“Anchoring the Void”
Installation by the Theatre Workshop Pilkentafel at the Flensburg harbour
“Anchoring the Void” was an installation by the theatre workshop Pilkentafel. It was located in the harbour of Flensburg from 16 June to 7 July 2019. During this time it left its mark on the tip of the harbour with an empty white platform in the harbour basin, the void: because the history of the plantation economies in the Caribbean, the people who were enslaved there and who resisted, is missing from public space in Flensburg. A video of the opening of the installation can be found on Vimeo (registration required).
The Pilkentafel project followed on from the previous exhibition ‘Rum, Sweat and Tears’ at the Flensburg Maritime Museum in 2017/2018, revisiting questions about Flensburg’s handling of its colonial entanglements. The installation was accompanied by a petition for a memorial, which was presented to the mayor, but did not result in any concrete political action.