ruiniert in transit

These guided bus tours visited sites of 1990s asylum seeker housings. The starting point for the tours was the Ex-Ordensburg Vogelsang, a former training center for Nazi cadres in the Eifel, an hour away from Cologne. The tours were my contribution to an artistic group intervention on this site, which since 2006 has been open for the public as an Erinnerungsort (site of public remembrance). The tours visited three sites of former refugee housings (Asylbewerberheim). Many of these housings near Vogelsang are today either ruined, torn down or put into new use. In the bus I gave information on the recent history of migration control in Germany and Europe, particularly related to the early 1990s wave of refugees and the subsequent legal restrictions in Germany. By connecting Vogelsang to these forgotten locations nearby, I wanted to expand the scope of the official German remembrance culture as this is manifested in places like Vogelsang. This culture all too often lapses into complacency as it places institutional racism at a safe distance. The history to which the unassuming locations visited by the tours relate to is unfortunately not yet over