The
controversy with Taring Padi graffiti at Documenta fifteen provoked another wave of the conversation about antisemitism and fuelled a new round of discussions about contemporary Jewish identity, its perceptions and (self)representation in Europe and globally. Alongside the question about what constitutes Jewish identity today and how it is manifested in both Jewish communities and non-Jewish contexts, the discussion that mostly took place in the art-related media also addressed the topics of expectations, meanings and visual representations this - and other ethnic and religious - backgrounds carry. How should they be addressed via the artistic medium and who controls this?
The fact that this case resonated on so many levels signifies that the problem of antisemitism, racism, dominant national artistic canons, politics of inclusion and exclusion are still very much embedded into politiсal and institutional structures far beyond the art world. Also, it again demonstrated institutional attitudes to artists from ‘non-dominant’, ‘marginalized’, ‘exotic’, ‘ethnic’ backgrounds and positions they are being attributed to or are allowed to have and what functions they are allocated in the westernized art world. As Tomer Dotan Dreyfus, Jewish Israeli writer living in Berlin,
pointed out, ‘We never know if we are really accepted, or if we are playing a role’.
The panel will address the cases of transformation of Jewish identities and its perceptions in Germany and Russia today in the face of societal and political changes. After the collapse of the Soviet Union, a great number of Soviet Jews left, including for Germany, changing the dynamics of the Jewish community there. Most of the German Jews today are Jews of the former USSR and their descendants. The process of migration of the Soviet Jews to Germany in the 1990s coincided and overlapped with broader multicultural transformations and tensions within German society.
Juxtaposing the positions of Jews - and Jewish artists and cultural workers - in the both countries, we will talk about the relationship between the Jewish identity in contemporary Germany and Russia and the histories of the Jewish communities in these countries. How do the present-day notions of multiculturalism and hybridity problematize the notion of a fixed Jewish identity? How does Jewish identity intersect with the larger national identity in the time of changing national ideology, military aggression and appropriation of fascist rhetorics? What are the artistic strategies when it comes to integration into a bigger national narrative and what are the mechanisms of alienation from it? What are the relationship between artists, institutions and audiences within the discourse of identity politics, ‘ethnic quotas’ and policies of community engagement?
German poet, writer, and stage performer
Max Czollek will talk about the making and breaking of Jewish identity in contemporary Germany. Czollek will discuss the German memory culture and the radical change of the Jewish population in Germany, induced by Jewish immigration from the former Soviet Union starting 1989. Is the current dynamics of Jewish identity in Germany leading to a fundamentally new beginning?
Russian-Israeli artist
Haim Sokol will speak about modern Yiddish studies and culture – including in Russian and Israeli context – as taking place in the shadow of a loss. With the exception of the Haredi communities, most Yiddish speakers today are not native speakers. But Yiddish is not a dead language. It is the language of the dead. Therefore, for Sokol, the study of Yiddish and, in general, Jewish culture and history is connected with the concept of redemption: “The well-known expression – yidish redt zikh (Yiddish speaks [by] itself) – acquires a tragic meaning in post-war Europe. Yiddish is a language without a body. I mean of course, primarily the physical extermination of European Jewry by the Nazi regime and its accomplices. But one should also not forget the forced Russification and murder of the Jewish cultural elite in the USSR, and the suppression of Yiddish culture in Israel.”
American art historian and the author of the book “Turks, Jews, and Other Germans in Contemporary Art”
Peter Chametzky will speak about the notions of multicultural, cosmopolitan, hybrid, and un-fixed identity in German visual arts. Chametzky writes “By cosmopolitan, I mean to break with the normative stereotype that defines Germans as White and Christian. I am also alluding to the long and continuing history of Jews being labeled “cosmopolitans,” both in a positive and more often negative sense. Following Anthony Appiah and his book Cosmopolitanism, I wanted to present identities that are hybrid and transnational in a positive light. And like Max Czollek, I want to argue that the compulsion to “integrate” to a normative and outdated societal standard is counterproductive to individuals, to groups, and to the society as a whole.”