Some time ago, I read the book The body in pain by American author Elaine Scarry, a classic on war, violence, and language. In her findings the goal and result of war is the destruction, injury, and mutilation of bodies, yet pain is removed from language and imagination in public discourses on war. War and violence are described in abstract terms, using words such as “defense, comradeship, honor, fatherland, military capability.” Reports on the progress of the front lines and territorial gains omit what war figures. Scarry writes that the only reason why people accept and even justify war in the first place is the fact that the body and its pain are turned invisible. Body in pain was published in 1985 but still carries relevance today.

When I saw Sven Johne’s Hochdruckversuch/Tiefbohrung (High pressure experiment/Deep drilling) for the first time, I was reminded of Elaine Scarry’s book. The body in pain, here it is. The artist turns the body visible, placing it at the center of his work. In the video, you see a man standing in a room completely lined with foil. His body is young, strong, he has the urge to be on stage and at the same time wants to hide away, as if he were afraid of his own courage. What better way to hide than behind being naked? The man has shed all individuality, clothes, adornments, hats.

From the off, there is the artist’s voice narrating – Johne tells how he rediscovered this recording of his from 25 years ago. Encountering his younger self triggers a monologue, a chain of associations, a journey into the past. He recalls his physical examination for the military service when he was 18. “Passed,” was the verdict. He could have joined any unit he wanted. In 1993 high school graduates in East Germany basically had to choose between “Go West” or “Join the Army.” To this day, East Germans are disproportionately represented within the German army.

Johne talks about the men in his family, his father, his stepfather, his grandfathers, who all were devoted soldiers in the Wehrmacht or in the NVA (National People’s Army). His stepfather was even a professional soldier in the NVA.

They were “dutiful soldiers,” he comments laconically, “only in retrospective it had always turned out to be totally wrong.” The narrator in the video calls the men in his family “fellow travellers” – supporters of the system, one might also say.

Yet, the war remained ingrained into the bodies of the warriors, long after battles had ceased. The stepfather had always let fresh bread harden, tells the voice, so that his stepson would not become spoiled by food. He also greeted in the mornings with “combat ready” instead of “good morning!”

While hearing these accounts, the viewer witnesses the young man’s body being hosed down with a hard jet of water, targeted as if with a weapon; only once one can see the person holding the hose dart across the screen. The water is ice cold, soon the skin tightens, reddens, the body begins to tremble, with one hand he brushes the water from his face, holds the other hand protectively over his genitals. He remains silent.

And while he increasingly gasps for breath, the voice narrates of his grandfather, who was only able to talk about his experiences in World War II after 1989. It seemed as if the big lie – the German Democratic Republic – had to collapse so that the personal, smaller lies could surface. This hatred for “the Russians” that needed to be suppressed for 40 years because they officially were “friends.” A hatred, however, that very soon turned into something else: into pity and empathy, because the Russians alike the East Germans experienced democracy as chaos and decay, considering themselves on the losing side after reunification.

The more the water splatters in the foil-lined room, the more the body suffers, the further back the narrating voice goes into memory. At the age of ten, the narrator says, he once secretly tried on his father’s NVA uniform and posed proudly in front of the mirror. What stuck with him was the idea that all strong men wore uniforms. As already described by Elaine Scarry, the slogans of that time hide the violence and pain. They read: “Peace must be armed”; “Your workplace – your battlefield for peace”; “If you want peace, you must be ready for war.” These slogans were used by the state leadership to justify military armament and the influence by the Soviet Union. The Iron Curtain fell in 1989 without anyone dying because the soldiers and border guards no longer wanted to be strong. Or because they realized that strength sometimes lies in doing nothing.

Is it really the case that East Germans today long more for peace because they have disclosed the war propaganda? Or because Soviet war propaganda is so deeply ingrained?

It is difficult to watch Hochdruckversuch / Tiefbohrung and not to immediately think of the young men fighting three thousand kilometers further east in the Ukraine, the young men on both sides of the front line. We do not know exactly what is happening there; it is beyond our conception. Sometimes media reports use a metaphor that already dehumanizes the soldiers: “meat grinder.”

For almost four years, the same images have been running on the daily news program: explosions, destroyed houses, crying people, bleeding civilians. And it’s astonishing how one gets accustomed to it. When the pain of others is so far away, this feeling almost bears doubt and lack of reality.

I think of the young men who will have to muster in a year’s time, because compulsory military service will be reinstated. Only men, though – gender equality has its limits. “We no longer live in peace,” said Chancellor Friedrich Merz on September 26, 2025. And they say we must talk about war to preserve peace. Defense contractors are earning billions, car manufacturers will be building tanks in the future, and the brightest minds of our generation are developing drones. Machines that kill from a distance, a weapon in which the perpetrator and its victim are also physically separated from each other, a weapon that radicalizes disembodiment.

The man being shot at with water shows us the vulnerability of his body. And he also shows us what is missing. He doesn’t make a sound. He doesn’t show any expression of cold, discomfort, pain; he endures, like a good soldier. I hear him scream: in my head.

(Against the disembodiment of war, by Sabine Rennefanz)