G8 summit, Heiligendamm, Germany 2007
8 C-Prints, 40x40 cm, 2007
"I heard the people who lived on the ceiling / Scream and fight most scarily / Hearing that noise was my first ever feeling / That's how it's been all around me." It is the afternoon of the 8th of July 2007, the last day of the G8 summit in Heiligendamm. Somebody in protest camp Reddelich has put on the song "Lost in the Supermarket" by the British punk rock group "The Clash". The barrios of the tent camp that had been densely packed have begun to empty since the morning, the 900 souls of the small community will regain normality after a state of emergency that lasted for a week. Like everybody else I have begun packing my things, my towel is on the tent's roof to dry. I was just in time in the shower before the other sex is admitted in, I went to the People's Kitchen ("100% vegan, 100% organic, 100% by farmers who aren't Nazis") to get a coffee and had a last smoke in the midday heat. Barefoot and refreshed I go for a walk to the information at the entrance of the camp. On one of the bulletin-boards, there is an anonymous appeal that calls for a squatting of Berlin's Hackesche Höfe shopping center on the same evening, 21.00 o'clock. After the summit, the protest is to be carried "into the heart of capitalism". I pack up my tent, shoulder my backpack and start on my way to the station. The regional train to Berlin is overcrowded, but despite the jostle I manage to get a seat. The atmosphere in the coach is quite relaxed. After all the euphoria, all the aggressions, all the events of the week - most people are tired and happy to go back to their regular everyday life. I am seated next to Thomas Roth, the director of the ARD Moscow studio (he is a bit out of place in his black suit, he doesn't seem to belong, seems to float above everyone else) and a Canadian tourist, on his way from the Eastern Sea to Berlin. He is making use of the time on the train to write his travel diary. I take a look. He doesn't mention the G8 summit with even one word. I am not going back to Hamburg yet, I want to visit a friend in Berlin. At about 21.30 o'clock my train passes the Hackesche Höfe. There's no one to be seen.
