Jungbusch Monument to Migrant Worquers (Mannheim)
The background of migrant workers, and migrant communities, specially the gastarbeiter and their families, their origins, cultures, stories of departure, or arriving and of hope can indeed challenge the social-based binaries of Local-Foreign, the strict rules and conducts behind the administrative and bureaucratic "integration", that don't accept difference but looks forward always for a hierarchical sameness. What can we say about the identity of the daughters and sons, and the grandchildren of the gastarbeiter? Perhaps a monument to the Migrant Wor(que)rs could open the right conversation?
There's a sack bearer monument in Jungbusch? But what on earth is a sack bearer? And what does it have to do with us, with Jungbusch today? Do we need monuments to know who we are or where we come from?
The Artist Márcio Carvalho, together with zeitraumexit, would like to invite Mannheim's communities from Jungbusch and beyond and different generations to imagine a new monument together and to draw it in this platform. Is it a monument for Jungbusch, or one that tells Mannheim's immigration story? Can we imagine a monument that doesn't just capture memories and history in one object? Marcio Carvalho invites the district to design a living monument, one that also speaks of current and future life, of arriving, of living together and of displacement and change.
