“There are no doors; one enters through a neighboring building and descends a long flight of stairs. Here, thirty feet below ground, a crossroads of three divergent avenues leads to distinct parts of the museum. …The ground is tilted at odd angles, creating a sense of disorientation”.
Tom Mueller, on the Jewish Museum, Berlin.
“I saw that the sacred hoop of my people was one of many hoops that made one circle, wide as daylight and as starlight, and in the centre grew one mighty flowering tree to shelter all children of one mother and one father. And I saw that it was holy… but anywhere is the centre of the world”.
Black Elk, Oglala Sioux.
One of the main thoroughfares leading from a central hub in the Holocaust section of the Jewish Museum in Berlin designed by Daniel Libeskind is called the “Axis of Exile”. This project sets out to “illuminate the Avenue of Exile”, the myriad of connections made on a journey across Europe that relate to Libeskind’s linear Axis but that would embrace the notion of the greenscape a tree lined avenue, if not literally then as a byword for a series of encounters.
Motivated by sitting amongst the trees where people once waited in line near what are now the ruins of crematoria four and five at Auschwitz Birkenau, the realisation dawns that much of this area and the nearby camp Mexico are new growth. The birds in this area sing long and loud during the summer months and break a silence of the senses.
This journey is a continuation of the wanderings of a traveller. Through the Avenue of Exile we can see the beginning of a return journey from Ambleside to Auschwitz.
Calgarth is the hub of a wheel, Auschwitz is the hub, Warsaw is the hub, as is Łódź, Kraków, Sieradz, Manchester….as are all the names impacted on the walls of Liebeskind’s Axis.
All are at one and the same time the centre of a wheel, as are the people who encounter the Avenue of Exile.
Avenue of Exile is supported by an individual award to Trevor Avery of Another Space by Arts Council England, North West and is also supported by South Lakeland District Council.
