Ukraine and Gaza: Culture of the Martial

Artists have been under suspicion ever since Plato wanted to exclude them from his state. In relaxed years, people only suspect what they do or don’t do. In tense times like ours, their political thinking is also under strict scrutiny. Their political thinking, even if it finds no noticeable reflection in their works, as in the case of Teodor Currentzi.

Whether you like him or not, Currentzis is currently the most interesting classical music conductor. He harnesses the old warhorses in such a completely different way that it shocks some and electrifies others. But because, it is said, he did not clearly distance himself from Russia’s war of aggression in Ukraine, Currentzis was disinvited from the Vienna Festival last month. Milo Rau, director of the festival, called the decision “no alternative” and announced his entry into the TINA party (There Is No Alternative) founded by Margaret Thatcher.

To anyone who listens to classical music, this disclaimer, preceded by many others in the industry, must seem absurd. For decades, conductors who had by no means clearly distanced themselves from the German Reich’s wars of aggression carried the baton. Eugen Jochum was even on Hitler’s “God-given” list, which did not harm his later career. However, wishing for him to fall silent would have been banal. Jochum’s recordings of Anton Bruckner’s symphonies with the Staatskapelle Dresden (1976–1980) remain unrivaled. With the Staatskapelle Dresden! There may have been state security employees among the musicians! You just don’t hear it.

It is not himself who is behind Rau’s coercive measures, but rather the powers that have been waging a war against Russia since 2014. Since 2022, almost every museum and every art association has felt compelled to put on an exhibition to honor the greater honor of the Ukrainian nation. Despite many chauvinistic capers, this would be easy to bear if valuable connections to Russia were not cut off and artists were required to swear oaths of loyalty, as if they wanted to enter the USA and had to affirm that they had no sympathy for communism, or no sympathy at all to cherish.

This is remarkable because the West’s ideology has long been that it grants freedom of expression. Yes, countries have been invaded on the basis of this freedom. In 2003, after France refused to go to the most murderous war of the 21st century (in Iraq), the French fries in the cafeteria of the US House of Representatives were renamed “Freedom Fries”.

In the meantime, along with the empty phrase “freedom,” we have also gotten rid of the empty phrase “peace.” Nowadays, especially in culture, everyone has to be “warworthy” and no one is allowed to demand a ceasefire. And so we find ourselves, at least mentally, on the other battlefield, in Israel.

The Berlinale honored Israeli filmmaker Yuval Abraham for “No Other Land,” a film that shows how Palestinian settlements in the West Bank are being systematically bulldozed by the army. What is often forgotten about the horrors in Gaza is that Israeli forces have killed around 400 people in the West Bank since the Hamas attack on October 7th. “First they only raided at night, now you have to expect them at any moment,” reports a hairdresser in Balata, near Nablus, to the “New York Times” (February 8, 2024). Abraham allowed himself to compare these conditions with apartheid, triggering the latest shitstorm by the state and the Springer Group.

The Golden Raspberry for the stupidest reaction in this matter goes to Minister of State for Culture Claudia Roth. Roth, who was accused of clapping when Abraham and his Palestinian colleague Basel Adra made comments critical of Israel, said that of course she had only applauded the Israeli, not the Palestinian.

Abraham told the Guardian (2/28/24) that Roth’s “divide and rule tactics” reminded him of military occupation. He is worried about his colleague who lives in the West Bank. Death threats were also received against him. “The fact that I am called anti-Semitic when I, as a descendant of Holocaust survivors, stand on German soil and demand a ceasefire is not only baseless, but literally threatens Jewish lives.” He wonders whether Germany intends to get over the guilt of the Holocaust in this way .

But the reason for the cancellation and denigration of critical artists is not just the desire to spoil history. Other possible reasons include geopolitical interests, authoritarian thinking and fear of strangers. This is proven by a case from Saarland.

After attacks by neo-conservative newspapers against the artist Candice Breitz, her exhibition about sex work in South Africa planned for this year was canceled by the Moderne Galerie Saarbrücken. Breitz, herself Jewish, had been critical of the Israeli government. When regional artists asked in shock whether their next funding application would be rejected if they were insubordinate, the Minister of Culture Christine Streichert-Clivot (SPD) referred to the Israeli Consul General Talya Lador-Fresher, who welcomed the censorship. According to Streichert, Lador “pointed out that every freedom has limits” (“Saarbrücker Zeitung”, February 9, 2024). The freedom to discuss sex work in South Africa ends when racist ministers are called “racist”.

The consul is not to be blamed, she represents her government and correctly recognizes that the criticism of it can be explained by the fact that “many cultural people are on the left.” (“Saarbrücker Zeitung”, January 26, 2024) What needs to be explained is that a minister allows herself to be praised by the representative of a right-wing state when she curtails civil liberties in Germany. Would she also welcome the praise of the Hungarian or Italian governments?

Streichert not only repeated the lie of the “Taz” (11/19/23) that Breitz was close to the BDS movement (Breitz would then be one of the very few BDS supporters who exhibited in Tel Aviv), but also explained this woman in horror No “stage” should be offered in Saarland. It is “part of a discussion” from which “members of our Saarland Jewish community are excluded and feel threatened.” The community is said to feel threatened by a Jewish woman’s exhibition about sex work in the already always empty Modern Gallery. This is either paranoid or demagogic. By the way, the minister may be reassured: Breitz declared last week in a semi-private circle that she was fed up with Germany’s “thought police” and, like many colleagues, was giving up.

There are currently two opposing tendencies: On the one hand, art, music and literature are intended to serve the propagandistic purposes of their belligerent and authoritarian financiers, especially the state. On the other hand, art, which is always ambivalent and therefore unreliable, and everyone who practices it are assumed to have undermining, dangerous, terrorist intentions. In a time of repression, many will censor themselves out of fear of the authorities and the press that follows them, culture will become impoverished; But there is also a good message: art, which one would have long ago considered to be incorporated, is once again becoming public enemy number one in its old age.