Darren Almond: Terminus

For his installation Terminus, the British artist Darren Almond relocates 14 socialist-era bus stops from the Polish town of Oswiecim to a gallery space in Berlin, activating a force field between the Auschwitz concentration camp, everyday life in Oswiecim and the way we experience historical proximity or distance. As Julian Heynen writes in his analysis of Terminus: What we see with our own eyes of the reality of Oswiecim, the bus shelters, is only a temporary stop on a hypothetical journey to the ‘real’ place, the camp. In this waiting room the direction of the next step is shown, even as doubt is cast on the chances of us satisfying our desire for authenticity. Mark Godfrey (Abstraction and the Holocaust) discusses the work’s genesis and context in a conversation with Almond, while Charity Scribner (Requiem for Communism) introduces her personal experiences from Poland. An extensive photographic record draws together the many aspects of this installation, summarizing them in photo essays.