In her book We as water, Leila Orth deals with the question of what places of remembrance there are and can be. Building on her many years of artistic engagement with memorials, she uses the book to search for places, far removed from national memorials, that lead to a possible transnational form of remembrance.
Orth understands commemoration as a multi-layered process in which not only one moment is remembered, but in which several memories, images, conflicts and feelings come together. Instead of erecting more monuments made of concrete and stone, she is interested in the gaps in between, in which memory is created and which make remembrance possible. Her focus is on the Elbe island of Finkenwerder in Hamburg harbour, where she herself grew up. From there, Orth develops a multidirectional dialogue in which different people's perspectives on water as part of their history are incorporated. Water has the power to connect us, reflects the relationship between past and present and provides space for narratives that have previously been overlooked.
"On some summer days, we met at the Finkenwerder marina. The current was gentle and the river was very calm. We climbed onto the mooring dolphins and jumped into thewater. My body plunged into the depths without realising what was inside of it. The higher we jumped, the greater the fear of touching the bottom. When the water receded back into the sea, you could see its muddy floor: the traces left by the current, the holes a bunch of shoes, cinder blocks.
We swam to the bunkers on the other side of the harbour basin. We climbed up onto them. Bushes grew between the concrete cracks that smelled of salt and silt. It felt like being on a deserted island."
Leila Orth (born 1995) is a German artist. She is interested in possible other forms of remembrance that exist alongside monuments and memorials. A search for new approaches to remembering and commemorating far removed from colonial and patriarchal pasts.
