This is an Intervention!
A long afternoon of public pauses reversing the post-pandemic rush to normality
For the duration of a long afternoon on Saturday July 11th from 12:00 until 24:00, we pushed the pause button. The walls, windows, gardens, streets and parks of Berlin-Kreuzberg were occupied through a series of public interventions in which artists, thinkers and other players opened up their private thinking to the public. These were accompanied by a discursive programme, guided tours and an info point where you could pick up a map and get more information.
Concept: In July 2020, that the curve had been flattened in the Global North, and the lockdown was slowly being lifted, governments seemed all too eager to return to “business-as-usual”. We couldn’t help but feel distressed at the prospect of going “back to normal” (at full speed). Rather than fast-forwarding, we felt an urgency to pause, and reflect on the very parameters of this “normality”.
The virus left a devastating trail of casualties. But it also momentarily halted the machine of capitalism, and exposed the structural global inequality and the overall unsustainability of the system we live in. It offered a painful reminder of the manner in which this system denies access to support to those already excluded from it.
Why is there such a rush to restart this machine?
“This is an Intervention!” explored the undiscovered land of the post-pandemic. Could this be the ground on which vast and widespread cultural, environmental, economic, social and democratic transformations in systems and mindsets can be initiated? Acknowledging uncertainty as a commonality, the event attempted to collect the wide range of contemplations, energies and emotions at play at this moment. In the rush of reactivating the public space after the lockdown, there was a pressing necessity for those voices that are unheard to intervene.
There is no time – this is why we have to pause!
José Délano, Lianne Mol & Yael Sherill
more information at: www.thisisanintervention.info