Der Kampf um das Mahnmal ist bereits das Mahnmal

What can an active culture of remembrance look like that responds to the current shift to the right in Germany - and counters the rise of racist violence and ideologies?

We invite you to a lecture and discussion about the planned memorial on Keupstraße. On June 9, 2004, the right-wing terrorist network National Socialist Underground (NSU) detonated a nail bomb in Cologne's Keupstraße, seriously injuring at least 24 people. Instead of recognizing the racist motivation behind the crime, for years the investigations were directed against the victims themselves - a massive institutional failure. Today, over 20 years later, the memorial has still not been erected.

The event will focus on Ulf Aminde's artistic approach, which is contained in his statement "The struggle for the memorial is already the memorial": a working approach in which the memorial is not understood as a completed work/object, but as an open, conflictual process: In a lecture, he will present central aspects of this work as well as his artistic practice and teaching - in particular the memorial as a negotiation process, the use of augmented reality in public space, participatory strategies and the relationship between art, teaching and social intervention. Afterwards, there will be plenty of space for discussion and exchange.

Ulf Aminde is an artist and teaches as a professor at the weissensee academy of art berlin. In his work, he combines video, performance and social practice with participatory and collaborative methods. He focuses on questions of the public sphere, memory, power relations and collective action. In his teaching, he researches methods and principles of the power-critical design of space. In 2016, he initiated the *foundationClass for designers and artists who have experienced racism and flight. | www.ulfaminde.info

Sandy Kaltenborn is a communication designer based in Berlin. In his work he combines visual communication, design with artistic practice and social intervention. He is concerned with the public sphere, conflict, power relations and the question of how design intervenes in real social processes. He has been running the image-shift.net office since 1999. He currently holds the professorship for transformation design at the Academy of Media Arts Cologne.

www.image-shift.net

t-dsgn.de