黑料不打烊

The exhibition titled 鈥淭ell me about yesterday tomorrow鈥� opens up a dialogue between contemporary art and the remembrance work performed by the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism. Works by over 40 international artists explore how to interpret the past and its links to the present day against the background of the historical exhibition. These works, most of them new, invite viewers to consider global realities of life while supplementing German History with international perspectives and creating polyphonic narratives of the past and future. Through the media of painting, photography, installation, video, and performance, artists from different generations, from the Nazi period to the present day, convey many-sided images of history, recounting individual experiences while also highlighting structural connections. The exhibition features selected works of art from the Nazi period and recent decades alongside new works created specifically for this context.

Historian John Henrik Clarke observed how important history is to our present and future: 鈥淗istory is a clock that people use to tell their political and cultural time of day. It is also a compass that people use to find themselves on the map of human geography. History tells a people where they have been and what they have been, where they are, and what they are. Most important, history tells people where they still must go, what they still must be.鈥� (John Henrik Clarke, 1996)

Historical events and our knowledge about them shape our understanding of our world today and our notions of what may lie ahead. Collective remembrance is closely linked with our experiences of the present day. This makes it impossible to draw a final conclusion. Instead, history must be reexamined and recontextualized in an ongoing process. It is also important to consider who interprets the past, and based on what experiences. Which stories are told, and whose stories are heard 鈥� or end up being suppressed, consciously or unconsciously? How do we deal with different voices and ambivalence?

The works of art collected in 鈥淭ell me about yesterday tomorrow鈥� are dedicated to a number of different topics: the resurgence of nationalism, racism, and anti-Semitism; the violent exploitation of humans and the natural world; the cultural and political impact of war, suppression, and trauma; and how national myths are depicted. They testify to how emotions are used to mobilize groups within society, by conjuring up fears and desires and how people are stigmatized as 鈥渢he Others鈥� while collective narratives are pressed into the service of political ideologies. The exhibition鈥檚 international perspective reflects the global dimensions of these critical occurrences.