YESTERTODAY

From Bronze Age carnage with axe and club to AI-controlled weapon systems of the 21st century; in the end, what remains of them is always the same: broken bones, perforated skulls and lots of military scrap. While modern battlefield archaeology provides us with significant insights into the history of mankind, exhumations help to solve war crimes in real time.

War has returned to Europe and its ugly grimace is causing half the world to bury its supposed pacifism and set a historic arms record. The timeless debate about rearmament and disarmament and the difficult balancing act between arms supplier, active war party and post-war German identity has also returned. The global impact of war increases its complexity and often makes individual political options for action appear ineffective in the public perception. It is important to make the complexity more negotiable through the concreteness of individual examples and voices and also to take a look back in history.

Where possibly the first European multi-ethnic battle was fought around 1250 BC and the imposing Klempenow Castle was built 2000 years later, YESTERTODAY spent four weeks negotiating the insurmountable human issue of militarization in response to the ongoing Russian war of aggression against Ukraine and the current international arms debate. The program offered new approaches to the current controversial debate and traces the topic back to the Bronze Age using concrete examples. An exhibition trail with contributions from the fields of archaeology, art and contemporary history covered the entire grounds of Klempenow Castle.

The opening included a live program with cinema, performances, readings, lectures and discussions. The 17th century Klempenow half-timbered church was also reopened for the first time following its extensive renovation.

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With: Lenore Blievernicht, Roland Borgwardt, Maxim Dondyuk, Roman Dubasevych, Thilo Fischer, John Huston, Christian Klemke, Elem Klimow, Wolfgang Landgraeber, Sergei Loznitsa, Christoph Meißner, Bert Neumann, Leonard Nikita Neumann, Thomas Oberender, Piotr Pawlus & Tomasz Wolski, Danièle Huillet & Jean-Marie Straub, Christian Thiel, Elke Windisch & Heiko Walter-Kämpfe and Frederick Wiseman