Isaac Julien. Western Union: Small Boats

The multi-channel video installation by Isaac Julien is presented in context of our partner project event Kino der Kunst
Little, overcrowded boats on their way to Sicily. One knows that the flight from the hardship in Africa often finds a fatal end. At first, however, Julien shows neither grief nor deprivation but images which are hauntingly beautiful. They present themselves in the figure of a beautiful, dark-skinned woman, gracefully wandering through magnificent palaces and exuberant gardens. And yet, in the final scenes – people happily enjoying themselves at the beach, bathing in the sea, while bodies of the refugees who drowned cover the shore – the dissent between aesthetics and politics, fiction and reality, fascination and shock manifests itself.