I have just come back from 5 days in Prague . Like Berlin the air is thick with Remembering and Forgetting .Unlike the Berliners their decisions meant they kept their jewel of a City intact but there was a heavy price to pay
The young Czech guy who drove me to Prague explained that the then Czechoslovakia chose to acquiesce to Hitlers demand for Sudetenland which had a sizable ethnic German Population at the urging of the Allies even though they had a strong army and industrial base on which to fight. In the end they were occupied and became a key part of the German war machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia#Demands_for_Sudeten_autonomy
They also chose to become communist after the excesses of facism.
After the war all Germans were expelled from Sudetenland ,the Jewish community had dwindeld to 1% and the Czech Republic for centuries a place where all Europe met and traded is now more monocultural than ever before.
Every decision has a consequence that echoes throughout subsequent decades centuries and millenia. It is unacceptable for Germans to act in a way that can be construed as racist but so many immigrants tell me they are discriminated agaist personally and systemically and that Germany, unlike the US or Australia, does not allow for social mobility for immigrants even after several generations in Germany.
I suuggested an exercise that would allow people to confess the things they were gulity about and then be assisted to produce a Video to the German Chancellor asking for Action .
While the other artists and the curator were well within their rights to question the subtlety and artistic merit of my proposal they went further and claimed that we artists as foreigners had no right to address such issues in our art
I objected to the idea that artists should not be allowed to address such issues in their work and explained my proposal would give People the opportunity to identify their own issues and assistance to do something about it. I was also told that direct quotation of religous symbols such as the confessional were also not appropriate.
Here is a visual represntation of the act of Remembering and the many ways we try to Forget
The young Czech guy who drove me to Prague explained that the then Czechoslovakia chose to acquiesce to Hitlers demand for Sudetenland which had a sizable ethnic German Population at the urging of the Allies even though they had a strong army and industrial base on which to fight. In the end they were occupied and became a key part of the German war machine.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/German_occupation_of_Czechoslovakia#Demands_for_Sudeten_autonomy
They also chose to become communist after the excesses of facism.
After the war all Germans were expelled from Sudetenland ,the Jewish community had dwindeld to 1% and the Czech Republic for centuries a place where all Europe met and traded is now more monocultural than ever before.
Every decision has a consequence that echoes throughout subsequent decades centuries and millenia. It is unacceptable for Germans to act in a way that can be construed as racist but so many immigrants tell me they are discriminated agaist personally and systemically and that Germany, unlike the US or Australia, does not allow for social mobility for immigrants even after several generations in Germany.
I suuggested an exercise that would allow people to confess the things they were gulity about and then be assisted to produce a Video to the German Chancellor asking for Action .
While the other artists and the curator were well within their rights to question the subtlety and artistic merit of my proposal they went further and claimed that we artists as foreigners had no right to address such issues in our art
Here is a visual represntation of the act of Remembering and the many ways we try to Forget
