2023-11-26 19:51:45
The “droning silence” that occurred shortly after October 7th, denouncing a lack of empathy towards the victims of the Palestinian terrorist organization Hamas’s brutal attack on the Israeli civilian population, has turned into nervous activism. Open letters are used to respond to open letters and, depending on the political situation, problematic terms such as genocide and apartheid are thrown out like rhetorical missiles or sanctioned as a communicative offense.
The cultural sector is in turmoil and increased uncertainty, and the list of canceled concerts, podiums and exhibitions is getting longer. Most recently, the Biennale for Current Photography in Mannheim, Ludwigshafen and Heidelberg was canceled after one of the curators, the Bangladeshi photographer Shahidul Amal, shared “anti-Semitic readable and anti-Semitic content” (as the organizers put it) on Facebook and “requested a request for one “didn’t want to follow the sensitive approach to his posts”. What may seem understandable or regrettable in individual cases reveals the pattern of a dilemma within the German cultural scene that not only questions the self-image of numerous events and institutions, but increasingly also raises the question of their existence.
Allow a little anti-Semitism?
This became clearest in the example of the Documenta art exhibition in Kassel, which takes place every five years, and which, after the anti-Semitism scandal of the 15th edition in the summer of 2022, was once again confronted with allegations of anti-Semitism when staffing a search committee for the upcoming exhibition. In an interview with the daily newspaper Die Welt, Roger M. Buergel, who, as the former head of Documenta, was involved in the appointment of the search committee, rejects a petty attitude that is used to look for the problematic attitudes of possible candidates. “We made it clear,” Buergel explains his role, “that there is a red line, but we did not search for signatures on petitions for identification purposes.” The Indian curator Ranjit Hoskoté, who came under criticism for signing an anti-Semitic petition, However, it showed little willingness to be committed to the guidelines of a sensitized Documenta.
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He riotously left the committee by quickly denying Documenta’s artistic freedom. The dilemma that exists beyond Hoskoté’s personality was summed up by peace and conflict researcher Nicole Deitelhoff, who contributed to a report on Documenta Fifteen. According to Deitelhoff, one cannot allow a little anti-Semitism in order to do justice to other perspectives that may prevail in the international art world. This has long since included double standards with regard to the noble concept of artistic freedom, which on the one hand is expected to make almost everything possible, but which is effortlessly thrown overboard when it comes to the activities of the boycott organization BDS with all the accumulated authority of the to support international art events.
Roger M. Buergel sees this much more calmly. He does not believe in an administrative logic of bureaucratization and transparency. Artistic things can always blow up in your face. “Sometimes it’s better to have a scandal that also says something about the present when you take the ball – that is, the energy and attention – to shape the situation.”
But how can the courage to take risks propagated by Buergel be reconciled with artistic statements that were recently suspected of promoting political propaganda of the worst kind? Elke Buhr, the editor-in-chief of the art magazine Monopol, first of all argues with the recently apparently forgotten statement that artists are not identical with their art. The omnipresence of social media and its dynamics, said Buhr on Deutschlandradio Kultur, have contributed to the poisoning of an atmosphere in which the genuine quality of art has come into a kind of competition with the raging pressure to confess.
The chance for mediation
In fact, despite ongoing military conflicts, in which emotions and arguments have recently become almost indistinguishable, the time has come for a discursive pause. In any case, it is not entirely understandable why the Federal Agency for Civic Education (BPB) canceled a symposium planned for December with the title “We still need to talk,” at which a “relational culture of remembrance” was supposed to be debated.
Undoubtedly, the events of October 7th and their consequences have also put tension in academic debates. Right now, however, it would be necessary to communicate with a heightened awareness about historical constellations and terms that have recently been circulating in phrases and inflationary terms in a camp conflict between postcolonial theorizing and supposedly Eurocentric perspectives.
Shouldn’t it be possible to reach an agreement that the Israeli army’s military operations in Gaza and Hamas’s will to destroy cannot belong to the same genocidal logic that must be rejected? And isn’t it important right now to free art from obsessive beliefs and conceptual corsets? Last but not least, there is an urgent need for a changed understanding of liberation. If the monstrous attacks by Hamas have shown one thing, it is the incompatibility of inhumane violence with the idea of a peaceful future.
Contrary to the malice with which a self-provincializing German cultural sector has recently been viewed with relish, we should urgently look for mediating positions and instances for whom artistic articulation is more important than momentarily being right in a conflict in which it seems difficult to deal with the phenomenon of anti-Semitism to be given the same attention as other forms of discrimination and exclusion.
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