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On June 20, , Simon Dickel met Christian W. Find and Hannes Hacke at the Alter St. Matthäus Kirchhof Old St. The installation is a greenhouse with an ivy plant. When visitors go inside, they find a table with 16 buttons partly covered by ivy. Pushing them, they can listen to the original voices of 16 people whose graves are in the cemetery, including AIDS activist Hans Peter Hauschild and photographer Jürgen Baldiga , whose work courageously chronicled the AIDS crisis.

Christian W. Find: Parla Memento Hedera is an ivy parliament of memories, whose name consists of three elements: Parla relates to parliament; Memento stands for the memento mori of medieval nuns and monks, a reminder of our mortality, even though the end is open; Hedera refers to hedera helix , the Latin term for ivy.

In this parliament different voices converge and engage in dialogue. It is about giving a voice to the thoughts and ideas of the people buried here in order to further pass them on. Listeners are invited to draw inspiration from those words. The voices emerge from ivy, a plant which symbolizes friendship.

Ivy is an epiphyte, a plant, which grows on other plants, while plant and host plant are mutually supportive. Ivy is said to have healing power, and it has been a sacred plant since ancient times. Even today ivy serves as medicine. And efeu , the German translation of ivy, is the name of a group organizing activities on the cemetery, such as guided tours.

Ivy is a typical cemetery plant. Simon Dickel: Which criteria have you considered in your selection of persons and sounds? Find: The entire sound installation covers a total of 16 voices, with each voice lasting three to four minutes.

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All recordings are original voices gathered from several sources and archives. Exceptions are Hedwig Dohm and Minna Cauer; Recording technology was simply not yet available during their lifetimes, and for this reason their voices are represented by read excerpts from their works.

Hence, one is guided through an entire century during those approximately 60 minutes. I chose 8 female and 8 male voices to have an equal representation of gender. Hannes Hacke: All of the voices are connected through this churchyard as the shared place of burial of the activists and artists, which means that to some degree the collective was formed arbitrarily.

Some members had known each other, whereas others are separated by a span of 50 or 60 years between their respective lifetimes. Find: The historical aspect has always been important to me. Listening to the whole thing up to , the year, in which the last person passed away, is like a journey through time during which one recognizes the relevance of those contributions.

The installation does not contain a single invalid statement. This reflects the concept of memento mori: to keep in mind that life goes on. The words of the dead will not become less important, instead, the dead, who spoke to us, will keep on talking. We are supposed to use their words to further develop their ideas and concerns.