2024-08-31 11:38:52
Lars Henrik Gass directed the Oberhausen Short Film Festival for almost 27 years. After a call for unification with Israel, activists launched a boycott. Now go Gass. In the interview he explains how campaigns controlled by anti-democratic parties work in today’s cultural world.
Most recently, the director of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Lars Henrik Gass, and the festival were the subject of an unprecedented boycott campaign – because Gass called for solidarity with the victims of the Hamas terrorist attack on October 7th in a Facebook post affect. Many filmmakers and distributors then stayed away from Oberhausen – now Gass has announced his departure from the Short Film Festival. Chat with him about the boycott strategy used by activists, the collapse of the bourgeois culture industry – and where Gass is going next.
WORLD: Are you still worried about the anonymous campaign?
Lars Henrik Gass: It’s a pretty fast learning curve for all of us. I have to understand how this affects the economy and why it also affects people who are thought to be rational. It is clear that such campaigns can provoke intense anger, even against a festival like the one in Oberhausen with a global view of the world.
WORLD: It was a real “Great Oberhausen”.
Gas: Apparently we should demonstrate in an exemplary way how high the cost of showing mercy to Israel can be. At their core, such campaigns are a social system of reward and punishment. Anyone who defies the cultural code – I defy it – is punished. Those who repeat are rewarded by membership and access to resources. This is what I call the pressure to conform. Different opinions will not be accepted.
WORLD: Have you seen who started the campaign?
Gas: No, maybe from Germany. There is a very small field of smart business leaders, especially in the higher education sector, who have really mastered this aggressive process. This includes an anonymous and prophetic message that appeals to spread civil society ideas about humanity and equality in order to mobilize the largest community of people in the shortest possible time. These are democratic forces that want to express their interests through anger management.
WORLD: Influences like the BDS movement.
Gas: BDS does not play a role either. The new strategy of anti-Israel activism is to give an appearance of humanity and peace-motivation and thus target civil society, and that works better than with BDS. In this way, many people who cannot honestly be said to have anti-democratic goals have directly supported them. They also remain cautiously cautious when it comes to strict measures against anti-Semitism that represent more than just symbolic politics.
WORLD: Oberhausen’s campaign was the first to be aimed directly against the human mind.
Gas: I was faced with a decision: either leave it in the open – or say what was happening in the open. And that’s exactly what I tried to do, hoping that the results would be drawn.
“Evidence to the decline of the middle class”
WORLD: Are the results drawn?
Gas: Not until today. Check out the Culture Council’s paper from July 1st, “Protecting freedom in the arts, combating anti-Semitism and racism in the cultural sector!” On the one hand, there is a desire to “solve” the problem, but on the other hand, the responsibility for carrying out this process is assigned to voluntary self-regulation in the field of culture, i.e. educational efforts. The book completely ignores the nature and function of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism, ie ideology, cannot be resocialized through education; That didn’t work with the old Nazis. Consider anti-Semitism in American universities, which hardly suffers from a lack of education. Such a book is proof of the resignation of the middle class, which does not want or can shape the process and it retreats into political politics.
WORLD: Are you satisfied with the support you received from the city of Oberhausen and its festival team?
Gas: Oberhausen has always taken a clear stand against anti-Semitism and even maintains a memorial hall for the victims of National Socialism, who were also the target of death by Pro-Palestine activists. But even in Oberhausen people do not understand that anti-Semitism is not only a problem of right-wing extremism, but also of left-wing radicalism and Islamofascism – and of the new alliance of all these forces. There is at least one question in the Hessian state parliament as to why the director of a state festival has supported the campaign against the Short Film Festival with his signature.
WORLD: That’s the “Go East” chapter, if I’m not mistaken. It is possible that there is still a person on the new selection committee for the Berlinale competition drawn against Oberhausen.
Gas: It is not a great crime to impose on us, but I see this behavior, blacklisting and boycotting, as inconsistent with our cultural mission.
WORLD: Now, sometimes public support just hides the fact that people would like to get rid of a controversial figure.
Gas: Not in my case, otherwise I wouldn’t have offered a contract extension. Maybe he was a little depressed, shocked by the anger that was done to us, like all of us. They even called me a “fascist” on Facebook. So we have to develop a security plan for the festival that is more stable than the Berlinale. We have a safety responsibility to our guests. Coded displays of behavior then lead to further rejection and hatred. But there are no interruptions, only lively discussions.
WORLD: What do you think would be an effective approach to anti-Semitism in the cultural sector?
Gas: It’s not a question of whether this or the image can be shown, but rather the question: Is there a right to publicly have racist or anti-Semitic actions and statements supported by public funds? In my opinion, there is no obligation to support propaganda under the protection of artistic freedom. This is also the idea of the proposal from the Berlin Senator for Culture Chialo. We will not ignore the rules if we want something to change. And that has nothing to do with infringement on artistic freedom. Article 1 of the Constitution enjoins us to protect human dignity as a matter of priority.
WORLD: Now there is art funding for creating works, and there is funding for publishing them, like in exhibitions or in cinema.
Gas: Therefore, problematic works such as “Tokyo Tapes” can be presented at Documenta. However, in the general picture of the exhibition, for me the curatorial system represents a collective retreat of the bourgeois subject; no one is responsible anymore. The “Tokyo Tapes” are clearly anti-Semitic information. Cultural policy and cultural management are completely exhausted.
WORLD: He has been the director of the Short Film Festival for almost 27 years. I can’t think of a comparable length of time in private festivals.
Gas: Sir Alex Ferguson was the manager of Manchester United for a long time.
WORLD: Where are we going now?
Gas: In Stuttgart, from February next year, I will be the founding director of the House for Film and Media. The building is the first cultural building in Germany that is really dedicated to film and media only since the Frankfurt Film Museum 50 years ago, which we also want for Berlin. It should be aimed primarily at civil society. Compared to the ZKM in Karlsruhe, it represents more of an umbrella for all film and media initiatives, a place for media practice and presentation, which is of course also intended to provide its own artistic releases. There will be two cinemas as well as exhibition areas and theaters, workshop rooms and restaurants – in a new building on the current site of the Breuninger parking garage.
WORLD: That’s the thing: culture replaces power. Isn’t the project called “Stuttgart 31” a possibility?
Gas: (laugh) Of course it won’t be my fault. The opening is currently scheduled to take place in 2029.
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