There are the thoughts you communicate, you nurture and want everyone around you to know. You want them to define you.
These thoughts are molded by the society, aiming at acceptance and integration.
And then there are other thoughts, the ones you try to keep secret. They might reflect an image of yourself that might stir trouble, rejection. Most of the time these thoughts are based on hate and fear. Hate for the others, for the ones that you just cannot understand.
You would only confess these thoughts to the people you are certain will agree. Creating even a stronger bond.
Like in a personal diary where whatever words are contained, they are not meant to be criticized.
What if instead, you’d project them right on the big tall wall of a building?
The artist Anne-Jan Reijn did just that. She first set up a public web site where everybody could submit any word that might be considered an offense, a politically incorrect act of release.
Then she associated any word with a picture. An image that might or might not, represent its concept.
Finally she took over the wall of the ex Volkskrant building in the Wibautstraat, home amongst other of the Planet Art collective.
Chink, mongol, negerbolle, boche, schwutte, kut marokkaan, finocchio.
The list is quite long. It spans from dutch to german, to danish, italian, french up to arabic. But the content does not vary that much. Our hate, projected, seems directed to the same people. No matter the language we speak. Immigrants, homosexuals, any other nationality that is not ours.
And so the dutch hate the germans and the moroccans; the germans hate the british and the french, the french hate the germans…
Somehow, the very public display of these words together with the images that explained them, drains the fuel out of the fire that burns when they are kept secret.
But do not fall for the easy conclusion: being free to express the politically incorrect is not speaking the truth. It is instead, to realize the fallacy of hate. The basic dumbness of it all.
And at this task, Anne-Jan has the idea to mix insults with sentences that are after all, neutral, such as asielzoeker or arbeit macht frei. Sentences that turn into insults purely because of the contest they are used in.
The ‘Wall of Offense’ project goes on, you can still submit your own choice of words. Go and see how it feels like to see them spread for all to witness.
For more information:
Anne-Jan Reijn – www.webzijt.nl
Planet Art – www.planetart.nl/now.htm / www.volkskrantgebouw.nl
