OLIVE BRANCHES

Fallen Leaves in a Void
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In the course of a visit to the Jewish museum in Berlin, in mid July 2014, I came across this truly creative and provocative piece. It is called Fallen Leaves. Some 10,000 faces punched out of steel are scattered on the ground. The work is dedicated not only to Jews killed in the holocaust, but to all victims of violence and war.

You are invited to walk over the faces
and listen to the sounds they make
as they shift beneath your feet.

This is what you see in front of you
as you try to keep your balance.

And this is what you nearly fall on top of.

It is hard to convey the emotional impact of this place. The noises made by the shifting faces remind you both of screams, varying in pitch and volume depending on the sizes and shapes of the faces making them, and of something like a clanking tank running over fleeing victims. It is quite unnerving.

Then, in the middle distance, a shaft of light which turns the faces to gold. What does it mean? Hope amid despair? Gold from the teeth of the dead? Just plain Shekels? Even more unnerving

Olive Branches

A nearby exhibit is the olive tree. Presented here as a symbol of fertility and peace. Visitors can write a wish or prayer for placing on the tree.

Unfortunately, the olive tree for me has become a symbol of the wanton destruction of the livelihood of Palestinians on the West Bank by illegal settlers. So this item brought me up a bit short.

And then a mental exercise suggested itself to me and I would like you to go back to the beginning of the Fallen Leaves and slowly go through the sequence again. Only this time, still being true to the artist's wider conception, imagine they are the faces of the Palestinians of Gaza.

Even more unnerving.


[My web page on the Jewish Museum]

Olive Revisited

Amnesty Peace Tree, Cows Lane, 14/12/2006
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I was passing by Cows Lane again today so I thought I'd check out if Amnesty ever got round to putting the promised plaque on the olive tree.

On 14 December 2006, to great fanfare and the beating of Burundi drums, the tree was planted in a wooden container in the Lane. According to Amnesty, the tree had been given to an Amnesty activist by Yoko Ono.

The Amnesty invite described it as follows

Amnesty International invites you to lighting up of the Peace Tree to raise awareness of the human rights abuses in Darfur. There will be drumming bands and speakers from Darfur, returned from Sudan and bearing witness to the atrocities that are happening there. Join us for the ceremonial planting and lighting of the 300 year old Olive tree in Cows Lane (between Dame Street and Essex Street) at 6pm on Thursday 14th.

And indeed there was. It was a most impressive evening.

14/12/2006

14/12/2006

And the promise, on which I had been regularly checking for the last seven years?

It will be permanently located on Cow's Lane in Temple Bar with a plaque explaining its significance. It will be a constant reminder of the work Amnesty does here in Ireland and all over the globe.

So, what's the story then?

Well, the plaque finally arrived.

25/2/2014

But where is Amnesty? Where is Yoko? Where is Darfur?

Not a trace?

The tree has now been dedicated to "the events of 1714" effectively celebrating the recapture of Barcelona from the Grand Alliance (Britain, Netherlands, Austria) by Franco-Spanish forces 300 years ago. The Lord Mayor of Dublin, Oisín Quinn, did the needful, on 11/11/2013, in the presence of the Deputy Mayor of Barcelona. And the original donor of the tree, Bill Shipsey, who was not named in 2006, now figures on the plaque.

Two for the price of one, you might say. And I'll bet there's more of a story behind this.

Thanks to Extra-Extra Blog for blogging the original occasion and thereby preserving the record.