Collective Amnesias
In the overfilled digital and analogue archives of the present day, access to materials related to artistic or political movements seems easier than ever. The commemoration culture, including entire “commemorative years”, has become a powerful sector of the culture industry. But strange exclusions and misrepresentations, suppressions and distortions occur in the omnipresent work this culture does on and with history. Even though one could not say that this is accompanied by a deliberate loss of memory, the effects of many kinds of historical reappraisal bear a dangerously close resemblance to one.
The present issue looks for themes and figures of collective amnesias and investigates their backgrounds. First of all there are the many links between individual and collective histories which contemporary art salvages from memory gaps and time holes. Then there are forgotten figures such as the Russian philosopher Michail Lifschitz, who offers provocative links in the here and now to a young generation of artists. And there are chapters of history that have not yet been properly reappraised, such as the Africa Conference in Berlin in 1884/85, the subject of a comprehensive pictorial article in this issue.
A special section looks at the way large events such as the Istanbul Biennial tend to wrap themselves in an aura of zeitgeist, yet largely exclude traumatic historical catastrophes such as the genocide of Kurds and Armenians. And the fatally short memory of imperial undertakings such as that by the USA in Iraq is also discussed. Here, an artists’ project examines what it means when, in the middle of Western society, citizens of Arab descent suddenly come under blanket suspicion.