… damit das Geräusch des Krieges nachlässt, sein Gedröhn

The exhibition deals with the long aftermath of wars since 1945. International artists reflect experiences of violence, destruction and reconstruction in their works. From the perspective of migration, from or to Europe, they tell of loss, flight and new beginnings. And they report on the challenge of moving on. How do experiences of war shape the lives of future generations in pluralistic, (post-)migrant societies? What remains - and what is passed on?

In view of the omnipresence of wars - in Ukraine, the Middle East, Sudan, Congo and other parts of the world - these questions seem immediate and close. The conflicts and polarizations associated with wars are interrelated in the global world and are not limited to specific places or time periods. 80 years after the end of the Second World War, it is clear that the hope for peace associated with the post-war order has remained unfulfilled. Today, the consequences of armed conflicts are violently repressed by armed border regimes - marking not only territories, but also borders of empathy. In view of this, how can we find a language within a diverse society that is based on a mutual recognition of suffering and grief and rejects nationalist ideologies?

The exhibition title refers to this: it is taken from the war memoirs of the French writer Marguerite Duras. In The Pain (French: La Douleur), she develops a critical language of mourning that brings together personal and collective dimensions and opposes the repression of war and its victims.

The artworks on display are linked to experiences that were not passed on or were only passed on in fragments - because those affected were unable to talk about them, because traumatic experiences were suppressed or overwritten by political narratives. They establish complex relationships between space, time and memory. This shows that memory is an ongoing process. A view of the wartime caesuras of the past 80 years inevitably remains incomplete. This is why the exhibition attempts to trace the potential of intergenerational and transnational dialogs. The artistic works ask what influence historical ruptures have on collective memory and how historical experiences shape the present. At the same time, however, they go further and understand shared memory as an orientation for the future.