective, and art comes into play when it creates objects that are bold and blunt enough that they can speak for themselves no matter through which lens or ideology they are observed and read.
So far, so good. Back to Back (2019) memorializes a society that celebrates the fact that its reunification lasts longer than its separation. Congratulations, Germany!
