Now Claudia Roth’s authority is in demand
Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth, WELT author Swantje Karich
Source: Michael Kappeler / dpa; Martin UK Lengeman / WELT
The first major test of the new Minister of State for Culture is existential. You must respond to allegations of anti-Semitism against the Documenta. Several artists are said to have questioned the state of Israel. Why the survival of the festival depends on their reaction.
KMinister of State for Culture Claudia Roth will advise on January 17th – if her corona infection allows it – with the sponsors of the Documenta, the state of Hesse and the city of Kassel. The reason for this urgent digital meeting are serious allegations against the festival: in the selection jury, in the collective space, which is curating the festival, and among the invited artists are said to be BDS supporters, even more artists who alongside Palestinian nationalists question Israel’s right to exist.
In 2019, the German Bundestag classified the campaign calling for a comprehensive boycott of Israel as “anti-Semitic”. Roth’s green party also spoke out in favor of this. Her predecessor Monika Grütters had recently repeatedly warned of the increasing divisions in the German cultural scene and criticized the “Cosmopolitan Initiative” in which representatives of important cultural institutions – such as the Humboldt Forum – had distanced themselves from the resolution. But the debate never really gained momentum.
Now Roth must prove her authority. Because the tension is increasing between the BDS sympathizers and those who brand BDS proximity as anti-Semitism and call for the exclusion of the artists. Somewhere in between are all those who see the 2019 resolution as important, but see compliance as “unrealistic” and call for critical debate. But even they often do not offer more than to allow participation.
And where is the Documenta? In the selection jury for space The Indian artist Amar Kanwar, who has repeatedly called for a boycott of Israel, was seated. So in Kassel you knew what you wanted – and now you got it. A buttery-soft commitment against anti-Semitism and racism, as now made by the documenta, is not enough as a reaction. Otherwise we will experience a repetition of 2017 afterwards, when ignorance became a scandal.
For the performance “Auschwitz on the beach”, Franco Berardi combined European migration policy with the Nazi death camps. The attempt to delete the Documenta ended in disgrace.
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