Die Unterdrücker
der Menschheit
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Part of the Carrasco’s Supermax study, Die Unterdrücker der menschheit [Oppressors of Humanity] is an installation piece created in Stuttgart, city where leaders of the RAF guerrilla were incarcerated, tried, and unofficially executed. Die Unterdrücker der menschheit is composed of three elements designed to raise a historical discussion on the German Autumn, also known as the Autumn of 1977 (Deutscher Herbst).

One of the elements of the piece, a pile of 1,000 granite cobblestones, allude to an article written by Ulrike Meinhof (intellectual leader of the Red Army Faction) following the attack on student leader Rudi Dutschke on the 11th of April, 1968, and from which she writes her well known and subversive statement, «If you throw one stone, it’s a punishable offence. If 1,000 stones are thrown, it’s political action».

Using vegetable paper and a wine colored hue, the second element of the artwork is a series of fifty monochromatic prints of data sheets from the Haus der Geschichte archive regarding RAF history. The photographic image of each sheet is unavailable due to a sudden censorship on behalf of the public institution.

Under the fifty prints is a handwritten phrase painted in acrylic paint. The inscription reads, «To punish the oppressors of humanity is clemency; to forgive them is cruelty», a direct reference to Jacobin leader Maximilien Robespierre. In this context and confronted with previous works, one cannot avoid reflecting on the revolutionary processes of the twentieth century, rethinking the role of «oppressor» and the function of «punishment».