Red Cells
Performance on the water for Rosa Luxemburg *
Place: Landwehrkanal, Lichtensteinbrücke, Berlin-Tiergarten, 1999
On January 15th 1919 Rosa Luxemburg was murdered at the age of 48. Her body was thrown into the Landwehrkanal from the Lichtensteinbrücke. On the 31st of May 1919 her corpse, which had reached the Unterschleuse, was recovered from the water.
In the afternoon of September 19th 1999, the 80th anniversary of Rosa Luxemburg’s violent death, I carried out a happening to commemorate the event. This took place from the scene of the crime (Lichtensteinbrücke/ Landwehrkanal) to the Unterschleuse where the corpse was recovered.
The work consists of 48 red lacquered paper objects. These are flat, almost round and have 10 metal handles on its peremeters. These objects are floatable- but only to a certain degree.
At the foot of the bridge the red objects were set one by one on the water. From a rowing boat I pulled these objects bound together with a cord along the Landwehrkanal, from the Lichtensteinbrücke to the Unterschleuse. There the paper objects were pulled one by one out of the water. The passage had largely destroyed them.
Note: these objects were a year ago part of the project “unterwandern”
* Rosa Luxemburg: political activist in the workers movement, co-founder of the German Communist Party
Hildegard Skowasch