The oath
Weimar, Germany 2022
Participative project and Performative sound-installation
Performers: Nadja Kracunovic, Vitor de Almeida Mattos
On the 19th of April 1945, a few days after the Buchenwald concentration camp had been liberated, representatives of its underground resistance, the International Buchenwald Committee, celebrated the first commemoration of the 51.000 inmates estimated to have died during their detention. The memory of fellow deportees is honored with the pronunciation of the Buchenwald anti-fascist oath, a call for justice, freedom, democracy that can only cease once all the remnants of nazi-fascist regimes have been eradicated.
Almost a 100 years after, the Buchenwald Oath is still echoing: the anti-fascist mission is yet to be completed, nazi-fascism is yet to be eradicated. Instead, in these uncertain times, it is profiting of a growing appeal among a confused, scared, misinformed population, to which cultural, racial, religious homogeneity are sold as a panacea for all contemporary evils. Non-Germans living in Weimar, to which administration the Buchenwald camp belongs, have been invited to read and revive the Oath through their voices. These voices have, for a day, filled the acoustic space between the former Gauforum and the Bauhaus Museum in Weimar during an itinerant sound-performance. Through their various voices, through their various accents, in a dialogue between the past we tell, the present we live, the future we aspire to, the Oath is revived and re-activated. It becomes a symbol of a fight that is yet to be won.
The work has been realised with the kind support of Stadt Weimar, Freundeskreis der Bauhaus Universität Weimar e.V., Triennale der Moderne
