Volks
Installation
Galvanized zink, print on paper, foam board
4m x 2m
Volks/Povo is an installation developed for the Memorial da Resistência, a former political prison of the military dictatorship. The Memorial was a site of confinement and torture for many political dissidents during the dictatorship period. It was in this former prison that several Volkswagen workers were held, after being reported to the State through a surveillance scheme set up inside the company by Franz Stangl, a Nazi officer who fled Germany after the war and was later hired by VW.
The installation juxtaposes a Volkswagen advertisement photograph — showing a suburban house and a Beetle appearing in the garage, in the very year of 1964, the year of the military coup — with a dossier documenting workers’ union organizing, obtained through the surveillance system installed within the company.
