Art in urban space
Petrified Survivors vs. Peace Statue Ari PR in Public Space
This leaves the future of the Peace Statue uncertain. At the same time, the artwork has already established itself as a symbol against acts of sexual violence in war and exemplifies how art in public space can be contested between diplomacy, memory culture and civic engagement. The Japanese government's attempt to prevent similar statues from being erected around the world – as in San Francisco, where in response Osaka terminated its city partnership in 2018 – shows how controversial the symbol is.
The controversy in Berlin drew a lot of attention to the monument and made it an example of how temporary art in public space can have a broad social impact.
Sven Kalden
Parallel to the controversy surrounding the peace statue, an organisation with ties to a former arms lobbyist applied for an alternative public art project. Evidently, a PR agency was hired to develop a strategy designed to get rid of the unsavoury monument.
In July 2024, the SASVIC organisation (sasvic.org) was founded in Berlin. According to its own description, it aims to commemorate the victims of sexualised violence in war zones and raise public awareness of the issue.
The organisation's first and only project is to erect a memorial in Berlin. Coincidentally, this memorial is also to be erected in Moabit. Unlike Ari, however, the new memorial is not about a specific armed conflict, but about many conflicts in general, especially those for which Great Britain, Japan, the USA, Germany, etc. are not directly responsible.
There are several interesting layers to this initiative. SASVIC was founded by employees of the PR agency Higgins and the lobby organisation Advanced Level Politics. The association itself is based in a tax consulting firm. The first-named founding member and former British Foreign Secretary Jack Straw was a strong supporter of the Iraq War in 2003. British soldiers are accused by the human rights organisation ECCHR of torturing prisoners of war, including using sexual violence.
The name SASVIC is similar to an existing women's rights initiative, SASVic, so when researching, one quickly stumbles upon an NGO that helps victims of sexual violence in Australia – not symbolically, but in practice.
Now, the newly founded Berlin-based SASVIC organisation has its own website, but little concrete activity to show for itself. So far, it has only been involved in the installation of the bronze sculpture Petrified Survivors by English sculptor Rebecca Hawkins. On her website, under the heading Campaign Sculptures, the artist publishes works she has produced for political initiatives. Among other things, there is a bronze sculpture of a soldier on a marble pedestal. It is a Gurkha modelled with a machine gun at the ready, intended to commemorate the fallen Nepalese soldiers who served in the British military. The website proudly reports that the uniform of the soldier depicted had to be remodelled more than six times, as the real uniforms of the soldiers have also changed constantly over years of service. Finally, the following sentence can be read on the base of the sculpture: Better to die than to be a coward.
Apparently, this is an artist who, when it seems opportune, glorifies the military and soldierhood and, at the same time, when the appropriate commission comes along, wants to commemorate the victims of sexualised violence in wars. There is no better way to reduce such a laudable intention to ad absurdum.
Petrified Survivors was installed in early September 2025. The KIST Commission of the Mitte district approved the application for temporary installation against the votes of the Expert Commission members.
These bizarre PR strategies show that public space continues to be contested, that it is not unimportant who is allowed and able to display and how. Public space therefore remains political. It can be used to showcase democratic civil society initiatives, but it can also be used to show the city's citizens how they should memorialise and what they should commemorate.