The Forum Democratic Culture and Contemporary Art (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 Auschwitz-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?]
On October 15, 2022, there will be a theme day titled Frieden in Anführungszeichen [Peace in Quotation Marks]. The event is kindly supported by the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung.
The Forum Democratic Culture and Contemporary Art (DE) is led by the artists Fabian Bechtle and Leon Kahane. It was founded in 2018 as a project of the Amadeu Antonio Foundation. Most recently, Forum DCCA initiated the series “Continuities of Anti-Semitism” at Volksbühne Berlin (2020/21), collaborated with Hito Steyerl for her exhibition at Kunstsammlung NRW, K21, and developed a work on anti-modern continuities for Weserburg Museum für Moderne Kunst Bremen (both 2020). The exhibition at Kunsthalle Osnabrück will be Forum DCCA’s first institutional solo exhibition.
The exhibition is kindly supported by Kulturstiftung des Bundes, Beauftragte der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien, Niedersächsische Ministerium für Wissenschaft und Kultur, Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, VR Stiftung and Freund:innen der Kunsthalle Osnabrück.