DISRUPT THE PROGRAMME! Swim! Sculpture

“Disrupt the programme!“, is a series of artistic works that deals with the scope and complexity of the global, socio-political topics, FLIGHT, MIGRATION AND ASYLUM, and their humanitarian significance for the empathic individual. Although we may not experience it first-hand – or precisely because we do not - it is extremely difficult to come to terms with these events mentally and emotionally. We are lost in a duality of being touched or keeping distance. In the face of these humanitarian disasters and the national and international approach to them, as well as in our daily thinking, action or refrain to help those people, the question arises as to where humanity and our being human is heading. Because: As a result of the sum of all individual consciousness and its social responsibility to act, our entire society, politics and state, have a general responsibility to act. Swim! It is not a unique story, but one of many. It is a global socio-political disaster. It was a young man, who loved a woman very much. Her name was Oluiti. They wanted to be together forever. But just to live, they lacked so much. They barely survived. He felt responsible for Oluiti’s destiny, because how was she to blame for their unbearable life? It was like a burden resting on his shoulders – a yoke that clamped and crushed him. In this desperation he decides to pursue the propositions and keep his hope alive, because he does not see any other way. He does not know whether it is of his own free will. He leaves her and his country behind. He is driven by the perception that somewhere else there may be a life with better chances for himself and the loved ones he left behind, a life lived in peace and freedom. He is not the only one who feels that way. He is one of many, because inequality and misery are unintelligible. On April 18th, 2015 the ship embarks. Apart from Oluiti’s loved one there are another 1000 people on board the ship. All are driven by misery and responsibilities. That same night the ship sinks 130 kilometers off the coast of Libya. Their lifeless bodies remain behind and sink into oblivion of the ocean. Without names. Their yoke and misery carrying on. It is the biggest tragedy, with the most victims, in the Mediterranean since the Second World War. Since 2014, an estimated number of more than 20.000 people have lost their lives trying to cross the Mediterranean. (source: Statista Research Department, 29.07.2020) Only few of them could be identified. Their death is recorded for informational purposes only, as a statistical figure of an impersonal mass. Hopes, desires, visions of a live without poverty, violence, hunger, war and persecution, all died with each single individual. Each person had a thousand, seemingly insignificant stories. For as long as we live, we hope; have deeply human desires, beliefs, dreams and visions of a good, happy life of our own. That is what makes us human beings. Above all, hope. All over the world. This fact alone should unite us and not separate us. Birth provides every human being with the right to live. My work is composed of more than 20.000 historical brass figurines – human images – positioned next to each other and on top of each other, with the purpose of them to be intertwined and to come to lie side by side. All 20.000 of them get their space on this “form”. In order to reconstruct the enormous number, I wanted to touch and conceive every single figure and get a sensual feeling of their overall weight. It might be be a rubber dinghy, but also a yoke, like the one cows or horses carry around their neck to pull people’s loads. It is the pattern of a never-ending cycle. Idea, concept and realization: STEINWIDDER 2020 Photos: Klaus Fritsch more to read about it: www.steinwidder.com

Sculpture:Found Objects on Other

Original:One-of-a-kind Artwork

Size:13.8 W x 20.5 H x 2.8 D in

Delivery Time:Typically 5-7 business days for domestic shipments, 10-14 business days for international shipments.