Post by Admin on Nov 24, 2023 12:05:48 GMT
Government and media threaten Documenta art exhibition with cancellation
Sybille Fuchs, Verena Nees
13 hours ago
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/23/nugm-n23.html
While outright genocide is taking place against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, leaving millions of people around the world stunned and taking to the streets, Germany’s official cultural policy is turning into a shameless instrument of war policy.
Cultural functionaries, journalists and establishment politicians seek to outdo each other with their bizarre distortions and lies in order to present the mass murder of children, old people and women, the bombing of hospitals, the cutting off of electricity, the water supply and food for 2.3 million people as Israeli “self-defence.” In a grotesque verbal perversion, they use the accusation of “antisemitism” to subject culture and art to aggressive German great power politics and justify war crimes.
Most recently, this repulsive campaign has once again been directed against the Documenta in Kassel, which was already subject to attack last year. This most important international exhibition of contemporary art is now even threatened with cancellation. The thoroughly reactionary Commissioner for Culture and the Media Claudia Roth (Green Party) has threatened to halt the funding of the exhibition.
In the second week of November, the media, led by the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), mounted a shrill smear campaign against the renowned Indian author and cultural scholar Ranjit Hoskoté, who was part of a six-member committee to find a new artistic director for the next exhibition in 2027, the 16th Documenta. The previous director, Sabine Schormann, resigned during Documenta 15 last year after right-wing Zionist circles attacked the Indonesian curatorial team Ruangrupa as “antisemitic.” Her successor was Andreas Hoffmann.
After an article by Nele Pollatschek in the SZ on November 9 sparked renewed debate, the newspaper’s cultural correspondent in New York, Jörg Häntzschel, stoked the fire. Accordingly, Ranjit Hoskoté was accused of having signed an “antisemitic” appeal in August 2019, protesting a discussion hosted by the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai on “Zionism and Hindutva [extremist Hindu nationalism],” which was also supported by representatives of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel. It was “antisemitic,” Häntzschel avers, to describe Zionism as a “racist ideology” which “calls for a settler colonial and apartheid state in which non-Jews have unequal rights, and which in practice has been based on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for seven decades.”
Immediately after the article appeared, other media outlets raged against the Documenta exhibition and called for its end. The Green Party’s in-house newspaper, taz, ran with the headline “The only thing that will help now is to stop funding” and accused Hoskoté of “Jew-hatred.” It was a scandal, according to these reactionaries, that even the new Documenta management had not succeeded in “changing anything about the organised irresponsibility of this event. The promise to no longer allow hatred of Jews was just lip service.” News weekly Der Spiegel accused Documenta of “ignorance,” and the notoriously right-wing Jürgen Kaube asked in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “When will Claudia Roth take action?”
For her part, the deplorable Roth declared that the statement signed by Hoskoté was “clearly anti-Semitic and bristling with anti-Israel conspiracy theories.” She threatened: “There will only be a financial contribution from the federal government for the next Documenta if there is a joint plan and visible reform steps towards clear responsibilities, a genuine opportunity for the federal government to participate and standards to prevent anti-Semitism and discrimination. I do not yet see a basis for this.”
Ranjit Hoskoté then announced his resignation from the selection committee, followed by the Israeli artist, philosopher, psychoanalyst and theorist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. A few days later, the other four members of the commission, Simon Njami, Gong Yan, Kathrin Rhomberg and María Inés Rodríguez, also resigned. In their letter of resignation, they explain: “If art is to take account of the complex cultural, political and social realities of our present day, it needs suitable conditions that allow for its diverse perspectives, perceptions and discourses.”
They defend Hoskoté and go on to write that “the dynamics of the last few days, with the unchallenged media and public discrediting of our colleague Ranjit Hoskoté, which forced him to resign from the selection committee, make us very doubtful as to whether this prerequisite for an upcoming edition of Documenta in Germany is currently in place. ...We do not believe that under the current circumstances in Germany there is room for an open exchange of ideas and the development of complex and nuanced artistic approaches that Documenta artists and curators deserve.”
Sybille Fuchs, Verena Nees
13 hours ago
www.wsws.org/en/articles/2023/11/23/nugm-n23.html
While outright genocide is taking place against the Palestinian population in the Gaza Strip, leaving millions of people around the world stunned and taking to the streets, Germany’s official cultural policy is turning into a shameless instrument of war policy.
Cultural functionaries, journalists and establishment politicians seek to outdo each other with their bizarre distortions and lies in order to present the mass murder of children, old people and women, the bombing of hospitals, the cutting off of electricity, the water supply and food for 2.3 million people as Israeli “self-defence.” In a grotesque verbal perversion, they use the accusation of “antisemitism” to subject culture and art to aggressive German great power politics and justify war crimes.
Most recently, this repulsive campaign has once again been directed against the Documenta in Kassel, which was already subject to attack last year. This most important international exhibition of contemporary art is now even threatened with cancellation. The thoroughly reactionary Commissioner for Culture and the Media Claudia Roth (Green Party) has threatened to halt the funding of the exhibition.
In the second week of November, the media, led by the Süddeutsche Zeitung (SZ), mounted a shrill smear campaign against the renowned Indian author and cultural scholar Ranjit Hoskoté, who was part of a six-member committee to find a new artistic director for the next exhibition in 2027, the 16th Documenta. The previous director, Sabine Schormann, resigned during Documenta 15 last year after right-wing Zionist circles attacked the Indonesian curatorial team Ruangrupa as “antisemitic.” Her successor was Andreas Hoffmann.
After an article by Nele Pollatschek in the SZ on November 9 sparked renewed debate, the newspaper’s cultural correspondent in New York, Jörg Häntzschel, stoked the fire. Accordingly, Ranjit Hoskoté was accused of having signed an “antisemitic” appeal in August 2019, protesting a discussion hosted by the Consulate General of Israel in Mumbai on “Zionism and Hindutva [extremist Hindu nationalism],” which was also supported by representatives of the BDS (Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions) campaign against Israel. It was “antisemitic,” Häntzschel avers, to describe Zionism as a “racist ideology” which “calls for a settler colonial and apartheid state in which non-Jews have unequal rights, and which in practice has been based on the ethnic cleansing of Palestinians for seven decades.”
Immediately after the article appeared, other media outlets raged against the Documenta exhibition and called for its end. The Green Party’s in-house newspaper, taz, ran with the headline “The only thing that will help now is to stop funding” and accused Hoskoté of “Jew-hatred.” It was a scandal, according to these reactionaries, that even the new Documenta management had not succeeded in “changing anything about the organised irresponsibility of this event. The promise to no longer allow hatred of Jews was just lip service.” News weekly Der Spiegel accused Documenta of “ignorance,” and the notoriously right-wing Jürgen Kaube asked in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung: “When will Claudia Roth take action?”
For her part, the deplorable Roth declared that the statement signed by Hoskoté was “clearly anti-Semitic and bristling with anti-Israel conspiracy theories.” She threatened: “There will only be a financial contribution from the federal government for the next Documenta if there is a joint plan and visible reform steps towards clear responsibilities, a genuine opportunity for the federal government to participate and standards to prevent anti-Semitism and discrimination. I do not yet see a basis for this.”
Ranjit Hoskoté then announced his resignation from the selection committee, followed by the Israeli artist, philosopher, psychoanalyst and theorist Bracha Lichtenberg Ettinger. A few days later, the other four members of the commission, Simon Njami, Gong Yan, Kathrin Rhomberg and María Inés Rodríguez, also resigned. In their letter of resignation, they explain: “If art is to take account of the complex cultural, political and social realities of our present day, it needs suitable conditions that allow for its diverse perspectives, perceptions and discourses.”
They defend Hoskoté and go on to write that “the dynamics of the last few days, with the unchallenged media and public discrediting of our colleague Ranjit Hoskoté, which forced him to resign from the selection committee, make us very doubtful as to whether this prerequisite for an upcoming edition of Documenta in Germany is currently in place. ...We do not believe that under the current circumstances in Germany there is room for an open exchange of ideas and the development of complex and nuanced artistic approaches that Documenta artists and curators deserve.”