GRUNDGESETZ EIN CHORISCHER STRESSTEST

On 3 October 1990, the union of the two German states was officially declared, and that day has been celebrated as the Day of the Germans ever since. On 3 October 2018, Marta Górnicka presented the GRUNDGESETZ  in front of the Brandenburg Gate with a chorus of fifty professional and non-professional actors from many different spectra of the civil society. They questioned the seventy-year-old legal text. This performative stress test sought to demonstrate the limits and the current tensile strength of the words in the constitution within the tensions of society: Who is the subject of the German constitution? In whose name does it speak? To whom does it belong? Who are “the people”? Who is “the majority”? Can a document which enshrines the fundamental rights “of all Germans” put a stop to violence and racism? Is any document that “guarantees” democratic values capable of “defending” them?

Marta Górnicka:
I’m interested in the tension between law and violence ‒ the limits and durability of a consensus that protects us against violence and against seeing our opponent’s death as the ultimate way of resolving conflicts. This consensus can only be achieved in language. The words that are written into laws are supposed to guarantee disarmament. They literally knock weapons out of our hands and enable us to overcome the rule of violence. But words can also arm our opponents. Every act of genocide or systemic violence, every refusal of solidarity that brings death, are first effected in language.

German society today is deeply divided. Two different visions of community are clashing – national and homogeneous versus open and diverse. A fight is waged with words and for words.

Whose vision ‘promotes world peace’? Who is ‘the nation’? Who forms ‘a majority’? Who is the citizen? Who is the alien? Who does this country belong to? Who are ‘ALLE DEUTSCHEN!’?

By subjecting the Basic Law to stress testing, we test the maximum workload and capacity that its words can handle