A stain­less steel ring with multiple twists hangs about 5 meters above the lawn and walkway in front of the dark shin­gled façade of the new museum building at the Fried­land Refugee Camp. It is suspended with steel cables from the façade of the museum and from a free-standing pole. Nine life-size bronze pigeons sit on the ring, some hanging upside down from the ring.

The origin is a wreath woven from three strands, of which a single strand is featured. Without the other strands around which it was orig­i­nally wrapped, the shape cannot be deduced at first glance - it confuses and also deceives the eye about its orien­ta­tion like a mirage. The multiple twists have taken on a life of their own, the wreath appears to be moving.

The struc­ture is suspended high over­head in the sky and somehow seems to float casu­ally in the air like a soft ring on the waves. Pigeons have settled on the ring. Most of them sit on the one half, indi­vid­u­ally or in pairs. But there are also some pigeons sitting upside down under­neath the ring. Although the sitting birds are a familiar sight, the natu­ral­ness with which some pigeons sit upside down together makes it absurd and dream­like. A strange gath­ering in a circle up in the air.
Are the pigeons on the under­side different from those on the top of the ring, what do they have in common, are they a mirror image of those on the other side, or is it all the same to sit at the top or the under­side? Because when there is no gravity, the ring offers twice as much space to sit on.
Thus the ring with the pigeons resting on it refers to the situ­a­tion of passage and tran­si­tion, in that it is itself in a kind of suspended state, does not stand firmly on the ground and seems to tran­scend bound­aries (spatial ~ and phys­ical ~). It hangs almost freely in the air, drawing our view upwards and allowing us to look through it into the sky. Like a strangely floating vehicle in the air, moved by the wind, its shadow also draws a circle on the grass below, which wanders across the path during the course of the day.
The shiny silver ring floating in the air with the pigeons perched on it - like migra­tory birds on a piece of drift­wood - is a symbol of the situ­a­tion of many people and of the refugee camp itself.

Design 2022, completed 2025
Client: the state of Lower Saxony, repre­sented by the State Construc­tion Manage­ment of Southern Lower Saxony
Archi­tec­ture: dichter Architek­turge­sellschaft Berlin
Land­scape archi­tec­ture: bbz Land­schaft­sar­chitekten Berlin
Photos: Thorsten Goldberg