Please join us for the launch of Bus Stop, an installation by renowned German artists, Renata Stih and Frieder Schnock.
Originally conceived in 1995 as an alternative to a static Holocaust memorial in Berlin, Bus Stop, a mobile sculpture, enables the public to actively commemorate the Holocaust by engaging with former sites of Nazi atrocity. “We wanted to create a work that enables active remembrance through the networking of places and information.”
Professors Stih and Schnock will discuss Bus Stop’s conception and ongoing significance.
Bus Stop will be on display at the Museum through March 2024.
This event is supported by
“BUS STOP” was Stih and Schnock’s response to the competition for a “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe”, where a representative memorial was planned in the center of Berlin, near Brandenburg Gate. Their concept of a transitory memorial aims to clarify that doesn’t need monumental constructs to commemorate the victims, because the whole country and many parts of Europe are full of places and stories that need to be preserved from oblivion. Visiting the former concentration camps makes you feel a sense of trepidation, because the idea of horrific events, the view of harrowing documents that we know from film footage and photos remains unforgettable. Stih and Schnock conceptualized an installation of a transitory sculpture on the dedicated lot, a bus terminal. From there, red buses would drive to actual commemoration sites and former death camps in both, near and distant vicinity all over Europe. The destination and the inscription “Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe” is written on the red buses. In this way the remembrance of the Holocaust is redirected to the crime scenes, away from that lofty site in the middle of the German capital and right into the banal everyday structure of our mobile society.
Renata is a Berlin based artist/activist, art critic and curator exhibiting at Lenbachhaus Munich, Staatsgalerie Stuttgart, St. Louis Art Museum, among other, and is known for her media and public art discourses, urban interventions and performances. She has been publishing videly on art, theater, film and architecture, and is a critic for TAZ Berlin and Kontura Art Magazine, Zagreb reporting from Berlin’s Film Festival and the Venice Biennale regularly, and has created numerous podcasts and videos.
Professor Stih has been teaching on art, film and technology at the Berlin College of Technology BHT/University of Applied Sciences for decades, and on public art and memory at various US universities and colleges including Princeton, Harvard, SAIC, MICA, RISD, Brown University, Hebrew University, ZhdK. She is also an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, Lueneburg teaching together with Frieder Schnock on environmental topics, ecology, colonial history. Stih acted as president of the San Marino pavillon at Venice Art Biennale, served for a decade as Chair of the Art Advisory Board to the Cultural Senate of Berlin, was on the Board of The Women’s International University at EXPO 2000 in Hannover, and is the co-founder of the Human Rights Watch Committee in Berlin. Fellowships and awards include the German Federal Grant at the Cité des Art in Paris; the Berlin Art Grant; the Freund Fellowship at Washington University, St. Louis; the Rockefeller Fellowship at the Rockefeller Advanced Research Center in Bellagio/Italy; the Obermayer German Jewish History Award; the Whitney J. Oates Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University, Rouse Visiting Artist, GSD Harvard University.
Frieder is an artist, art historian, cultural advisor, gallerist and curator widely known for his artistic documentary photography, and public art and memorialization projects in Berlin. He is an Honorary Professor at the Institute of Philosophy and Sciences of Art at Leuphana University, Lueneburg, has created visual studies at the Berlin College of Technology (BHT), and also taught at numerous art colleges like SAIC, MICA, Bard College, ZHDK, NYU, Princeton University. Schnock has worked as a curator in private and public collections, such as at Museum Fridericianum in Kassel and Engelhorn Foundation in Munich, and as an advisor on Berlin public space and the history of art to entrepreneurs like the architect Jean Nouvel. He is the co-founder of the exhibition organizations Gesellschaft für Blickschulung and Loft 44/45 in Berlin which presented a wide range of experimental artists and activities to Berlin’s audiences.
Fellowships and awards (selection): Rouse Visiting Artist, GSD Harvard University; Rockefeller Fellow at the Rockefeller Advanced Research Center in Bellagio/Italy; Freund Fellow at Washington University, St. Louis; the Obermayer German Jewish History Award, the Whitney J. Oates Fellowship in the Humanities at Princeton University.
