Paco Poyato - El Muro Invisible
32 years have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall. The political, ideological, and in some cases physical frontier divided not only Germany, but the entire world in two axes; one of a capitalist character and his nemesis, the communist. Erected in 1961, it existed for 28 years and was known as "the Wall of Shame" due to its impact in restricting the movement of people. The families were separated for decades, the flow of goods also; one side prospered, the other not so much.
Today the physical Wall does not exist, but there is an invisible one that continues to divide the country, and that can be measured in terms of the difference in wages, infrastructure, education, unemployment; political and economic differences that tip the balance in favour of the western model. A barrier that has been reinforced thanks to the global financial crises that occurred in recent years, widening the gap between rich and poor, ending the so-called middle class.
The idea underlying the development of the project is to attest to the hidden wall that today continues to divide Germany, through the study of the landscape, both urban and human, in order to attest to these differences that are still latent between the western and eastern parts of Berlin, taking the German capital as an example of what happens in the country. Obviously a change occurred, but did it meet expectations? After its demolition, the effects of the Wall continue to be felt, in particular social and economic inequalities, as well as the extrapolation of this division global created by the Berlin Wall, either in the city itself or in the whole world in general. The Invisible Wall comprises contemporary images taken around the German capital with the aim of tracking down the remains of the Wall, not so much the physical remains but its symbolic power.
It seems that today, the Invisible Wall is more than an idea linked to the division of the German country. Unfortunately it is very current, we can now see in the news the alarms of a possible war in Ukraine, and this is related to a time that we left behind more than 32 years ago, reinforcing the idea of a Hidden Wall.
