On the 4th of June 2007 a group of Reloading Images (Ashkan Sepahvand, Azin Feizabadi and Kaya Behkalam) sent a letter to the Press Office of the German Army (Bundeswehr), offering to do an artistic workshop for German soldiers based in Afghanistan. This letter is the first of a series and was written on the occasion of the exhibition “Homo Bellicus: A Genealogy Of War”. The text of this letter was a reflection about the relationship between and the common ground of artists and soldiers. It proposed to initiate workshops in collaboration with soldiers, in order to raise the awareness of their individual creativity, spirituality, openness and imagination - as well as of their freedom of choice. We argued that the creative chaos, the productive power of doubt and the subversive momentum of art could be enriching for the soldiers on their “Mission for Help and Cooperation”.
The letter was also an attempt on our behalf to approach and initiate a dialogue with the authorities of the state, in this case regarding the shaping of social processes as the Bundeswehr seeks to do it in Afghanistan.

[Click to enlarge. Letters are in German]

So far we have not received an answer. Calling the press office of the German army 4 weeks later, we were told to get in touch with the “Bürgertelefon” (“Citizen Telephone”) a special hotline for questions and concerns regarding the army. Unfortunately, as we noticed, this hotline was out of service, instead the automatic voice offered the possibility of email contact. After writing an email to the mentioned address we received an automatic error message saying:

“Your message

Subject: ANFRAGE

was not delivered to:

prinfo2-buergerbriefe@bmvg.bund.de

because:

User prinfo2-buergerbriefe (prinfo2-buergerbriefe@bmvg.bund.de) not listed in public Name & Address Book”