"DIE WELTMEISTERSCHAFT IST GANZ VORBEI"
The 2006 World Cup and the European championships of 2008 saw an unprecedented widespread public display of the national flag in Germany. Many Germans greeted this explosion in the flag’s popularity with a mixture of surprise and fear. This decades-old apprehension derives from the idea that German flag-waving and national pride is inextricably associated with its Nazi past.
For the exhibition in the Iltisbunker we initially proposed the intervention ‘Celebrate Diversity No.2’. (click here for explanation about Celebrate Diversity) While driving around in the city with the German flag somebody shouted: “Die Weltmeisterschaft ist ganz vorbei”. The man couldn’t find any logical explanation why we were driving around with the German flags. After the performance we started working on a series of photos.
The slideshow presents some of the locations in the city of Kiel where we found left-overs of the widespread public display of the German flags during the last championships. This phenomenon intrigued us and it surprised us that we could find so many places where people decided to keep their flag. As a beginning for a research on this re-emerging patriotism, we started collecting all these different locations in the city. For the exhibition at the bunker we presented the archive of these pictures and talked with different people about this relative new phenomenon.
