IEFK

Immaterial heritage cemetery culture –
this is what it says at St Thomas‘ Cemetery in Neukölln. Like many others in the city and countryside, it is facing serious upheaval. People rarely live in their places of origin these days, intergenerational responsibility is unusual to say the least, it doesn‘t make any money either and do cemeteries still fit into the new era at all? Everything is so dirty, edgy, creepy, can‘t it be smoothed out somehow or at least digitised?

So, immaterial now, and yet cemeteries in particular symbolise the materiality of our existence like no other place. Where, if not there, can finiteness be experienced? Is culture just memory? And how can we preserve a cultural heritage whose material side only necessarily means decay? Especially in times of tight budgets?

The bones are already breaking over there.
Excavators are rolling across abandoned burial grounds. Because real estate means cashflow. Graves or not. A playground is being built or a supermarket or a gallery or luxury cafés or condominiums or or or. You could do what you wanna do with the dead, especially in Neukölln.

But decay is a new beginning and where there is life there is also resistance. An initiative is fighting back against the looming concrete on the horizon.
Their chances are not bad to at least preserve their cemetery as a place of peace. A photo reportage in the face of its transience.