A sharp rise in deaths from terrorist attacks in developed countries in the past two years has unsettled the world. Artists have responded - with comfort and provocation.
Image: Reuters/R. Krause
Advertisement
How artists have responded to terror
A sharp rise in deaths from terrorist attacks in developed countries in the past two years has unsettled the world. Artists have responded - with comfort and provocation.
Image: Reuters/R. Krause
First sign of peace
The day after the November 2015 Paris attacks, which left over 130 people dead, the city was in mourning. When German pianist Davide Martello began playing John Lennon's "Imagine" outside the Bataclan on a piano he had transported from Germany, a crowd quickly gathered. Martello later told The Guardian that "I wanted to be there to try and comfort, and offer a sign of hope."
Image: Getty Images/AFP/K. Tribouillard
When words fail
After the chaos of a tragedy, a simple visual image can be a comfort. French graphic artist Jean Jullien posted a hand-painted peace sign incorporating an image of the Eiffel Tower on social media after the November 2015 attack in Paris. It quickly became an iconic symbol of sympathy with survivors.
Image: Jean Jullien
The image as a weapon
Artists do not always play a peaceful role. The comic artist known as Charb was famous for publishing offensive caricatures of religions, including Islam. After Islamist gunmen shot him and his colleages to death in the offices of Charlie Hebdo on Jan. 7, 2015, demonstrators used his images to defy the attackers and their supporters.
Image: Getty Images/E. Cabanis
Music from the ashes
Artists are sometimes the targets of terrorist groups. Such was the fate of Syrian pianist Aeham Ahmad, who studied music in Damascus and Homs but spent much of his life in a refugee settlement. It was on a bombed-out street there that Ahmad gained international attention, playing piano in a YouTube video. After ISIS militants burned his instrument, he fled to Germany and now lives there.
Image: DW/K. Danetzki
Catharsis, the therapy of theater
Aristotle's theory of catharsis - purging emotions through theater - lives on. Austrian Elfriede Jelinek crafted her play "Anger" (pictured above in a 2016 production at the Hamburger Thalia-Theater) while in shock from the 2015 attacks in Paris. The title points not only to the anger of the attackers, but also the hatefulness of some responses, as well as the agony of those caught in the middle.
Image: picture-alliance/dpa/C. Fürst
"Not even scared"
On March 13, 2016, Al-Qaeda militants gunned down 19 people on the Ivory Coast's sandy Grand Bassam beach. Ten days later, a number of the country's pop stars released a music video to reclaim the space. "Meme pas peur" is the name of the song - "Not even scared" - and the defiant words ring true among performers as they dance on the sun-bleached sand, no blood in sight.
Image: DW/J.-P. Scholz
Just color and line
Not all artistic responses to violence are literal. The vivid colors and lively shapes of Guillaume Bottazzi's abstract art speak for themselves as a reponse to tragedy. Since the end of October, he has been working on a mural in Brussels's Place Jourdan as a permanent memorial to the victims of the March 22 attacks in the city.
Image: DW/M. Kübler
A wealthy donor
American pop artist Jeff Koons unveiled his plan for "Bouquet of Tulips 2016" at a ceremony in Paris in November. The forthcoming sculpture, by one of the world's wealthiest artists who hires workers to construct his designs, was donated in honor of the victims of the multiple Paris terrorist attacks of 2015.
Image: picture-alliance/AP Photo/M. Euler
Together Berlin!
On December 20, a day after an attack on a Berlin Christmas market claimed 12 lives, the Brandenburg Gate was lit with the colors of the German flag. On Friday, December 23, the city will hold a six-hour long memorial concert featuring several German musicians as a sign of Berlin's resilience to the disruption of an otherwise festive public life in the week before Christmas.
Image: Reuters/R. Krause
9 images1 | 9
Terrorism is difficult to define. In Europe and the US, mass shootings are sometimes called acts of terror, sometimes not. It depends on who the perpetrators are and why they did it. In Syria, the government labels both the Islamic State and the Free Syrian Army terrorist groups. The UN admits that it has no universally-accepted definition, and instead works on a "pragmatic approach" to countering the problem.
Journalists are also divided on the terminology. Tarik Kafala, for example, the editor of BBC's Arabic department prefers not to use the word "terrorism." "We know what political violence is," he told The Independent after the deadly 2015 attacks on the office of the French satire magazine Charlie Hebdo. "We know what murder, bombings and shootings are - and we describe them. That's much more revealing, we believe, than using a word like terrorist."
A demonstration in Toulouse, France, against the assassination of Charlie Hebdo cartoonists in January 2015Image: Getty Images/E. Cabanis
While journalists and artists debate difficult questions in the wake of tragedies like the November 13 attacks in Paris, artists have often stepped in with immediacy and grace.
If terrorism is something different from murder, it is because of the traumatizing effect it has on survivors. That is precicely where many artists have directed their efforts in the past two years: confronting the terror of terrorism.
From the wandering piano player who dragged his instrument in front of the besieged Bataclan club in Paris to play John Lennon's "Imagine" to the Ivory Coast performers who filmed a music video on the very beach where Al Qaida gunmen killed 22 people - artists around the world have taken an active role in reponding to attacks on civilians.
This picture gallery collects some memorable and lesser-known artistic responses from the past two years.
