The CPPD Micro-Grant was used to fund a panel on December 12, 2023, which examined the role of contemporary art and literary production in the context of current and past conflicts and wars. The focus was on two artistic positions from the fields of performance, photography, literature, theater or visual arts that deal explicitly with the topic of war in their work. In a three-hour discussion, the two positions were confronted with each other in order to shed light on the respective approaches in dealing with such a topic. In particular, the panel raised awareness of how to deal with the contradictions that arise in contexts of remembering violence and war and tied in with the topic of “Gegenwart erinnern”.

Speakers and artists: Wolf Böwig (war photographer and visual artist), Ronya Othmann (writer), Darija Davidović (theater scholar, CPPD), Marko Dinić (writer, CPPD)

The micro-grant was used to fund the event “Unser Denkmal bleibt! (K)Eine Frage deutscher Verantwortung” (“Our Memorial Stays! (Not) a Question of German Responsibility”) on December 16, 2023. Experts discussed the plans of the Berlin Senate and Deutsche Bahn to build a new S-Bahn line under the memorial to the Sinti* and Roma* of Europe murdered under National Socialism. They explained the current state of planning and the irreparable damage this would cause to the memorial and placed the debate, which is painful for many, in the context of Germany’s historical responsibility. The event was used as an opportunity to launch a crowdfunding campaign to preserve the monument.

Speakers and artists: Hamze Bytyçi (RomaTrial e.V., CPPD), Leah Carola Czollek (Institute for Social Justice & Radical Diversity), Kelly Laubinger (Managing Director of the Sinti Union Schleswig-Holstein, CPPD), Jana Mechelhof-Herezi (Stiftung Denkmal, Head of the Remembrance of Sinti* and Roma* Department).

The long-term project will train young people from different communities to become newsfluencers and journalists in order to generate outreach and publicity for relevant but neglected political and social issues.

The CPPD Micro-Grant enabled the implementation of the first project phase, in which the year-long project was conceived, the website was designed and two workshops on the topics of “Newsfluencer Interview and Panel Training” and “TikTok” were prepared. By raising media awareness and learning tools for dealing with history in journalistic contexts, the project aims to contribute to the pluralization of remembrance culture in Germany and beyond.

As part of the Fluctoplasma Festival – Hamburg’s Festival for Art, Discourse and Diversity, the CPPD micro-grant enabled the realization of three event formats. These included the lecture performance “The Missing Book of Lillith & Judith”, the event “Producing Discomfort – Perspectives on the Intersectional Cultural Sector” and a workshop on “Solidarity with Jewish Communities in Political Activism”. The events complemented the festival program with intersectional perspectives on pluralistic remembrance and revealed concrete possibilities for action to the audience.

Speakers and artists: Clara Laila Abid Alstar (conceptual artist, CPPD), Felisha Maria Carenage (artist), Melissa Kolukisagil (curator, CPPD), Nina Prader (artist, CPPD), Quyen Vo (journalist), radical_Jewish education collective.

“Standing Together” is a Jewish-Palestinian grassroots movement committed to peace and social justice in Israel. Two activists were invited to Germany after October 7 and the subsequent Israeli ground offensive in the Gaza Strip. The speakers took part as panelists in the event “Where there is struggle, there is hope” on November 27, 2023 in the Grüner Salon of the Volksbühne and in the event “Den anderen Weg suchen” on December 6, 2023 at the Rosa-Luxemburg-Stiftung. CPPD members and network partners were given the opportunity to network and discuss the events following October 7.

Speakers and artists: Alon-Lee Green (Standing Together), Rula Daood (Standing Together), Dinah Riese (journalist, CPPD).

In literary reportages, Olesya Yaremchuk investigated the fate of Crimean Tatars*, Roma* and Jews* from Ukraine who have found refuge in Germany.

The micro-grant enabled the research and conception phase as well as the journalistic implementation and follow-up of the reports. The articles were written in German and Ukrainian and will thus be able to raise readers’ awareness of migration and refugee movements in the contexts discussed.

İç İçe – Festival for New Anatolian Music is a festival for contemporary Anatolian music in Germany. From July 13-15, 2023, a small version of the Berlin festival took place in Munich, which included numerous music acts, workshops and panel discussions.

The CPPD micro-grant provided long-term support for the festival concept and curation. This enabled İç İçe to anchor music as a medium of collective memory for the visualization of a pluralistic culture of remembrance in Germany and in its event formats.

In the context of the emerging anti-racist learning and memorial site on Keupstraße in Cologne, which commemorates the NSU nail bomb attacks, six people were invited via the CPPD Micro-Grant to develop texts that will be integrated into the memorial site as future digital formats. The contributions diversify the future place of remembrance and are intended as a concrete implementation of multi-perspective remembrance in the urban space.

Contributors to the text: Ibrahim Arslan (education advisor, CPPD), Max Czollek (poet, writer, curator of the CPPD), Bassam Ghazi (theater director, CPPD), Bengü Kocatürk-Schuster (Domid), Seyda Kurt (writer), Deniz Utlu (writer, CPPD).

The CPPD micro-grant supported the development of a long-term knowledge exchange project entitled “The Glasgow-Berlin Summer Institute on European Urbanism: Colonial Modernity, Memory Culture and Anti-Racism”. The Summer Institute, a 10-day educational format and action platform for around 20 artists, activists, academics, policy makers and journalists, will alternate between Glasgow and Berlin on an annual basis.

Project participants: Dr. Ibou Diop, Dr. Noa Ha (Scientific Director of the German Centre for Integration and Migration Research (DeZIM), Dr. Giovanni Picker (Glasgow Project Leader, Jun. Professorship, Sociology, University of Glasgow), Nelson Cummins (Curator, Glasgow Museums – Project Leader of “Legacies of Slavery and Empire”)
Amy Rich (Project Manager, CRER – Coalition for Racial Rights and Equality,
Glasgow), Graham Campbell (Councillor, Chair of Glasgow City Council
Slavery Working Group)

The work “Frohes Neues Jahr” at the Museum Berlin-Karlshorst is a freely accessible, hexagon-shaped “time capsule” consisting of eighteen HD monitors mounted above and below one another. On these, New Year’s speeches by heads of government from the Soviet Union, Ukraine, Russia and Germany from the last 43 years can be seen and heard in a continuous loop. The work addresses the disintegration of the familiar historical narratives and politics of remembrance of the Second World War. Since the second invasion of Ukraine, the need to deal with the sometimes divergent and national politics of remembrance of the Second World War, its contradictory pre- and post-histories, has become more urgent than ever. The time capsule is intended to update the fundamental conflicts of interest that underlie the nationally connoted concern for a particular people and a particular country, whose well-being and prosperity are to be secured as a priority. The central aim is to transfer the hollow eloquence of the political address to the level of physicality and initially to make the competition of interests, the vying for legitimacy and the urgency physically tangible for the viewer.

The multi-year project will train young people from different communities to become newsfluencers and journalists in order to generate coverage and publicity for relevant but neglected political and social issues. The CPPD micro-grant enabled the implementation of the third project phase, in which a kick-off workshop and three further workshops were held for the participants to gain basic knowledge on the topics of “Panel and interview training”, “Tik Tok as a means of remembrance culture” and “Remembrance work in social media”. By sharpening media awareness and learning tools for dealing with history in journalistic contexts, the project aims to contribute to the pluralization of remembrance culture in Germany and beyond.

Project participants: Kim Ly (workshop leader, qualification: host of a TikTok format of RTL, journalist), Emily Laquer (workshop leader, founder of the activist agency), Denise Brechbühl-Diaz (social media support, qualification: language skills (German, English, Spanish), experience in social media management)

The Micro-Grant supported the participant fees for this event: On October 7, 2024, the Grüner Salon invited participants to a special event entitled »Gegenwart Erinnern: Eine Nacht der Trauer«. On the occasion of the terrorist attacks carried out by Hamas in Israel exactly one year ago, on October 7, 2023, and the subsequent war in Gaza, the focus of the event was on the complex and ambivalent topic of mourning, which was considered on this night in its complexity and multidimensionality, which constitutes its unique tension: as a cultural phenomenon that shapes collective memory, remembrance and identities, and as an individual, profound emotion. The aim of the event was to achieve a shared understanding of the complex interconnections and facets of mourning. The focus was on the question of how societies mourn and whether collective mourning can be a unifying force in the face of conflict and polarization. With this event, Hamze Bytyçi and RomaTrial e.V. built on the good cooperation with the CPPD to place October 7 in the context of remembrance politics.

Speakers, artists and other project participants: Max Czollek, Ahmad Dakhnous, Shai Hoffmann, Atalya Laufer, Hannan Salamat, Samuel Stern, Hadija Harouna-Oelker, Ariel Reichmann, Furkan Yüksel and others.

The “februarsturm” project is dedicated to the memory of the victims of the racist terrorist attack in Hanau on February 19, 2020. Based on the poem of the same name “februarsturm” by Ozan Zakariya Keskinkılıç, a lyrical short film is being made that brings together performative, lyrical, musical and cinematic arts in order to reach a broad public via digital channels, artistically process the memory of Hanau and strengthen empowering discussions about solidarity, resistance and remembrance. The project makes an artistic, aesthetic contribution to the pluralistic culture of remembrance by working in an interdisciplinary way and bringing poetry, music and film into dialog with each other.

Project participants: Tayfun Guttstadt, Kamil Bahtijar

The “Möllner Rede im Exil” is a commemorative event that remembers the arson attack in Mölln on November 23, 1992 in a critical confrontation with the official commemoration of the city of Mölln. It has been taking place in different cities since 2013. The ten- and 14-year-old girls Yeliz Arslan and Ayşe Yılmaz and their 51-year-old grandmother Bahide Arslan died in the Mölln murder attack. Ibrahim Arslan, seven years old at the time, survived. Arslan criticized the city of Mölln for not giving the victims’ voices enough of a voice in the commemoration. His concern is to put the perspective of the victims of right-wing extremist and racist attacks at the center of remembrance and commemoration. For this reason, the speech has been held in exile since 2013, each year in a city chosen by family and friends, in 2024 in Mannheim. The 2024 speaker was the author, journalist, activist and speaker Şeyda Kurt.

Speakers and other participants: Şeyda Kurt, Kutlu Yurtseven (planning and organization of the event and support of the Arslan family, social worker and board member of Lückenlos e.V., musician, actor and activist), National Theatre Mannheim, Chana Dischereit (researcher, consultant in the field of education, press, culture and science)