PATH OF HUMANITY Exhibition Project 2015 - 2017

PROJECT DESCRIPTION
Status: November 1 2015

Introduction

1 Background and Idea

2 Audiences

3 Exhibitions

4 Places

5 Overview Artworks

6 Sponsors

Introduction

Humanitarian disasters can be no looking away to

57 million people are currently on the run from war and misery. Desperately they are looking for refuge - also in Switzerland. But not all welcome these migrants. Has the virtue of lived humanity in Switzerland lost its strength ? What does "humanity" mean for us today ? Here and now the question is: How much humanity does Switzerland affords? And you personally - what do you do?

«Path of Humanity" is a platform that is made on the attention to the current humanitarian emergency with the means of art and dialogue. In a series of exhibitions at various locations in Switzerland 2016-2017 visitors will experience how committed contemporary artists deal with the theme and what positions they have. The selected works are partly created especially for the exhibition project, partly there are already existing works. Together they form a Manifesto for Humanity of nationally and internationally renowned artists.

A program of events that includes the artists, directly affected persons and humanitarian activists pointing to possible ways and providing the impetus, which should lead to a more human, more tolerant and peaceful society - in Switzerland and beyond.

«Path of Humanity" is itself a migratory project that started in 2015 and will end in 2017, being hosted in various Swiss cities and all parts of the country. Two presentations have already taken place in the Bourbaki Panorama in Lucerne and around the Henry Dunant Museum in Heiden (AR). At every stop there is a new context to which the artists respond in dialogue with the people of the respective community.resultuing in new impulses

The organizer of "Path of Humanity" is the non-profit association of the same name, which was constituted in Lucerne in 2015. Partners for «Path of Humanity" are the International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), the Swiss Red Cross (SRC), the Bourbaki Panorama Foundation and the Henry-Dunant-Museum as well as numerous humanitarian organizations from Switzerland.

1. Background an Idea


The foundation for all humanitarian action is the international law originating in the Geneva Convention of 1864 concerning first aid to wounded military personnel 1864. The Geneva Convention goes back to an initiative of Henry Dunant, who had his war experience on the battlefield of Solferino during a business trip in Italy in 1859. He wrote the book A Memory of Solferino (published in 1862) wherein he demanded an international regime for dealing with military and civilian war victims. The Geneva Convention comprised ten items regulated dealing with the wounded soldiers and their helpers. In particular this treaty introduced the armband with a red cross on a white ground as a distinctive emblem. Founded one year before the completion of the Convention, the International Committee for Relief to the Wounded, which the since 1876 name carries International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC), became in the following decades a decisive impetus to the further development of international humanitarian law.

To this founding history and the developing years of the Red Cross belongs an artistic commitment that wanted to give a face the idea of humanity in war and shake up a broad public: The Geneva painter Edouard Castres created the Bourbaki Panorama. On this gigantic circular painting (10 meters in height and 112 meters in length) of 1881, the artist depicts the passage of the French Eastern Army (called Bourbaki Army due to the name of its General) to Switzerland at the end of the Franco-German War 1870-1871. The Bourbaki Panorama is probably the first great work of art, in which the theme of humanity in war is visualized. It shows the first Red Cross action and the biggest asylum granting initiative in the history of Switzerland: at the beginning of February 1871 approximately 35,500 French soldiers fled into the village of Les Verrières in today's Canton of Jura (1,800 inhabitants) crossing over to Switzerland. There - as well as in other places at the Swiss borders- around 87,000 soldiers were granted asylum; these starving, freezing and wounded soldiers were rescued. The civilians and medics of the French and Swiss army rendered first aid, equipped with armbands of the Red Cross.

In the context of our exhibition it is of particular importance that the artist himself was a humanitarian activist who on the part of the French Eastern Army provided humanitarian aid as a Red Cross paramedic. Edouard Castres reported with his panoramic painting, so to speak "live" from the war. His sketches of 1871 were ten years later implemented in the then popular mass media panorama, so the general public would learn of this other side of the war. As the Bourbaki Painting created more than one hundred years ago there are also today artworks, which provoke questions and raise our awareness of the current manifestations of humanitarian crises. Also contemporary artists thus contribute to raising awareness of urgently needed expansions of international humanitarian law; in particular they use new artistic strategies, which are able to reach the public despite the communication flood of today.

As a contribution to the 150 year anniversary of the International Committee of the Red Cross (2014) and the Swiss Red Cross (2016) our nonprofit art organization developed the “Path of humanity” exhibition project. At sites which are related to the creation and promotion of humanitarian tradition in Switzerland, the exhibition addresses in particular aspects of the current refugee protection crisis. The exhibition concept has been worked out in advance scientifically. The attorney and curator Dr. Marco Stoffel elaborated the theoretical and curatorial basis in a master's thesis on the topic of art and international humanitarian law under the title HUMANENESS (Zurich University of Art, Master of Arts in Curating and Art Education, 2014). As initiator of the project, he has the exhibition designed as a parcours of artistic positions on the subject of "humanity". Because the exhibition aims to sensitize the humanitarian responsibility of our society, it balances art and context.


2. Audiences

«Path of Humanity " is aimed at a wide audience . The exhibition period falls in the anniversary year of the Swiss Red Cross (SRC), but also in the time of devastating daily news from crisis regions such as Syria , Eritrea and Libya and the tragic fates of refugees, as they are manifest in the Mediterranean and at certain European borders Audiences reach form the art public to migrants as our exhibition wants address all who care about humanitarian responsibilities.

The sensitization of the population on the issues of humanitarian commitment in the face of global problems is just as important as the creation of an awareness of the humanitarian tradition of Switzerland . Besides a classic art education programme we will have events lead by migration experts addressing the general public with questions like: "How much humanity can Switzerland afford …and what is your role ?"

Visitors and participants to which the contents of our exhibition will be communicated with guides and a versatile accompanying program are:

- The general public
- Directly affected persons
- Politically involved people
- Migration experts and members of humanitarian organizations
- Professionals and agencies
- Non-governmental organizations
- Schools and Universities.


To Know more information about Marco Stoffel Please visit the website.
http://www.ms-kunstverknuepft.org/ki