LIFELINE
During my time as Artist in Residence at the Sachsenhausen Memorial, I created the landscape artwork LIFELINE.
LIFELINE is a 52-meter-long and 15-centimeter-wide strip of earth sown with wildflower seeds. This line runs through an area enclosed by steel and filled with black stones, marking the outline of former prisoner barrack at the Sachsenhausen concentration camp.
Throughout my two-and-a-half-year residency at the memorial, together with the children and grandchildren of concentration camp survivors, we planted the seeds and I invited international visitors, school groups, ambassadors, politicians, police officers in training, colleagues from the memorial site, students, and refugees from Ukraine and Russia to water and care for LIFELINE together.
During this collective ritual of watering and caring for LIFELINE, we engaged in profound conversations about what happened on these grounds and about the current state of our world. Through this active, communal practice, we bridged past and present through shared dialogue and reflection. It connected people from all these different countries, religions, social backgrounds, and ages. Through this shared act of watering and caring for LIFELINE, it became a new collective ritual of remembrance.
Over time, through the different seasons, the flowers grew and blossomed into a colorful LIFELINE.
