Artists are well known for using their craft to challenge those in power and resist oppression.

This year, as part of the "Documenta" art exhibition, concept artist Marta Minujín collaborated with students from Kassel University, to create a life-size “Parthenon” constructed from over 100 000 banned books in Kassel, Germany.

According to the artist, “The Parthenon of Books” is a statement of resistance to political repression, combining the Parthenon, a symbol of democracy and education, with an image of censorship and control.

This is not the Parthenon’s first installation. Minujín created the original work, “El Partenón de Libros” in Buenos Aires, after the fall of Argentina's authoritarian military dictatorship in 1983. Around 25,000 books, previously banned, burned or locked away by the dictatorship, were rescued from their cellar prisons, and given new life within the walls of the Parthenon.

After five days, two cranes lifted the structure on one side, enabling the books to be taken down and given back to the people.

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Minujín's 2017 “Parthenon of Books” is on a much bigger scale than its predecessor. In 2016, a call was sent out to the public to donate copies of previously or currently banned books. Wrapped in plastic for protection, the books were then strapped to skeleton of the structure, erected at the centre of the Friedrichsplatz, a city square in Kassel.

Friedrichsplatz has both historical and thematic significance for the project, a site at which, on May 19, 1933, the Nazi party burned some 2000 banned books. At universities across the nation on this date, burning pyres of books lit the night as Nazi supporters gathered to salute Hitler and support the “Aktion wider den undeutschen Geist” (Campaign against the Un-German Spirit).

Amongst the thousands of titles burnt on this night alone, were works including Remarque’s "All Quiet on the Western Front," and the writings of deafblind author, Helen Keller, who, in response, wrote:

“History has taught you nothing if you think you can kill ideas. You can burn my books and the books of the best minds in Europe, but the ideas in them have seeped through a million channels and will continue to quicken other minds.”

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Of the first exhibition, Haftmann said, “It is devised with our young generation in mind, and the artists, poets and thinkers they follow, so that they may recognise what foundations have been laid for them, what inheritance they must nurture, and what inheritance must be overcome.”

Minujín’s incredible work celebrates the gift of the written word, and stands as a crucial reminder that our rights to knowledge, education and democracy should not be taken for granted.

So long as censorship and political oppression exist around the world, we will continue to fight for knowledge and power, like Minujín’s books, to be given back to the people.

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Parthenon Replica Built from 100,000 Banned Books on Site of Nazi Book Burning

Ein Beitrag von Sarah Wood