All the dead are still here

2025

Bogensee-Areal

Video performance

The camera points to the sky, shows the crown of a pine tree, pans slowly to the ground, briefly captures the Bogensee villa, pans further to pine needles and bare feet that start to move. They walk - not long and yet seemingly endlessly - over gravel and sand, step by crunching step. Accompanied by discomfort and birdsong.

The place, surrounded by dense forests, has something idyllic about it - would have something idyllic if it weren't for the history. If it weren't for the people who moved here eight decades ago, perhaps even looked up at the pine tree and the sky above. If it weren't for the dead, these dead and millions of others. The villa belonged to Joseph Goebbels; in the last years of the war he lived here with Magda Goebbels and their six children.

Feet cross the forecourt, stop at the threshold of the house. A hand on the door handle comes into focus. Is it trying to open the door? Is it bracing itself to hold it shut so that the ghosts behind it don't escape? The complexity of remembering and forgetting becomes palpable between penetrating and holding shut.

The video performance was created in the early morning of May 8, 2025, the 80th anniversary of the liberation.

The artist herself is in charge of the camera. In her work “All the dead are still here”, Stephanie Bothe follows the traces of the past, leaving her own - fleeting ones in the sand, lasting ones in herself. She seeks a physical and emotional connection to the place and to history, which has an impact on the present. Following a deep inner need, she treads a path that is inescapable for her. She finds a personal connection to that history, to questions of attitude and cowardice - and thereby establishes a connection to the dead.She invites viewers to follow her gaze - outwards and inwards.

Der Nationalsozialismus lebt nach, und bis heute wissen wir nicht, ob bloß als Gespenst dessen, was so monströs war, dass es am eigenen Tode noch nicht starb, oder ob es gar nicht erst zum Tode kam; ob die Bereitschaft zum Unsäglichen fortwest in den Menschen wie in den Verhältnissen, die sie umklammern. (Theodor Adorno, 1959)

By Ben Schieler