In front of one of the works exhibited at the Hamburger Bahnhof, one of the venues for the Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art, a visitor caught the public's attention today by commenting with enormous anguish that she had always believed that those born in her generation, the of World War II, they would be happy all their lives, because they would live without more wars; that she was convinced that her existence would be peaceful, calm, and without reason to be ashamed until the arrival of her death. But it does not seem that things are going to be like this, he affirmed, because it is not clear how the events of these dramatic days represented by the war with Ukraine will unfold.
The madness of one man and his devoted minions determines the fate of the country, he pointed out. We can only guess what will be written about this in the history books fifty years from now. Pain, fear and shame: these are the feelings of today, he stated. Pain, because war affects us all. Fear, because our biological instinct is to preserve our life and that of those around us. Shame because we are responsible for this situation that can have serious consequences for everyone. Because the responsibility for what is happening today also lies with all of us who witnessed these dramatic events, because we did not know how to foresee and prevent them.
Faced with these reflections, and in an environment such as the one we find ourselves in, it is inevitable to consider what role art should play in our daily lives, bearing in mind that it should also focus on the conflicts that surround us. This is one of the central questions addressed by Still Present!, the twelfth edition of the Berlin Art Biennale.
The works he shows can be judged for the way they push us to the limits, exposing pain, accepting physical extremes, causing emotions to rise to the surface of our skin with the aim of reclaiming the field of emotion through art. In extreme situations there is often the painful feeling that everything has changed, that we cannot understand why or understand what is happening. It is therefore the works that we observe here that present us with a position that does not leave us free, that does not offer escape routes, because its message crosses all walls. Failure to grasp it would be cynical. Because reality cannot be turned off.
