Statement by Axel Wieder, Pro qm

The first time I heard about Martin Zet’s project was when a staff member of the Berlin Biennale asked me whether I thought this idea could be realized. Despite its many open questions I liked the proposal for two reasons: on the one hand because of its discursive understanding of how Thilo Sarrazin’s book operates and on the other hand particularly because of its particular openness.

Firstly, of course the book is awful, both from a political and from a theoretical perspective. But what I find even worse is the fact that it has sold so well. It has caused a public debate in which observations and theses are simplified in a kind of negligent way. Instead of grasping the social dynamic in its complexity, it offers short-term solutions that perpetuate injustices while seemingly being based on scientific facts. Sarrazin’s book provokes a simplistic position and basically a shrinking of knowledge. This is also the reason why biologic arguments play such an important role for Sarrazin, even though the book is actually about political questions and which is how they should really be negotiated as. This is what Zet’s project is targeting, instead of focusing on the details – which this isn’t about anyway; not even for the defendants of the book, who merely use it to underpin their political attitude.

Secondly, as part of the 7th Berlin Biennale, the project is embedded in a conceptual framework that is important for the campaign. So far, there is not yet much to be seen of Martin Zet’s project. It’s really only starting now: what is going to happen after the call? How will the obviously brittle areas of the call be problematized? The curators of the 7th Berlin Biennale explicitly investigate the reciprocity of art and reality, granting the artistic field a larger, possibly activist scope of action. With “brittle areas” I’m not even particularly thinking of the stale taste that the extinction of books might provoke in our enlightened minds. While it’s probably not meant as a call for censorship, what is surprising is the precarious and probably consciously controversial intrusion on the high status we attribute to the idea of information. Furthermore, the project addresses the relation of populism and counter-populism, the scope of art and – through a kind of grandiose experiment – it also questions which processes can emerge from an artistic proposal that has to be conceptualized rather openly in order to achieve far-reaching results.

With the bookstore Pro qm we are now one of the places where the books can be returned to. I am not entirely sure, however, whether this makes us participate more or less in the project than any other critical observer. For us it was at first a gesture of solidarity towards the theoretically interesting and favorable exhibition project of the forthcoming Berlin Biennale, paired with a curiosity about what were to emerge from the exhibition proposal. After the massive protests – which we could also sense in our store – a political process has begun. Some institutions have issued statements calling the campaign a dangerous polarization, which in my opinion is not correct. For the art institutions it is particularly about an attitude: how can one position oneself politically? What is possible in relation to the funding institutions one depends on? And how does one want to be seen in the public discussion? These are the kind of processes, which the project makes visible in a – as I believe – very conscious manner.