Who abolishes it? – The freedom of thought?

On the debate around the campaign “Germany abolishes it“ by Martin Zet as part of the 7th Berlin Biennale 2012.

Statement by Katharina Kaiser, Independent curator, until 2011 director of the Haus am Kleistpark Berlin

The heated public discussion has not yet reached where Martin Zet’s artistic campaign began– with the power of a title composed of complex, interventionist language-art!

Of course also my personal spontaneous reaction to the campaign’s title, which I obviously shared with many other people, was: “I hope the artist won’t destroy the book.” My second thought went: “Why do I spontaneously assume that this Czech artist intends to destroy or even burn any books? Has he said anything like this?”

No, he didn’t.

What is happening in the minds of curators, directors and art organizers that they hasten to publicly revoke their previously confirmed support of this project while expressing their indignation?  And likewise, what leads newspapers and cultural programs to proclaim a scandal?

Back to the beginning:

What would have happened if the artist had called his projects “R e t u r n e d“? What would we have associated with this title?

Perhaps we imagine he would send Tilo Sarrazin five book packages a day, making Sarrazin continuously go to the post office to pick up and carry home his “hefty” social Darwinistic theses… or perhaps the artist would use the books to erect a large cone in front of the SPD-headquarter so that the comrades are really, for once going to read those racist theses and re-think whether someone who thinks like this should really remain a member of their party.

But the artist has called his work “Germany abolishes it.” Which means he has only minimally changed Sarrazin’s supremacy-jargon – and immediately (and rightly so) we associate something barbaric.

But the debate has yet to ask: how barbaric is Sarrazin’s language already in the mere title? And how barbaric is the book’s content?

No one asks either why the artist is using Sarrazin’s own language as a means of provocation? Or put differently: does the – known – artistic strategy of “critique through affirmation” work in this particular case?

These kind of questions are not being asked. No one revolts against Sarrazin’s language. The agitation, the presumed scandal, is directed solely towards the artist as the potential agent. It is towards him that we imply (on the basis of the thoughts and associations in the minds of those who read or hear his title) a “deliberate intention” – to consciously choose a legal term – in order for us to be able to revoke the originally granted support.

Already before the artistic campaign has ever really begun there is the urge to prevent the mere association called forth by the title. In effect, this means to limit the freedom of thought and of free association but also the freedom of art and that which the individual artist does –And this is done by the very people who pretend to protect the freedom of those that disagree with Sarrazin.

How can this public agitation over a free association provoked by an artist be explained?

The answer is contained within the very sentence that caused the agitation:

“Germany abolishes IT.” What could this IT be? In combination with “Germany” as the subject of this sentence the IT that ought to be abolished could be the collective unconscious, not a concrete book.

But as little as one can force a democratic way of thinking, one can abolish a way of thinking that is racist or prohibitive towards everything that is foreign. The latter however is already contained within the imperial gesture with which Germany is being used as the sentence’s subject and which immediately lends the IT a nationalist tone. This is the same kind of language, which for instance the party uses that calls itself “Pro Deutschland” and that was one the first organizations (alongside the NPD) to broadly criticize Martin Zet’s artistic project on their website. They go as far as to mount a distorted quote by Zet above a photo of Goebbels.

(http://www.pro-berlin.net/?p=4078)

The question remains:

Is one permitted to recycle books in the way the artist hinted at after the initial reactions? Even though the question could be related to the context of digital culture, I would still like to focus on the analog world: For instance what about the huge amounts of books that were trashed at the end of the GDR (among them many international classics or poetry)? What about the public libraries that without further ado dispose of all books that have lost their “timeliness” – started with the Nazi-books immediately after WW2? What happens with old text books? What do you do with your own books when you no longer exist and no one else wants to carry crates of books? Or do books become a fetish, more important than their actual content–as the artist has asked in an interview? (http://www.rbb-online.de/stilbruch/archiv/stilbruch_vom_19_01/die_sarrazin_installation.html)

A complex debate, instigated by a conceptual art project:

My interlocutor says: “You are implying that the artist thinks in such a complex way. But perhaps that’s not at all the case.” And I respond: “You are implying that the artist thinks barbarically, according to your own association, but that’s not at all the case.” A project that instigates such a discussion is already successful, independently from whether the artist originally intended it or not. Art is always also created in the mind of the viewer/reader.

So even before Martin Zet will have created an installation from the perhaps 100 or 600 donated books of the 1.3 million sold copies we ask ourselves: How many bound books will remain in one million households that will eventually be inherited to the next generation? How many more will be added through the new pocket book edition? How many hundreds will end up in the bin, for indifference or because people don’t want to “preserve” this openly racist book on their bookshelves? How many copies are inevitably going to be burnt or recycled at the dump together with the other trash?

Once Martin Zet will have stacked the consciously donated books in whatever shape as part of the 7th Berlin Biennale and hopefully all the articles, statements, emails, pamphlets (and also threats by neo-nazis and “civic” comments by “Pro Deutschland” and the NPD) will be displayed, this artwork will ask one additional question:

How many German cultural institutions and Kunstvereine in this particular case supported the freedom of art?

Who abolishes it? The freedom of thought and free association? In Germany and elsewhere?

23.01.2012