Bilder-Wörterbuch

During their research tours of the Völklingen Ironworks, the Russian artists' collective Frukty came across a booklet from the early 1940s in the Röchling exhibition that literally has it all. The title reads: "Picture dictionary for communication without language skills". Underneath is the note: "Trilingual edition: German-Russian-Ukrainian-Polish". This is a contemporary document of the German occupation in Eastern Europe during the Second World War, which was used at the Völklingen Ironworks to communicate with the forced labourers. In the centre of Völklingen, Frukty discovered a windowless house wall with a peeling façade, which seemed ideal for their work and which could be secured after discussions with the owner. The "picture dictionary" can now be found on the wall of the house, enlarged to gigantic proportions as a damaged trace of memory - with numerous missing parts, as if it had been there for decades but was still legible. Frukty's in-situ work brings a special piece of world history that took place in this region into the urban space and bears witness to a time when Russians, Ukrainians and Poles were victims together - namely of our ancestors in Germany.
The work is located in the street "Am Hüttenwerk" in Völklingen.

Ralf Beil