Statue honoring whistleblowers Snowden, Assange, Manning unveiled in Berlin
A statue depicting whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Julian Assange and Chelsea Manning was unveiled in Berlin on Friday, as a celebration of freedom of expression and the courage to expose truths, Sputnik reported.
Entitled "Anything to Say?", the artwork comprises three life size figures standing atop three chairs in Berlin's Alexanderplatz, while a fourth chair to one side remains empty, suggesting a platform for bystanders to stand up on to address the public.
"Public Art has the power to make people grow and change their point of view. The chair has a double meaning. It can be comfortable, but it can also be a pedestal to rise higher, to get a better view, to learn more," the Italian artist behind the work, Davide Dormino, says of the project.
But would-be whistleblowers won't have to be in Berlin to stand up and have their say: the intention of the project's organizers is to take the monument on a world tour.
Dormino and Charles Glass, an American journalist and author, came up with the idea as a counterpoint to monuments that celebrate the powerful. British journalist Vaughan Smith, who organized the crowdfunding campaign to complete the project, agreed with the sentiment.
"If you look at the statues we do have, they’re mostly of people who’ve done various things during our past in conflict and killed rather a lot of people," Smith told the Independent. "I think it’s refreshing to have a statue that’s perhaps owned by the public a little bit more."
The statue was also intended as an intentional counterpoint to the tradition of public war monuments, according to organizers.
"The Dormino statue pays homage to three who said no to war, to the lies that lead to war and to the intrusion into private life that helps to perpetuate war," says the website for the project.