# taz.de -- Dresden’s 'Monument’ artwork: The protective barrier
       
       > Manaf Halbouni commemorates war and destruction with buses next to the
       > Frauenkirche. The forecourt has become a place for communication.
       
 (IMG) Bild: Manaf Halbouni and his hat with the battered brim
       
       DRESDEN taz | As people hold hands in Dresden, Manaf Halbouni sinks into a
       chair in his art studio. He pulls off his cap – he believes that nobody
       recognises him when he’s wearing it. “Crappy day“, he says, “crappy mood“.
       They are waiting to catch him alone, he is sure of that. ‚They‘ being the
       agitators, rabble rousers and nazis who know his face; so he withdrew from
       the place where his most imposing artwork to date is standing. It consists
       of three buses that Halbouni has errected in the square in front of
       Dresden’s Frauenkirche. He wanted to ensure peace, and yet today war
       prevails in Manaf Halbouni’s head. “Sometimes I wish that I had made such a
       colourful fuss that people would just say: 'how beautiful’“.
       
       It is the evening of 13 February, the day on which people in Dresden
       commemorate the victims of the 1945 air raids. And it is the seventh day
       that Manaf has been provoking them with his art. Halbouni, 32 years old, is
       a small man with the face of an adolescent; he often wears a hat with a
       battered brim which is meant to conceal that face, and evokes the artist
       Joseph Beuys. And the artistic colossus Christo, with whom Halbouni has
       been compared for days by those who see great art in the three buses.
       
       Others see Halbouni as a terrorist – not because there are signs of this,
       but because it is a fitting narrative. Neumarkt, Frauenkirche’s forecourt,
       is for the Germans a place of survival and overcoming the past. Why should
       Syrians be commemorated here as well? That is the question that many ask in
       the square.
       
       ## The Syrian victims
       
       It all started with a photograph. Aleppo, an urban canyon and three buses
       standing upright; a protective barrier against snipers. The people, as
       shown by the photos, scurrying along behind it, the scrap metal making life
       possible. Halbouni decides to imitate the protective wall. First he
       convinces a small museum, then some of the region’s important charitable
       trusts and finally the Mayor of the City. Then a mob appears at last week’s
       unveilin. They roar “shame“ and “traitor“, even when the pastor of
       Frauenkirche is giving a speech. Later the mayor, Dirk Hilbert, receives a
       death threat. Since then policemen have been guarding Hilbert’s residence,
       and Manaf Halbouni’s phone doesn’t stop ringing.
       
       They are circulating on the Internet and everyone in Neumarkt knows about
       them: pictures of the buses in Aleppo, and a flag is waving on top of them
       – a flag from the militia Ahrar ash-Sham. Germany classifies them as a
       terrorist organization. Then they investigate Halbouni’s earlier works and
       find maps showing European cities with Arabic names. It is a thought
       experiment – how the world would look if the Ottomans had colonised the
       world, instead of the Europeans. “He wants Europe to submit to Islam,“
       claims the mob and then even the people in front of the buses follow suit.
       
       “It's incredibly brave that the city has decided in favour of it“, says
       Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz about the monument. She is the artistic
       director of the Kunsthaus, an urban gallery in Dresden. She was convinced
       by Halbouni’s idea and organised the realisation. She believes it takes
       courage to bring the Syrian war to Germany, to this place – especially on
       those days when the city disputes, year after year, how to commemorate the
       victims of the bombing attacks on the city. For Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz
       the installation is about artistic freedom “for which we have worked so
       hard“, she says. “For a long time it has not been self-evident in many
       European countries“.
       
       She worked with Manaf Halbouni in 2015 for the first time. Back then he was
       a student and Pegida was still a new movement. Christiane Mennicke-Schwarz
       feels that the mood in the city is changing and beginning to address the
       new issues. Halbouni, then, comes along with a packed car that symbolises
       escape and the few things the fugitives have left, alongside the marches of
       the far-right. He calls it 'Saxons on the run’. However, Pegida is growing
       and Dresden is becoming a symbol of rowdy far-right populists. Art cannot
       do anything to put a stop to this.
       
       ## The artist defends his piece
       
       It's Sunday, the fourth day since the unveiling. Manaf Halbouni gets onto a
       concrete block and 150 people cluster around him, looking at him. “No“, he
       says, he is not an Islamist – after all, he does drink German lager.
       Laughter ensues. No, he does not want to interfere in politics. After all,
       politics is complicated and he just wants to remember war, peace and
       Aleppo. This peace could stop, he says, so young people should not forget
       that. People applaud. He apologises for not having noticed the flag during
       his research. It is a rare moment: the artist defending his work of art.
       After all, when was the last time, when a work of art attracted so much
       attention? Saxony’s economy minister argues with citizens in front of the
       artwork, satirist Jan Böhmermann pokes fun at the protests and journalists
       bring the story to the whole world. Halbouni’s father calls to say that his
       neighbours have heard of the buses. He lives in Damascus, in the midst of
       the war which his son is now commemorating in Germany – Syria is Manaf
       Halbouni’s birthplace.
       
       In 2008, he decided to leave his land. Like every student, he had to do his
       military service after graduation. He did not want to spend two and a half
       years in Assad’s army. He uses his German passport, comes to Dresden, his
       mother’s hometown, and is assessed by the German Armed Forces; the Syrian
       State would still recognise this military service. Then he is waiting to be
       called up for service, but instead of an invitation the Army writes a
       letter to him, saying that he is currently not needed. Therefore Halbouni
       must remain in Germany longer than planned. He begins to study and work
       again, until civil war breaks out.
       
       Two men are standing in the sunshine, in front of the installation. One
       talks to the other and speaks of 'those darkies’ who have everything given
       to them and get away with everything. There is a piano on the other side of
       the buses, its music spreading over the square. A father takes his two
       daughters to the square. They eat candied apples while he tells them that
       they would not get a high mark at school for such work. After all, they are
       neither Syrians nor Afghans and the buses are not even originally from
       Aleppo, yet people make so much fuss about it.
       
       ## The German perpetrators
       
       Something is happening in the square. People come and take pictures, attach
       flowers and light candles, even at night, in the freezing cold. Strangers
       are engaging in dialogue, initially because they often agree that the
       installation is wrong; then they talk about their own stories. About life
       on benefits. About the changes that have taken away their sense of
       security. About sickness, unemployment and anger towards a society that
       ignores their sense of hopelessness. About a time when Dresden was burning
       and they endured days in their cellars – and about the many years, when
       Neumarkt was just a pile of rubble.
       
       Two students with flyers from the far-right Alternative für Deutschland
       must heed the warning words of a survivor: that Dresden’s victims must not
       be remembered without thinking of the German perpetrators. The old man who
       talks about 'darkies’ so loudly is rebuked by a young man into
       reconsidering his language. And so Dresden’s people stand together behind
       this wall of old metal sheet, talking and arguing for the first time in two
       years. The buses have also become their protective barrier.
       
       The war in Syria has made Manaf Halbouni an artist with thoughts on the
       major social issues, but it was Pegida that gave him a voice. Dresden, says
       Halbouni, is like a black hole for him; it sucks him in. He, who was the
       German in Syria and is now the Syrian in Germany, makes a subject of
       discussion out of the suffering of foreigners in front of the Frauenkirche.
       It inspires him to use big words: „The atmosphere at the monument reminds
       me of the ancient world, when philosophers and citizens came together and
       talked about art and the world“.
       
       It’s been hours since night fell. A man stands in front of the Monument and
       throws light on the undersides of the buses with a slide projector. A peace
       sign, a dove of peace. The mayor’s statement that caused plenty of outrage:
       Dresden is not innocent. And so he stands there, on his own and without an
       audience. “We have to do something about the situation,“ he murmurs and
       then he goes home. He wants to print more slides.
       
       Original in German/auf Deutsch: [1][Der Schutzwall]
       
       6 Feb 2018
       
       ## LINKS
       
 (DIR) [1] /Das-Kunstwerk-Monument-in-Dresden/!5380764
       
       ## AUTOREN
       
 (DIR) Christina Schmidt
       
       ## TAGS
       
 (DIR) taz international
       
       ## ARTIKEL ZUM THEMA