there is no oblivion
Patterns of Paradyze / Memory Club, August 2022, Hamburg
Memory Club and Patterns of Paradyze are dedicated to the forgotten and the unforgettable. In There Is No Oblivion, participants embarked on an interventionist bicycle tour through Hamburg, exploring sites of collective memory and monumental urban history, guided by the ideas of Michael Rothberg’s Multidirectional Memories.
The journey began on Halskestraße, where two residents of the local home, Nguyễn Ngọc Châu and Đỗ Anh Lân, fell victim to a 1980 arson attack by the neo-Nazi Deutsche Aktionsgruppe. Today, traces of this crime are barely visible in the cityscape. The tour asked: Who does history remember, and who is forgotten?
The second stop brought us to Grosse Elbstrasse, where 14 murals created since 1994 by international female artists commemorate women’s port labor and challenge the masculinized myths of Hamburg’s harbor. These works also reflect on forced labor in former colonies and under National Socialist rule, raising the question: Which voices and genders shape memory?
The final stop was Gezi Park Fiction, a symbolic renaming of Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013. Here, participants reflected on transcontinental remembrance and considered how public spaces can act as monuments, shaping both collective memory and visions of the future.
Funded by Kulturbehörde Hamburg
