Images of destruction
Posters in public space
Leipzig 26 April – 5 May 2016
Five large-size posters along Leipzig’s Rosa-Luxemburg-Strasse establish a connection between current events, local history, and the exhibition Stefan Koppelkamm: Houses Rooms Voices in the Leipzig Museum of Fine Arts. The posters show photos of Leipzig’s Great Synagogue after its destruction on 9 November 1938, the dynamiting of Leipzig’s University Church (Paulinerkirche) on 30 May 1968, the ruin of a church in Northern Syria, destroyed by the »Islamic State«, and more destructions by the IS: Both the demolition of a mosque in Mossul (Iraq) and the demolition of the Baal Shamin Temple in Palmyra were filmed by the IS at the very moment of the explosion. The images have since been circulating on the Internet. The captions of each of the five posters refer to the other images of the series: thus all five events are linked with each other beyond their historical context.