The Bridge, Metaphor of Metaphors
Bridges constantly serve as metaphors for dialogue, exchange, and connection. As such, they are excellently suited for all possible artistic work, especially that of the Goethe-Institut. This also applies in Edéa, Cameroon. Recently, the mutual history of Cameroon and Germany was commemorated here. A major intervention in the public space took place. Its focal point was a bridge. Not just any bridge, but a massive, 100-year-old steel structure that the German colonial rulers once had built. The artist Pascale Marthine Tayou together with his team draped huge wooden figures standing on steles about it, did an intercultural production of Goethe’s Faust – another perennial favourite – and set up an installation based on the indigenous Cameroon writing system, and the Gesamtkunstwerk was finished. It was called “Les flâneurs d’Edéa” (The Ramblers of Edéa).
