Participation for the entire two days is preferred, but not a requirement.
In recent years, debates on Holocaust remembrance and its entanglement with Europe’s accountability to its former colonies brought memory culture and political discurs, especially in Germany to a crisis. This crisis is mainly characterized by a clash between two agendas. On the one hand an attempt to hold on to universalist memory culture based on western authority over historical narratives. On the other hand, particular non western histories emerge from the global south as an attempt to challenge these national monolithic frameworks.
While this important discussion is one symptom of a changing world characterized by mass migration, the dismantling of communities through privatization and the collapse of liberal democracies, it is often reduced to rigid binaries as the understandable claim for historical justice becomes the main motivation for a culture war and political instrumentalization. Drawing from Primo Levi’s concept of Gray-Zone and Franz Fanon’s notion of Vertigo, the workshop challenges oppositional binaries between victims and perpetrators.
By initiating discussions on ethical, and moral dilemmas contested through films, critical, historical and literary texts, and Gal’s own extensive research practice It examines how binary notions of historical good and evil are destabilized in order to question cultural preconceptions and society's need to judge.
As an artform with major importance to representation and reenactment of historical events, cinema is the main artistic medium of the workshop. Using numerous examples from historical fiction and documentary films it showcases concepts such as empathic unsettlement, witness testimony, multidirectional memory, and the possibility of forgiveness. These notions are performed not only in front of the camera but also between the screen and the viewer, contesting spectator involvement and proposing dialogical as opposed to fixed models of history.
Accompanying texts by Peter Banki, Bashir Bashir, Rustom Bharucha, Kathy Caruth, Franz Fanon, Shoshana Felmann, Amos Goldberg, Margarida Hourmat, Amal Jamal, Elias Khoury, Dori Laub, Dominick LaCapra, Primo Levi, Mahmood Mahmdahni, Raya Morag, Michael Rothberg, Sharon Slivinsky, Beni Wictberg and Avot Yeshurun. As well as clips from films by Lilliana Cavanni, Samuel Fuller, Constantin Costa-Gavras, Claude Lanzmann, Gillo Pontecorvo, Thet Sambath, and others.
Dani Gal (1975, Jerusalem) lives and works in Berlin. He studied at Bezalel Academy for Art and Design in Jerusalem, Staatliche Hochschule für Bildende Künste Stäadelschule in Frankfurt and in Cooper Union in New York. His films and installations have been shown at the 54th Venice Biennale (2011), Istanbul Biennale (2011), New Museum New York (2012), Kunsthalle St. Gallen Switzerland (2013), The Jewish Museum New York (2014), Berlinale Forum Expanded (2014), Kunsthaus Zurich (2015) Kunsthalle Wien (2015), Documenta 14 (2017), Centre Pompidou (2018, 2023) and at Club TransMediale Festival Berlin (2020). This year Gal is a Fellow in the Centre for Advanced Studies INHERIT. Heritage in Transformation ist ein vom BMBF gefördertes Käte Hamburger Kolleg - Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin. In 2019 he was artist-in-residence with Blood Mountain Projects and research fellows at the Vienna Wiesenthal Institute.
When: Wed, Oct 29, 2025, 10:00 - 17:00 & Thurs, Oct 30, 2025, 10:00 - 16:00
Location: Virtual Realities Classroom, Nordbau 0508, Kunsthochschule Kassel
Language: English
Please register for this workshop by Monday, Oct 27, 2025:
forms.gle