This Will Not End Well

Power Ekroth

Nan Goldin's acclaimed traveling exhibition, “This Will Not End Well”, produced by Moderna Museet in Stockholm, has become a thorn in the side of Berlin, where the opening took place on November 22 at the newly renovated Neue Nationalgalerie. It's not easy to work out why, and some background is needed on the complicated and tense situation in Germany and Berlin right now.

To begin with, the controversy is not about the content of the exhibition as such, but rather Goldin's personal stance against Israel's genocide in Gaza, and the terror in Lebanon. Furthermore it is about how she allows the exhibition to become a platform for her activism. This is no easy task in an increasingly authoritarian climate in Germany and Berlin, where, as Goldin points out, in a city that she once felt was a cultural hotspot, a city of freedom, there is a “cultural crackdown” on more than 180 artists and teachers who have been stripped of their work or otherwise silenced - often for something as banal as a like on Instagram. An ongoing archive of the silenced voices is being collected through The Archive of Silence.

The list of cultural figures from countries other than Germany is long. One example is Yanis Varoufakis, Greece's former finance minister, who was banned from entering Germany, but also from participating via video link in political video conferences because of his expressed support for justice in Palestine. The other day, the German Schelling Architecture Foundation withdrew its award to a British artist, James Bridle, because he signed an open letter calling for a boycott of Israeli cultural institutions just days before the award ceremony. The decision cites the German parliament's controversial anti-Semitism resolution as a factor behind the decision.

Nan Goldin, who was awarded Germany's prestigious Käthe Kollwitz Prize in 2023, is well known for her activist work, particularly in the fight against the Sackler family and their profiting from the opioid crisis, as well as for her involvement in the AIDS organization Act Up. Goldin was one of the signatories of an open letter in Artforum, published on 19 October 2023, criticizing the actions of the Israeli army in Gaza, and as she mentions in her opening speech, it is impossible to separate her art and her activism. The exhibition, which started at Moderna Museet in Stockholm, covers Goldin's entire artistic career, including her slide series The Ballad of Sexual Dependency, and went on to the Stedelijk Museum before it is now on display in Berlin, and will tour internationally to Pirelli Hangar Bicocca in Milan in October 2025 before ending its European tour at the Grand Palais in Paris in March 2026.

Until the last second, it was uncertain whether the exhibition would open; would Goldin be canceled? Would Goldin stop the exhibition? Would she be allowed to give her opening speech? Would the police use their usual violence against pro-Palestinian protesters inside the Neue Nationalgalerie? SITE Zones was there to document the opening speeches of Klaus Biesenbach, Fredrik Liew and Nan Goldin, the quality is cell phone and the sound is intermittent. But Goldin's voice is nevertheless strong and resolute.

Filmed documentation by Power Ekroth.

Half an hour after his speech and the activists left the building, Biesenbach returned to the podium to repeat his earlier speech, where he again pointed out Israel's right to exist and rejected all forms of cultural boycott and the BDS movement. Outside the glass wall, behind Biesenbach, activists unfurled a banner reading “STAATRÄSON IST GENOZID”, with several individuals standing behind Biesenbach in an attempt to prevent the reading of the banner, shortly after, police dismantled the banner. Images copied from Instagram video.

Never again?

Recently, on November 14, 2024, the UN Special Committee used the word genocide in a report on Israel's methods of warfare in Gaza, pointing to Israel's systematic blockade of Gaza and obstruction of humanitarian aid as means of collective punishment, as well as the disproportionate number of civilian victims, especially women and children. The UN therefore calls on the countries of the world to take action to stop Israel's violations of international law. However, in Germany, organizations or individuals who publicly support the UN's conclusions or express criticism of Israel can lose state funding and be labelled as antisemitic.

In Germany, any statement that “questions Israel's right to exist or calls for a boycott of Israel” is no longer considered eligible for public funding. The law follows Germany's decision in 2019 to label the international Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions (BDS) movement as anti-Semitic. Currently, organizations in Germany that openly support BDS, an international movement that aims to “stop international support for Israel's violations of international law by forcing companies, institutions and governments to change their policies”, are prohibited from receiving funding from the federal government. That this leads to absurd situations, layoffs, canceled exhibitions and impossible tasks was briefly described in SITE Zones a year ago.

Since then, the situation in Germany has further deteriorated for artistic freedom and freedom of expression.

On November 7, 2024, Germany adopted a new resolution by a large majority, despite legal experts arguing that the law is potentially unconstitutional. The resolution, entitled Never Again is Now: Protecting, Preserving and Strengthening Jewish Life, gives schools and universities the power to suspend or deregister students who criticize Israel. The aim, according to the resolution, is to “protect, preserve and strengthen Jewish life in Germany”. But Amnesty International and several Jewish organizations argue that the resolution increases tensions between minorities, restricts freedom of expression and empowers the far-right. They point out that the resolution links criticism of Israeli policies with anti-Semitism in a way that could undermine the fight against real anti-Semitism.

A further layer of concern is that the resolution does not distinguish between anti-Zionism and antisemitism, thus equating Jewish identity with Israeli policies. The artist Candice Breitz, Jewish and critical of Israeli policies, has labeled herself and all Jewish voices raised against Israeli policies as a “bad Jew”. She counts Martha Gessen, Eyal Weizman and Deborah Feldman among them.

Many also react to the resolution's focus on so-called “imported antisemitism”, which allows for restrictions on migrants' rights and asylum seekers' applications, but also to sweep under the carpet that antisemitism very much exists “from within”.

A group of Jewish and non-Jewish academics produced an alternative bill published in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, which proposes that the state should not have the authoritarian power to define what constitutes antisemitism. Instead, it should be subject to academic and societal reflection, using international definitions as a guide. The authors argue that their proposal shows how the state and civil society can protect Jewish life without pitting minorities against each other, and stress that effective policies against antisemitism and racism require a pluralistic self-image and a strong democratic civil society.

Despite the far-reaching implications of the resolution, the demonstrations outside the Bundestag, organized by the Arts & Culture Alliance the day before the vote, attracted only a few hundred participants. Several spokespeople for the organization Jüdische Stimme für gerechten Frieden in Nahost (Jewish Voices for Just Peace in the Middle East) warned here that the law does not create protection for them, but will increase their sense of insecurity, alienation and isolation.

In a city with such deep-rooted historical traumas of anti-Semitism, fascism and genocide, the meaning of 'Never Again' should not be so vague. The trend of equating any criticism of Israel with antisemitism, particularly through the adoption of the controversial IHRA definition of antisemitism, coupled with the encouragement of universities to cooperate more with intelligence services for increased surveillance and persecution of Palestine solidarity protesters, points to an increasingly authoritarian society. This is happening in parallel with legal action against student protests, and with non-EU citizens at risk of losing their visas and being suspended from their studies, and there is reason to believe that the resolution hits the most marginalized students the hardest.

In a statement on social media, the Jewish Voice organization said that the resolution will “affect many Anti Zionist Jewish student organizers for opposing a Genocide that is conducted in the name of their religion and culture. This has nothing to do with Jewish life or safety and everything to do with Germany's national identity and further authoritarian state policies that are capitalizing on war and militarization. Germany is oppressing any opponents of the Israeli Genocide in the name of Judaism and is constantly equating our religion and culture with one of the most violent states to have ever existed. This makes Germany the eternal protagonist of making Judaism seemingly inseparable from extreme violence.”

On October 14, 2024, Nan Goldin was arrested along with Laura Poitras and 200 other activists of Jewish Voice for Peace who organized a sit-in for Palestine outside the New York Stock Exchange. They criticized arms sales to Israel. Goldin is quoted in Hyperallergic as saying: “I'm proud to have been arrested if it helps get our message across” in connection with this.

Photo: Alexa B. Wilkinson, Jewish Voice for Peace

Here, then, is the dilemma for Berlin and Germany: the exalted American artist, who also happens to be Jewish, is an outspoken supporter of the BDS movement. She has even been arrested for saying so in public. However, under German law, and especially after the arrest effect of the resolution, a German public institution cannot house or pay Goldin any fees. Nor provide an arena for her activism.

The director of the institution, Klaus Biesenbach, has chosen to remove his name from all press releases, leaving the Moderna Museet curator Fredrik Liew as the sole curator and sender of the exhibition. Furthermore, Biesenbach has chosen to organize a symposium in the days following the opening entitled “Art and Activism in Polarized Times”. The event, which is formally separate from the artist's retrospective, will address Israel's war in Gaza, anti-Semitism and Islamophobia, according to the museum's website.

Goldin commented via her official Instagram account @nangoldinstudio:

"I want it to be clear that I was not aware of the symposium until an ally sent me the press release, which connected it to my name and my show. I wanted it canceled from the beginning, but I was only able to divorce my name. It is clear to me that the museum organized this symposium as a prophylactic to secure its position in the German discussion — in other words, to prove they do not support my politics".

After her statement, Hito Steyerl, Martha Gessen, Eyal Weizman, Candice Breitz and the artist Raphael Malik, among others, dropped out of the conference. The moderators are widely accused of being Zionists.

What will happen to the seminar on Sunday, November 24th remains to be seen. But the violence on the streets of Germany, and especially in Berlin, an extremely well documented police violence against pro-Palestinian demonstrators, continues without any retaliation, the police seem to have been given the green card to do what they want from the highest authorities. It is a very tumultuous time, characterized by silence, frustration for artists, writers, journalists, it is a suffocating experience of confinement, coercion and above all violence. The violence is totalitarian, it is widespread, systematic and extremely well documented police violence and violence against the constitutionally protected freedom of expression.

A Norwegian artist who divides his time between Oslo and Berlin has decided to devote more of his life to attending demonstrations and rallies in Berlin to feel like he is “doing something” about the frustrated situation: “The feeling of hopelessness and breathlessness forces me to the street, it doesn't matter if I get arrested, I feel a kind of meaning of life with it, I have to go out on the street to speak out! But I also get exhausted after the demonstrations for days, often I get persistent migraines, so I can't go to more than three demonstrations a week.”

The law of the baton and the choreography of violence

Every demonstration in Berlin for a free Palestine, with a permit, is lined with thousands of riot police with guns and helmets. The demonstrations are peaceful, with protesting Jews, Palestinians, Germans and a group of Berlin's large international community walking together, many with several different flags flying, the Palestinian, Lebanese and rainbow flags. The demonstrations follow a kind of script, and the crescendo starts when the police officers put on their helmets. The demonstrators follow other security measures, such as disableing the fingerprint unlocking of cell phones to secure documentation of police brutality for instance. Everyone knows hot it will unfold, i.e. the choreography where the police form up in groups and run into the crowd without regard to make a completely arbitrary arrest of anyone in the group. The police carefully record their actions themselves, which seems absurd. Some of the police officers do not participate in the violence, their only task is to film the events with cameras on high poles.

Those arrested are dragged away, and even if they do not put up the slightest resistance, they are subjected to beatings and completely unjustified strangulations and beatings under the heading of 'miscellaneous'. Young people, the elderly, wheelchair-bound and even eight-year-olds are chased, arrested, wrestled to the ground and spend a few hours in detention. The demonstrations are broken up and the police follow them down into the subway stations and onto the trains to beat up demonstrators who continue to sing “Free, free Palestine” or wave the Palestinian flag, because after official demo-hours they no longer have an official permit.

The claim that a genocide is taking place is now officially legal in Germany, following a judicial review. According to the same legal process, it should also be legal to say “from the river to the sea”, but the Berlin police do not care about that - on the contrary - they invoke the right of the baton instead, and in several videos you can see how they justify and defend arrests with “She really said ‘from the river to the sea’, I saw it”. The fact that the video recordings document that no one said the words before arrests is uninteresting, the law of the police and violence trumps.

After the demonstrations, hundreds of mobile phone videos are uploaded on social media where the excessive use of force by the police is demonstrated, proven, witnessed and spread - but not picked up by the media. The Springer Group's newspapers instead consistently describe the demonstrators who want a free Palestine as “Jew-haters” (Judenhasser) or Hamas supporters (Hamas-Unterstützer).

To understand why Germany closes its doors, pulls down its blinds, passes laws and makes resolutions, one needs to understand the concept of “Staaträson” which is repeatedly invoked. Staatsräson can be translated as 'state interest' or 'state reason' - or 'national security'. It is the principle that a state must sometimes act in the best interests of its survival and stability, even if this may contradict moral principles or laws. It is about an overriding national interest that prioritizes the existence and sovereignty of the state over other values. Germany uses Staaträson to legitimize decisions regarding its relationship with Israel as part of its post-war reconciliation policy - i.e. the commitment to protect Israel's existence is paramount to political opinion.

The concept of Staatsräson has existed in German political theory for centuries, but its use as an official political principle became more prominent with Angela Merkel's statement in the Knesset in 2008 that “Israel's security is part of Germany's Staatsräson”. This set the tone for a new era in which Staatsräson became a public principle rather than just an underlying doctrine.

A shift?

The day before the resolution was passed, on November 6, the German coalition government fell and new elections will take place in February 2025. Many believe that the only winners in the new elections will be the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD), where antisemitic voices will have a completely different resonance. That's why Nan Goldin's opening speech becomes a symbol of faint hope, echoing Marlene Diedrich's song “Ich hab' noch einen Koffer in Berlin”. Dietrich sang from her exile after criticizing the Nazis, putting her finger on a nostalgic sense of belonging and a hope of returning that many 'sorted out' individuals exiled from Germany could relate to. It was a reminder of the city's role as a cultural center before the war and became a symbol of longing, identity and reconciliation in a time of division and change. Is Germany's staaträson complicit in today's genocide? And can Germany's evolution towards an authoritarian police state be derailed, delayed or prevented?