Public Art: The Right to Remember and the Reality of Cities

Ulf Aminde is an artist and filmmaker. His productions often negotiate public space and are also shown there. Many of them initiate collaborations and collective learning environments. In his filmic work he negotiates the potential of self-empowerment through the performative camera, alienation effects in the documentary and strategies of subjectification. His film works are usually also characterized by a collaboration with the protagonists and experimental settings. His most recent works deal with memory and resistance. In Cologne, he is developing a cinematic and, through the use of Augmented Reality, participatory memorial to the memory of the racist bombings of the NSU terrorist network in Probsteigasse, 2001 and Keupstraße, 2004. He is also a professor of Performative Spaces at the Weißensee Kunsthochschule Berlin. There, together with Miriam Schickler, he initiated the *foundationClass for artists who had to flee their home countries.

İbrahim Arslan survived the racist arson attacks in Mölln in 1992, in which his grandmother Bahide Arslan, his sister Yeliz Arslan and cousin Ayşe Yılmaz lost their lives. He has been involved in anti-racism work for many years, reporting from the perspective of those affected at events, conferences and, above all, in schools as a political education speaker throughout Germany. Through the “Möllner Rede im Exil” (Mölln Speech in Exile), which he has been organizing since 2013 together with his family and circle of friends in memory of the racist arson attacks in Mölln in 1992, he established a new culture of remembrance in Germany that actively involves the relatives of racist murders and attacks and fights against forgetting. İbrahim Arslan is an ambassador for democracy and tolerance. (Taken from the website of the Heinrich Böll Foundation.)

Gürsoy Doğtaş is an art historian, publicist, and curator working at the intersections of institutional critique, structural racism, and queer studies. He received his PhD from LMU Munich on Chantal Mouffe's theory of democracy in the exhibition discourse of biennials (2020). Since 2014, he has taught courses and lectured at the Academy in Berlin and Munich, Fachhochschule Potsdam, among others. He curated the discursive program of Public Art Munich (2018) and exhibitions such as “Die kalte Libido” (The Cold Libido) at Haus der Kunst/Munich (2015); “Das Kleid sitzt nicht” (The Dress Doesn’t Fit), Curated by, Vienna (2013). From 2007 to 2013 he was the editor of the artistzine “Matt Magazine”. In the framework of ICI (Independent Curators International) in New York, he co-edited the publication The Politics of the Melancholic Voice - Zeki Müren's 'Kahır Mektubu' (Letter of Sorrow) about the culturally specific melancholy of the Turkish singer Zeki Müren. He is a researcher at the University of Applied Arts in Vienna.

Talya Feldman is a media artist from Denver, Colorado (USA). She received a B.F.A. from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago and is currently studying at the Hochschule für bildende Künste Hamburg. She received the 2021 DAGESH Art Prize for her installation “The Violence We Have Witnessed Carries a Weight on Our Hearts” at the Jewish Museum Berlin. A survivor of the attack in Halle (Saale) on October 9, 2019, Feldman received recognition for her subsequent projects against right-wing terror.

Simon Fujiwara’s work can be described as a highly personal exploration into the industry of the individual in a hyper capitalist, socially mediated world. In this seductive yet fraught arena, the British-Japanese artist is drawn to investigate and reveal the paradox of our simultaneous quest for fantasy and authenticity in the culture we consume. His work, which ranges from video and installation to sculpture and drawing, often references and replicates real world forms of education or entertainment, such as theme park rides, models and miniatures, or wax works. In his recent exhibitions – which include a full-scale reconstruction of the Anne Frank House (Hope House, 2017), a “rebranding campaign” of his former high school art teacher (Joanne, 2016-2018) and a theme park ride that takes you into the world of YouTube (Empathy I, 2018) – we observe a distorted reflection of the real world through the artist’s fantastical and sometimes disturbing universe.

Sophie Goltz lives and works in Salzburg and Berlin as a curator, art educator, and writer. In 2020, she was appointed director of the Salzburg International Summer Academy of Fine Arts. From 2017 to 2020, she taught as an Assistant Professor in the new Museum Studies and Curatorial Practice (MA) program at the School of Art, Design and Media at Nanyang Technological University Singapore and served as Deputy Director of Research and Academic Education at NTU Center for Contemporary Art Singapore (NTU CCA Singapore). From 2013 to 2016, she was the Artistic Director of Stadtkuratorin Hamburg. From 2008 to 2017, she worked as a curator at Neuer Berliner Kunstverein (n.b.k.), where she also became the Head of Communications and Art Education until 2013. Most recently, Goltz published Culture City. Culture Scape. (co-authored with Ute Meta Bauer and Khim Ong, NUS Press, 2021) and Passages. Art in Public Space Hamburg since 1981 (forthcoming, Spector Books), which reflects on her time as Artistic Director of Stadtkuratorin Hamburg.

Ayşe Güleç is an educator, author and research activist at the intersections of anti-racism, migration, art and art education. Currently, Güleç is part of the Artistic Team of documenta fifteen. From 2015 – 2017, she was a documenta 14 staff member as a community liaison in the artistic director's department. From 2018 to 2019, she was the head of art education at the Museum of Modern Art in Frankfurt am Main. She was active in the collective movement „NSU-Komplex auflösen“ (unraveling the NSU-Complex) and was involved in the preparation and coordination of the tribunal „NSU-Komplex auflösen“, which took place in Cologne in May 2017. From 1998 to 2016, she led the development, management, and implementation of (inter)cultural aesthetic activities, educational opportunities, and European networking at the Kulturzentrum Schlachthof Kassel. For documenta 12, she developed the documenta 12 advisory board to develop and link the show with individuals, groups in Kassel and subsequently became the spokesperson. She became an advisory member of the Maybe Education of documenta 13 and trained a group of art mediators.

Dr. Noa K. Ha is an urban researcher. Since October 2021, she has been teaching at the Kunsthochschule Berlin-Weißensee in the MA Spatial Strategies with Prof. Dr. Bonaventure Ndikung and Prof. Nasan Tur, and is leading the National Discrimination and Racism Monitor (NaDiRa) at the DeZIM Institute (German Center for Integration and Migration Research, Berlin) as a substitute until February 2022. From July 2020 to September 2021, she was acting Scientific Director at DeZIM. From 2018 to 2020, she led the Center for Integration Studies at TU Dresden as Executive Director and Junior Research Group Leader. From 2013 to 2017, she was a research associate and post-doc at the Center for Metropolitan Studies (CMS) at TU Berlin. She is a founding member of the society for racism-critical, postcolonial and decolonial research and practice (DeKolonial e.V.i.G.). and is active in the Asian-German association korientation e.V..

Oliver Hardt is a director and filmmaker. For many years, his documentary films have explored Black history and culture, often with a focus on contemporary art, architecture and design. His internationally acclaimed films include Black Germany (2006), an intimate study of the thoughts and feelings of a not-so-small minority in Germany; The United States of Hoodoo (2012), a road trip to the spiritual sources of African American culture; David Adjaye - Collaborations (2015), a portrait of the Ghanaian-British star architect; most recently, The Black Museum (2018), a documentary about the National Museum of African American History and Culture in Washington, D.C., whose creation Hardt filmed over several years. Hardt's films have been screened at film festivals and on television around the world, as well as in the context of exhibitions, including at the Haus der Kunst in Munich, the Art Institute of Chicago, the Garage Museum in Moscow, the Museum of the African Diaspora San Francisco, and the Guggenheim Museum Bilbao.

Jörg Heiser is an art critic, university lecturer, curator and musician. At the University of the Arts in Berlin, he is Dean of the Faculty of Fine Arts and Executive Director of the Institute for Art in Context. For twenty years he worked as an editor for the magazine frieze. His books include All of a Sudden. Things That Matter in Contemporary Art (2008) and Double Lives in Art and Pop Music (2019). Since 2004 he has curated numerous group exhibitions, including Romantic Conceptualism (2007/08, Kunsthalle Nuremberg and Bawag Foundation Vienna, catalog); in 2018 he was co-curator of the Busan Biennale in South Korea (catalog). The second album by the band La Stampa, of which he is a member, was released in 2018 by Vinyl Factory, London. Most recently, his book Freiheit ist kein Bild (2021) was published.

In spring 2014, the anti-fascist initiative “Das Schweigen Durchbrechen!” (Breaking the silence!) was founded as an initiative to remember the victims of right-wing terror in Nuremberg with the goal of establishing a permanent memorial in Nuremberg. Since then, the initiative organizes annual rallies at the crime scenes to commemorate the murdered. In doing so, it is important to name the social conditions under which the National Socialist Underground was able to emerge and murder. The initiative does not want to neglect the active commemoration of those murdered by the NSU and the demand for a dissolution of the NSU complex, nor does it want to remain silent about virulent anti-racist, feminist and other social disputes.

Oliver Koerner von Gustorf is a freelance writer and art critic living in Berlin. He writes for magazines such as Monopol, Blau, AD and daily newspapers such as taz, Freitag, Welt. Koerner has been working freelance in the field of corporate publishing for the art department of Deutsche Bank for 20 years. In 2007 he founded the gallery SEPTEMBER in Berlin, which closed in 2014. His recent catalog publications include essays in Rainer Fetting, Blumen & (Hatje Cantz, 2021) and Marc Brandenburg, Hirnsturm (Kerber Verlag, 2021).

Dipl-Ing. Mark C. Kücking is a landscape architect and chairman of the association BauLust Initiative für Architektur & Öffentlichkeit e.V. The Nuremberg-based association has set itself the task of sensitizing the urban public to the architecture of the city. In addition to panel discussions, lectures and exhibitions, the association is also concerned with projects aimed at improving life and architecture in Nuremberg. Furthermore, the association takes a stand on sensitive architectural building projects. This includes the question of how to deal with the Nuremberg Nazi Party Rally Grounds.

Birgit Mair holds a university diploma in social science and is co-founder of the Nuremberg Institute for Social Science Research, Education and Consulting e.V. (ISFBB), co-author of the international study on Nazi forced labor “Hitlers Sklaven” (“Hitler's Slaves”), authored several publications on Holocaust survivors as well as extreme right movements. She conceived the nationally acclaimed exhibition “The Victims of the NSU and Coming to Terms with the Crimes” and conducted more than three hundred eyewitness interviews with Holocaust survivors. In 2012 and 2013, she observed the Bavarian NSU parliamentary investigative committee, and later the Munich NSU trial.

• www.isfbb.de<https://www.isfbb.de>
• www.opfer-des-nsu.de<https://www.opfer-des-nsu.de>
• www.die-letzten-zeugen.de<https://www.die-letzten-zeugen.de>

Zoë Claire Miller, born 1984 in Boston, is an artist / curator / activist who lives and works in Berlin. She is a spokeswoman of the bbk berlin (berufsverband bildender künstler*innen berlin e.V., the professional association of artists), and co-founded the Berlin Art Prize. Her recent work includes a horticultural-sculptural collaboration for the Bergen Assembly in Norway, a community effort to exorcise capitalism via raku ceramics at Floating University and The Society for Matriarchal World Domination (self-explanatory).

Andrea Pichl lives and works in Berlin. Studied Fine Arts at the Berlin Weißensee School of Art and at Chelsea College of Art, London. Solo exhibitions among others: Kunsthalle Rostock, Museum Dieselkraftwerk Cottbus, Landesmuseum Brandenburg, Galerie Weißer Elefant, L40 Kunstverein am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Krome Gallery, Luxembourg, IG Metall, in collaboration with Haus am Lützowplatz, Berlin, Museum Moritzburg, Halle /Saale, Landesmuseum Sachsen/Anhalt, M HKA, Museum for Contemporary Art, Antwerp, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin, National Gallery Tashkent, Uzbekistan, Mies van der Rohe Haus, Berlin, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Berlin (stage design), Künstlerhaus Bethanien, Berlin, Contemporary Art Centre Vilnius, Lithuania, Kumu Art Museum, Tallinn, Estonia. Group exhibitions among others: Kunsthalle Wilhelmshaven, Prater Galerie Berlin, Kunsthalle Rostock, Werkleitzfestival Dessau, ZKR, Center for Art and Public Space, Schloss Biesdorf, Berlin, Saarländische Galerie, Berlin, Hartware Medien Kunstverein, Dortmund, L40 - Kunstverein Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz, Krome Gallery, Luxembourg, Deutsches Haus, NY University, New York, Skulpturenmuseum Glaskasten, Marl, Kunsthistorisches Museum Schloss Ambras, Innsbruck, Hamburger Bahnhof, Berlin.

Olu Oguibe is a multi-media artist whose work often straddles minimalist formalism and social engagement. His work has been widely exhibited in museum and gallery shows, as well as biennials and triennials. He has also created several public works in many countries. In 2017 his “Strangers and Refugees Monument”, a public sculpture in Kassel, Germany, received the Arnold Bode Preis for documenta 14.

María Inés Plaza Lazo, born 1989, enjoys developing curatorial and communicative strategies for others, individuals and institutions alike. She grew up in Guayaquil, Ecuador, and lives and works in the streets of Berlin and the world. Trained as an art historian at the Ludwig-Maximilians-University of Munich and the Catholic University of Eichstätt, she is founder and editor of Arts of the Working Class, together with Paul Sochacki and Alina Ana Kolar, a multilingual street newspaper for poverty, wealth and art. Since 2018 Arts of the Working Class is published bi-monthly and features contributions from artists and thinkers from different fields and countries. It is aimed at the working class, at everyone, and it is about everything that belongs to everyone. Everyone who sells it makes money. Street vendors keep the full price. Every artist whose work is advertised helps to create it.

Pope.L, born 1955, is a visual-PERFORMNACE artist AND EDUCATOR from the United States CURRENTLY living in Chicago. He has been teaching visual arts at the University of Chicago since 2010. PRIOR HE TAUGHT THEATER AND FILM FOR TWENTY YEARS AT BATES COLLEGE IN LEWISTON, MAINE, USA. He has a long record of both solo and group exhibitions. Recent exhibitions include "Misconceptions" at Portikus Frankfurt (2021); "Pope. L: Instigation, Aspiration, Perspiration," three complementary exhibitions in New York, at the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Museum of Modern Art, and with the Public Art Fund (2019-2020); "Whispering Campaign" at documenta 14, Athens and Kassel (2017); "Claim" at the Whitney Biennial (2017); "On the Tip of the Tongue" at the Museum of Modern Art Warsaw (2016); "Baile" at the 32. Biennial de São Paulo (2016); "The Public Body" at Artspace, Sydney (2016). Pope.L has received numerous awards and fellowships, including the United States Artists Rockefeller Fellowship, the Solomon R. Guggenheim Fellowship, and the Andy Warhol Foundation Fellowship. HE IS A BASTARD.

J.P. Raether is an artist and professor at the Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg. In his artistic work he cares for a system of constructed identities (Avataras, AlterIdentities or SelfSisters) that appear in various places in public space where they research, teach and tell stories. These so-called aLifveForms - Transformella, Protektorama, and Swarm Beings - challenge conventional assumptions about identities, bodies, and technology. Works and performances have been on view at the 9th Berlin Biennale, Palais de Tokyo in Paris, Fridericianum in Kassel, and transmediale 2017 in Berlin, among others. Solo exhibitions have taken place at Kraupa-Tuskany Zeidler in Berlin, Kunstverein Düsseldorf, Transmission Gallery in Glasgow, and Ludlow 38 in New York City, among others. At AdBK Nuremberg, Raether directs the newly created postgraduate master's program Live Art Forms, which connects performative and aesthetic practices in public, digital, and global spaces - within the visual and performing arts and beyond.

Monique Roelofs is Professor of Philosophy of Art and Culture at the University of Amsterdam. Her research focuses on the relation between aesthetics and politics, attending especially to facets of race, gender, nation, coloniality, and the global. She is the author of Arts of Address: Being Alive to Language and The World (2020) and The Cultural Promise of the Aesthetic (2014). Her articles have appeared in numerous venues, including differences, Confluencia, Flash Art and Texte zur Kunst. Roelofs has recently completed a new book manuscript, Aesthetics, Address, and the Politics of Culture. She is also coauthoring a book on aesthetics and temporality in Latin(x) America and coediting the anthology Black Art and Aesthetics: Relations, Interiors, Reckonings.

Kerstin Stakemeier, Professor of Art Theory (Academy of Fine Arts Nuremberg), works in teaching, organizes exhibitions and writes. In September 2021 she opened the exhibition and publication project Illiberal Arts with Anselm Franke at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin. With Bill Dietz, the seminar Universal Receptivity resulted in an online and print publication (March 2021), with M. Ammer, E. Birkenstock, J. Nachtigall, and S. Weber she developed the exhibition series and journal Class Languages (2017/18), and with Marina Vishmidt she wrote Reproducing Autonomy (2016). In 2017, b_books PoLYpen published the monograph Entgrenzter Formalismus. Procedures of an anti-modern aesthetics.

Cassie Thornton is an artist, activist and writer who makes a “safe space” for the unknown, for disobedience and for unanticipated collectivity. She uses social practices including institutional critique, insurgent architecture, and “healing modalities” like hypnosis and yoga to find soft spots in the hard surfaces of capitalist life. Cassie has invented a grassroots alternative credit reporting service for the survivors of gentrification, has hypnotized hedge fund managers, has finger-painted with the grime found inside banks, has donated cursed paintings to profiteering bankers, and has taught feminist economics to yogis (and vice versa). Her 2020 book, "The Hologram: Feminist, Peer-to-Peer Health for a Post-Pandemic Future" is available from Pluto Press.