Violent reaction in Germany is not fatigue-it is a strategy that disguises as a hayd Fatima Aydemir
IN SPORTS, black athlete is often myths: supernatural speed, exceptional strength, genetics like magic. However, in public places, a black person meets suspicion, fear or anger. The new piece of dances, Joanna Tishkao RaninAnd that was first shown in the prestigious performance stage in Berlin, last week, opens this tension and carries it to see.
The work itself builds every day: Four artists move in circles through an empty stage. It brings the so-called “pedestrian movement” from postmodern-walking dance, standing, and sitting-a kind of movement that is almost neutral, invisible, in a collision with the black body. When a racist person simply moves, simply breathes in our common streets, it seems that the piece is asking, is this neutral?
The audience was With great happiness. We were lucky enough because we witnessed a dance performance that turns into a hidden metaphor, a playful mirror of what is happening around us now in the cultural scene in Berlin. It seems that the issues of participation and the unconscious bias regarding race and sex are no longer in the center of the discourse. Not because they were already answered, but because they were silently pushed, in favor of a hollow neutrality, a return to the current situation.
For a few years, it looked as if something was turning in cultural institutions in Germany. In the aftermath of Black Lives Matter and #Metoo, suddenly there were paintings everywhere in structural racism, sexual shares and obligations to diversify programming. Berlin, which is proud of its progressive form, rushed to the final model of diversity. It was, for a while. But now mood ChangeLargely.
Throughout the city, it seems that the appetite of “diversity” has passed. The energy and resources that were once placed in the anti -racist and comprehensive work, and diversity programs are the first Sacrifice When austerity measures are taken. In the arts of Berlin conference Earlier this year, Tischkau said: “As a black, edge and sex German woman, she managed to slip through the very short window of the so -called” aperture of diversity “.
The closing window is not just a Berlin story. It is global. In the United States, the reverse reaction is much higher and more radical. Under Donald Trump’s presidency, critical race theory is Threaten. Diversity training has been banned in federal institutions. Universities and educational areas are targeted to teach dates that recognize regular racism. The message is clear: diversity is dangerous.
This speech itself makes its way across the Atlantic. In Germany, Fur Deutalland, the right -wing alternative (AFD) framing diversity and gender policy as “ideological indoctrination”. It attacks cultural institutions that stipulate the marginalization of voices, and frame them as anti -Germans and extremism. And increasingly hears.
But not only the success of the extreme right in the recent elections or severe budgets that feed the cultural policy. The violent reaction was there since the first day, and I have grieved with sadness over the years in various secret places, came from inside the house. This came from many of the people we work with daily, who will get to know themselves as progress, and those who claim that they only look at the “quality” of work, rather than the identity of its author, which they believe, of course, are completely neutral.
The state -funded diversity programs were good on paper, but they were always troubled to implement. Many people who have worked within German cultural institutions in recent years will tell you how difficult it is to fight to persuade their colleagues that white, heterogeneous or European positions are not in itself the art of “better” art. As if it is not the issue of references and knowledge when considering the artistic works that we find more valuable and any of the ones that we do not simply understand. To expand our views, we must recognize the societies and topics that have been represented by an act of an act in an act of cultural and artistic spaces, so that we can find ways to achieve a balance between them, with specific calls, invitations and financing.
However, of course, limited resources in the arts and culture lead to competition, which sometimes turns into a ruthless defense of privileges. Everything that deals with marginalization is classified immediately “wake up”. The colored artists must justify their success, which is suspected of being a result of preferential treatment instead of the result of their crafts and effort. These mechanisms usually play behind closed doors of jury committees and bodies whose work is completely secret. But once the dispute over diversity becomes public, it is immediately compensated through the political right.
When she was granted Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) to her International Literary Award To the Senegalese author Mohamed Mbujar Saar in 2023, there are two members of the jury later I criticized publicly The arbitration process was that identity and race issues had excelled, from their point of view on literary standards. They did not explicitly say that Saar did not deserve the prize, because this could have been ridiculous. The 35 -year -old has won awards around the world for his distinguished novel, the most secret memory of men.
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But they claimed that the members of the white jury had been silenced during the discussions, and that the white candidates were told. These allegations were immediately rejected by HKW, a space for multidisciplinary arts in Berlin known for its colonial approach. However, of course, the former crime members statement was a great benefit to AFD. The leaders of the extreme right -wing party in a Parliament question This summer, the general financing of “Pro-Migration” from HKW and the suitability of its manager.
The danger here is not only political, but is cultural. When institutions end their diversity diversity, when bodies are ashamed of “controversial” topics, when artists are told that their work is “very specific”, we only lose acting. We lose the truth, we lose the complexity. Because art must be free in the opposite of the world as it is, not only as the strong want to see it.
The opposite anti-diversity reaction is not just fatigue-it is a strategy. Like all reactionary movements, it denies as a return to “neutrality”. But this neutrality was never real, as Runnin reflects Tischkau strongly, without spelling it. It is not necessary, we can feel it. This is actually what makes the artwork great.
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Fatima Idimir, based in Berlin, is a novelist, theater writer and a columnist in Europe