In room number six with the door heading "Ernst?" Find public image and written statements from the various opinion camps, especially a selection of so-called town hall finds: protest notes, demonstration boards, visual and verbal protest material that had been taken since 2020 during various protests against compulsory vaccination, against the lockdown, against the mask requirement and against other measures taken by the government and the authorities against the spread of the pandemic and to protect the population. Regular and spontaneous protests, Monday walks, demonstrations against measures perceived by quite a few people as unjust, unjustified or disproportionate. A serious divide through society, often enough even through families. A serious rejection in interpersonal coexistence, which has made sometimes very hardened fronts between various religious camps, echo chambers and filter bubbles visible and tangible. These conflicts are a source of nagging questions. Anyone who takes the trouble to move from the mode of mere assertions to a mode of questioning in order to get to the bottom of uncertainties and contradictions must be taken seriously, no matter from which camp he or she comes. Especially the Center for Open Questions is not a place for either the voices of one or the voices of the other, but a place that can withstand all voices, in which hardened fronts are warmed up again by questions, malleable and softened and thus spaces are opened.
Here in the room "Ernst?", room number six, in addition to those randomly framed and hung protest notes and posters, there is also a display case and the continuation of the billboards and paper walls running through all rooms with pasted questions in a somewhat clearer and deeper context on the topic of the respective room, here this room.
If you want to hear questions from this room, press one now.
The display case contains more of those self-painted and self-written, improvised demonstration signs and protest images, in which, starting from doubts about the correctness of certain pandemic measures, a general anger projected onto the big picture or on certain social and political perspectives is initially vented.
Nurses whose training certificates have been crossed out here and comments written on them, all of which revolve around the decision to give up the job and no longer be available in nursing than to get vaccinated. Regardless of whether many of these testimonies turn out not to be genuine, but have been duplicated by individuals, with the aim of feigning a critical mass, what counts when these documents are issued is the clarification of anger and helplessness.
Nevertheless, these attitudes must be taken seriously. A democracy must withstand protests and demonstrations, no matter what representatives of other opinions think of it.
Many of the demonstrators complained that they were incorrectly described as right-wing extremists, right-wing extremists, or right-wing esotericists, just because they dared to speak out against individual measures or had even joined such a demonstration.
They are also invited here, cordially invited, to write down and throw in their questions, which arise in the face of this room, over the writing material on display. Or to speak orally, via the button 3 of the main menu (first zero, then 3). Or via the Fraginator on one of the interactive screens of the installation. Or via the website www.zfof.eu, where you have even more possibilities to deal with the questions that others had already entered before them. And above all, be able to add further questions yourself.
The seriousness of the situation begins with the dilemma of not being sure of being allowed to think something that springs from a real feeling, but has been tabooed by politics, media, or public pressure.
