One of my working methods consists of chaining perceptions that appear, at first, unconnected. This video is an extreme case.

In the nineties, I read Canetti’s text on national symbols, specifically the forest as the national symbol of Germany (Crowds and Power). Decades later, living in Germany, I experienced for the first time the streets of Berlin filled with discarded Christmas trees — thrown out worse than garbage. Worse than garbage, because in Germany garbage is itself a symbol of order and structure. I could not help but wonder about the vigorous state of Canetti’s national symbols in my new homeland.

Canetti had brilliantly intuited a coherent disposition: from the forest to order, from order to the army, from the army to the camp, from the camp to the concentration camp. I simply followed his rhythm — from the concentration camp to the industrial Christmas tree, from the industrial Christmas tree to the living room. That connection became unavoidable when I found, in the depot of a park, a mountain of unsold trees wrapped in plastic. Then I saw it: a concentration camp.

The old myth of the dark German forest heart ended up producing The National Innocence: the German who does not find out, and if they do, prefers not to know.