Kunsthalle Osnabrück. Forum Democratic Cultre Contemporary Art. Sound Design. 2022


www.kunsthalle.osnabrueck.de

The Forum demokratische Kultur und zeitgenössische Kunst (Forum DCCA) looks at the political dangers facing the arts. It encourages discussions

of issues that are important for an open society. The focus is on addressing racism and antisemitism. These problems keep coming back.

[Racism means: Someone believes: Humans belong to different races. Some races are better than others. Racist people always believe:

Their own race is the best.] [Antisemitism means: to have prejudices, hatred and hostility against Jewish people.] From this perspective, the forum

looks at waves of Romanticism. It also looks at Völkisch ideas that were common back then. Völkisch is a German word. It means: belonging to

the people of a nation. It is also a racist word. It means: One nation is better than other nations. During the era of Romanticism, people often used

this word in Germany. It was part of their everyday language.

Two new video works will be shown in the ruin. They look at the topics of Romanticism, antisemitism and the rejection of modernity.

[Modernity is the term used to describe social changes from the 18th century onwards. Modernity stands for democracy and freedom for all people.]

What connects these topics? How they do affect us? How were things in the past? And how are things today?

The video works contrast two narratives. The first film was shot in 3 different locations. They stand for the mystification of the so-called “cultural

nation” of Germany. [Mystification means: Something is retold more beautifully than it was in the past.] In German Romanticism, some places were

especially important: Valhalla in the Danube Valley, the Ruin Theatre in Bayreuth and Peacock Island in Berlin. These places are shown in the video.

They are shown together with repeated images of Romanticism from the computer game Elden Ring. The forum has also written song lyrics.

The artist Verena Dengler performs these lyrics at the Ruin Theatre in Bayreuth. The song is about an antisemitic theatre play that Turkish President

Recep Tayyip Erdogan wrote himself. The second film shows footage from the grounds of the Ausschwitz-Birkenau memorial site. The period of

Romanticism was very important to the Nazis. Many ideas of Romanticism became part of their ideology. [Ideology means: What values do people

have? How do they see the world?]



Video piece from:

Fabian Bechtle & Leon Kahane