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In a poem written in exile, the playwright Bertolt Brecht, who fled persecution in Germany in 1933 for his pro-communist plays and writings, likens his work to that of a reporter:
The words which they call out to each other I report.
What the mother says to her son
What the employer tells the employee
What the wife replies to her husband
All the begging words, all the commanding
The grovelling, the misleading
The lying, the unknowing
The winning, the wounding…
I report them all. (‘The Playwright’s Song’ 1934-36)
On the one hand he is a journalist who relays “what the mother says to her son”. On the other, as a playwright, he unveils the nuances in speech “the begging, the commanding” and the invisible, “the misleading, the lying, the unknowing”. The verses reveal Brecht’s belief that art has its own role to play in times of crisis.
Yet, these verses are also problematic, for how can a poet in exile also give an accurate report from the ground?
Bertolt Brecht and Helene Weigel, in exile in Lidingö, Sweden, 1939.
Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Bertolt-Brecht-Archiv FA 07/145, Photographer: unknown
Brecht’s work is part of a major exhibition ‘Uncertain States: Artistic Strategies in States of Emergency’, at the Akademie der Künste, Berlin. Taking the current migration crisis as a starting point, the exhibition explores the concept of “uncertainty” in extreme situations, as expressed by artists such as Mona Hatoum, whose work in the exhibition Kapan Iki (2012) explores the concepts of instability and entrapment through sculpture, and Richard Mosse who has documented the conflict in Eastern Congo using colour infrared film. It also draws on the historical experience of flight and exile, and includes archival objects and material from writers and artists who fled Germany after the rise of the Nazi regime in 1933.
Mona Hatoum, Kapan iki, 2012 (detail),
Mild steel and hand-blown glass. Courtesy Galerie Max Hetzler, Berlin | Paris © Mona Hatoum
“This is a contemporary art exhibition, but we deepened it by going back to our own history in Germany, the time between 1933 and 1945 when our most important artists were forced to leave the country due to persecution and situations of injustice” says Johannes Odenthal who co-curated the exhibition with Anke Herval, in collaboration Katarina Gregos and Diana Vexler. Brecht’s drafts of a poem about migration appears in the show, as well as the last letter that the philosopher and critic Walter Benjamin wrote to his friend Theodor Adorno, before committing suicide as a fugitive in Spain.
Passport issued to Walter Benjamin, Berlin Grunewald, 10 August 1928 Photo: Nick Ash © Akademie der Künste, Berlin
Akam Shex Hadi’s The Cordon Project (2015) has also been selected among the contemporary works in the exhibition. The photography series documents Iraq’s minority groups who were displaced by IS in 2014. It was first exhibited by the Ruya Foundation at the National Pavilion of Iraq at the 56th Venice Biennale. In the images, Christian, Kaka’i and Yazidi refugees, as well as refugees from the Syrian city of Kobane, stand in seemingly sedate settings, encircled by a black fabric.
Akam Shex Hadi, Kobani from the series The Cordon Project, 2014-25. Courtesy of the artist.
Shex Hadi and Brecht lived nearly three quarters of a century, and two continents apart. Yet the comparison suggested by the exhibition highlights key issues around the practice of art in times of crisis and conflict.
Trained as a photojournalist, Shex Hadi has documented the IDP camps in Iraq, as well as the conflict with IS. Yet The Cordon Project does not directly show the violence or human suffering. Rather it presents an invisible threat through the black fabric, or ‘cordon’ that is placed around or near the person in the photograph, suggesting a slow suffocation or death as the cordon will slow become tighter and tighter.
Equally, as with Brecht, the artist here is likened to a reporter, but whose eyewitness accounts go beyond the stories told by journalists. “Akam’s photographs of internally displaced people in Iraq make visible an otherwise invisible political situation.” says Odenthal, “It is a strong statement. The artist gives a level of expression which can’t be covered by the media alone”.
The subject of migration that lies at the core of the exhibition, also comes through in the works of both artists. “Between 1933 and 1945, Germany’s most important artists were forced to leave the country. They gave up everything. At the same time, they developed a new creative process to express their extreme situation,” Odenthal explains.
While in exile, Brecht continued to produce vociferously anti-fascist and pro-communist writings, including a collection of poems written while living in Svendborg, Denmark from 1933 to 1939. Poems such as ‘In Dark Times’ reveal his concern with maintaining an active and engaged voice about the rise of fascism in Germany:
They won’t say: the times were dark
Rather: why were their poets silent
Such poems show that while in exile on the island of Fyn in Denmark, in what he describes as “Finding refuge in a Danish thatch,” Brecht remained intellectually close to home.
In contrast, Shex Hadi has not left Iraq, but migration and exile are key concerns in his practice as an artist. “The word ‘exile’ once meant being forced to stay in one place, with no freedom to leave. Today, it is our own homelands that can become a prison, as many people living in conflict zones worldwide will testify,” Shex Hadi explains.
As well as internal displacement, Shex Hadi has witnessed the waves of migration out of Iraq, even among his peers. According to a 2013 IOM study, 99% of young people in Southern Iraq and 79% in Iraqi Kurdistan wish to emigrate, citing lack of employment and the wish for freedom and security as some of the main reason.
This, the artist addresses in a new series of photographic works, “Homeland, Exile,” commissioned by the Ruya Foundation. Shex Hadi places his subjects inside a perimeter of barbed wire, to which he has tied colourful kites. In doing so, the artist likens migration to kites which “float in the sky […] but their movement is neither spontaneous nor free, they always return home”.
Like Brecht, Shex Hadi provides an ambiguous and complex definition of exile, in which the connection or closeness to one’s homeland can never be severed, despite the physical distance.
Uncertain States runs until 15 January 2017 and is complimented by a series of talks and workshops at the Akademie der Künste.
*Manheim, Ralph and John Willet, editors: Bertolt Brecht: Poems 1913-1956 by Bertolt Brecht (London : Methuen, 1979 1987)