Twenty years later, the past lives on in the remains of the Wall

In a barely visible corner, in a cheerful green, one can also read “ich liebe die Mauer”. I love the Wall, probably what is left of it, harmlessly available to memory. Pieces of wall, pieces of history and life whose memory persists among fragments of chipped plaster, remnants of images, plays of colour created by the passing seasons, and wounds that open up unexpected views. Twenty years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall, and all of them can be seen in Alessandro Vicario’s photographic exhibition, presented yesterday at Castelgrande in Bellinzona. Vicario’s gaze returns to the places of History many years later to record what remains of the events that changed its course. The photographs in Die Berliner Mauer, which opens on Saturday 12 September and runs until 15 November, were taken between 2003 and 2009. “I like to return to the scene of the crime when the others have gone,” the Italian photographer explained, “to observe what remains, the cracks in which images accumulate, the traces of past life that persist in the present.”

This exhibition therefore does not revisit the great events of November 1989 through reportage. Instead, in a more intimate way, it encourages visitors to engage with their human significance before their historical value. “There is a tendency to think of the events of 1989,” the exhibition’s curator Roberto Mutti told us, “as something finished, as a great celebration. Of course, it was that too. But the point of an exhibition such as this is precisely to recall that this physical Wall evoked other walls that everyone carried within themselves and that, unfortunately, we still continue to erect today. These images are intended to be a profound questioning, a mirror.”

The exhibition at Castelgrande is the principal part of a more extensive cultural project promoted by the City of Bellinzona together with the Biblioteca cantonale, the Archivio di Stato, Bellinzona Turismo, the Circoli del cinema di Bellinzona e Locarno and the Fiori Musicali association. Two public lectures, a round-table discussion, a special concert and a film programme are therefore scheduled over the coming weeks. This wide-ranging project seems to fit coherently into the capital’s new cultural policy, increasingly focused on devising projects that can involve several of the city’s cultural organisations. In short, where one large undertaking is not possible, it is better to bring together many smaller ones, significant ones if possible.

After the exhibition’s opening, the first scheduled event is on Tuesday 29 September at 8.30 p.m., when the film programme “8 films on Berlin before, during and after the Wall” will open at Cinema Forum. “A programme that we had originally conceived around the city of Berlin,” explained Michele Dell’Ambrogio. “Increasingly, however, given our resources, we run into the problem of obtaining the films and acquiring rights for public screenings. So we had to make some changes, and it worked out well.” The programme will open with a film between Germany and Ticino, Alto tradimento, made by Luca Jaeggli with RSI’s support. The documentary tells the story of Thomas Lacina’s journey, which began in 1978. Arrested and tried in the GDR because of his attempts to escape, for which his family was also persecuted by the political police, he now lives and works in Ticino.

The two lectures will take place at the beginning of October, on the 1st and the 8th, at 8.30 p.m. in the Biblioteca cantonale: C’era una volta il Muro, a vent’anni dalla fine della guerra fredda and La fine del Novecento: fuori dal labirinto? On 9 November at 6.30 p.m., Castelgrande will host a round-table discussion on Giorno della libertà, dalla caduta del Muro all’attacco alle Torri Gemelle. At 9 p.m., in the Chiesa Collegiata, the concert Tra il muro e l’infinito will feature Robert Michaels on organ and Helmut Hauskeller on pan flute.