Berliner Herbstsalon - on belonging

First, let me interrupt this post with a note about this blog.

I haven’t been writing regularly. I started the blog planning to share teaching and inspiration. But in my daily life I was thinking of story in terms of the content I was encountering in Berlin and on my travels. I was thinking of stories in terms of the media I saw and the conversations I heard and the differences between what I was reading in the US headlines and what I was hearing and experiencing in daily life.

So I’ve decided to experiment and use this space to share thoughts of what I’m seeing, thinking about and doing. Sometimes I’ll share notices of upcoming programs. Sometimes I’ll talk about travel or exhibitions I attend. And sometimes I’ll talk about projects, both client projects and personal projects.

Okay, so this is what I’m planning to do going forward. And I’m challenging myself to write every weekday for two weeks to test this out and get some of my thoughts out from my head and into writing.

Reflections on the Maxim Gorki 4th Berliner Herbstsalon: De-Heimatize It!

AN ART EXHIBITION, CONFERENCE, YOUNG CURATORS ACADEMY EXPLORING THE THEME OF HEIMAT (GERMAN FOR HOMELAND, BUT MORE COMPLICATED)

If I was to summarize the ideas I’m reflecting on below, I would say that I feel it is important for people impacted by history to tell their own stories and for others to hear these stories. It is important for people to embrace their identity, including all that it entails. It is important to add new narratives to our collective dialog, to listen and witness these narratives and to reflect on how these narratives change our own perceptions.

Notes from the Conference, Day 1, Panel 1: De-Heimatization in Historical and Contemporary Perspectives

See the full day on YouTube or on their website: Berliner Herbstsalon Conference

From my understanding, the term Heimat, or homeland, is complicated. In the current German political context, Heimat has been used to indicate who ‘belongs’ to Germany. Belonging being different from being.

The question of who belongs is being raised by right-wing parties across the globe, including the United States of America where I am from. In the US, everyone except for native Americans has immigrant backgrounds and the question being asked is who has the right to be in the US. There is active discourse of race in spaces of protest, academics and the arts.

When I first arrived I was told by another artist that I could not use the term ‘race’ in Germany. I felt accused of racism just in using the term race.

In fact, Germany does not collect statistics on race. One former East German person told me that after Hitler, Germany doesn’t collect these statistics because they have moved beyond race. But not tracking this information hasn’t removed racism.

I feel like there are interesting contradictions in the discussion on Heimat. There is a tendency for people to want to fight for inclusion within discussions of the problem of the term Heimat but not to allow people to ask others where they are from. The question of background based on race or geography seems to be the problem; when the problem, as I see it, is that we are not embracing the diversity that exists and has existed within the German, and world, context.

After Day 1 of the conference, I sat down for lunch with a few of the other attendees and I asked them where they were from. One person responded that I was asking ‘that question.’

I felt bad for days about this response because I believe differently and I wasn’t able to articulate my viewpoint.

On that first day, I also met an artist exhibiting in the Herbstsalon Exhibition. Donna Miranda is a choreographer from the Philippines whose exhibition included three lectures. I attended all three which I’ll write about in a future blog post.

What is significant to this discussion is a conversation I had at dinner after the last day of lectures. I was speaking to the woman sitting next to me after having exchanged our mutual joy over having at the last minute, decided to try the ume onigiri (Japanese plum rice-balls), which were delicious.

Hesitant to ask her about her background but curious because she talked about the challenges of learning the Filipino language, I asked and learned she was half Filipino half German. And furthermore, she talked about not understanding why she didn’t feel she belonged as a child when there was no discussion of race.

It was in college where she started embracing her identity and led her to begin studies in colonial German history, a history that hasn’t been taught in schools in Germany.

So stories are not being told because of race. Or, on the other hand, in the news stories are being told that reflect race but these are not told in their words and when told they are mostly negative..

Notes on the Exhibition: TLDR (too long, did not read) by Candice Breitz

Let me end this reflection by talking about a work that illustrates the power of giving voice to one’s personal story and the power of embracing one’s identify in its various racial and social contexts.

I had first seen Candice Breitz’s work in 2017 when she showed Love Story, at KOW here in Berlin as part of Gallery Weekend Berlin. That installation included a series of full-length interviews of each of the participants, coming from different countries, from different circumstances with different migration experiences, talking about the reasons there left their home countries, the process of getting to Europe and their current hopes and dreams.

Interviews were conducted during the European Migration Crisis and I watched the series at a time where Refugees Welcome signs were plastered throughout the city, on bar windows, shop doors, on formally typed white paper placed at cultural establishment entrances. Listening to these stories the meaning of the migration crisis took on many new meanings.

In the 4. Herbstsalon Candice was exhibiting TLDR (too long, did not read) and Profile (Variant B), portraits of sex workers based Cape Town who are affiliated with the activist organization, SWEAT (Sex Workers Education and Advocacy Taskforce).

Honestly, I wasn’t interested in the topic of sex work, having heard many stories of sexual liberation and empowerment living in San Francisco, but I was interested in Candice’s work. However, after the first minute of listening to the interview of a sex worker with purple lipstick, I wanted to listen to all the stories in the series. So far I’ve managed to listen to four out of 13 (I think).

Candice lets people talk. She lets them tell their own story. She lets them define themselves they want they’d like to be defined. And she lets people be people, not characters or subjects.

In a time when humans are operating with the assumption that attention spans are shrinking, I feel it is radical to showcase entire interviews. Not to mention, whose stories are being told.

In Part 2 and 3 of my reflections, I want to write about two other forms of storytelling that captured my attention. Donna Miranda’s archive and lecture series and Grada Kilomba’s Greek mythology series reframed.