The power of culture over the culture of power

I was meaning to write this post when we got the photos from the launch of East of Elsewhere, the new art space our Co-Founder Clemmie opened with a show by Rob Blake, dedicated to addressing the growth of the far right globally, but today shit hit the fan. And I’m gonna curse all through this post because I’m angry-typing it.

I’m also very fucking angry because I cannot vote. My voting abilities in Germany, after living 4 years in the country and working with social aspects for two, is reduced to picking who will decide over the trashcans of my district. And like me, millions are kept away from voting while uneducated people decide our fate. Because it’s us and our friends who will get the worst end of this equation.

Now I understand why that guy, the one that rides his bike through the streets of Berlin demanding they give him the right to vote, goes out every day and crosses the city with his megaphone. Fuck, I’d totally do the same tonight. 

So, yeah, AfD, the uneducated initiative that wants to fight the fact that the world has no alternative (pun intended) than becoming one big nation, got the 13% today. While I eye-roll myself to another dimension, and rage makes my stomach churn, I try to think of an encouraging message, of a humorous twist to combat a bit of this mess. 

Hangar 1 is a community. A very colorful and multi-cultural one. A community which has made me the proudest woman alive due to the power of its unity and its constant work. One that’s shape-shifting, evolving and getting bigger and bigger. I know we are not here to change the world, but at least we are raising some extent of social awareness amongst our circle of friends.

Well, that has been working well for us. On the evening of East of Elsewhere’s opening all our friends once again, congregated to Clem’s initiative. All the familiar and loved faces were there, and many more. And we stood under one roof to try to make some sense that our friends at the shelter were endangered by the ideas of false prophets.

A lot of interesting conclusions arised from that evening and we were once again, thankful for the support of our community.

But now it becomes apparent, we need to get out of our community because an astonishing 13% of the voters in Germany think we are a hassle, a pariah and that we endanger their children.

Dear 13%: you are endangering your own children by providing them with wrongful education, misleading information and denying them the many advantages of having a multi-cultural life. 

During our panel discussion on Thursday, a brilliant idea came up: let’s not only talk with people that agree with us. We know how Clem, Nico, Annique, or Nacho think. We know they wanna fight these horrible phenomena as hard as the rest of our Hangar 1 community. So instead of only talking to each other, let’s try to engage on educated and peaceful discussion with people that don’t agree with us, let’s try to reconcile and make them have some common sense.

Abuse of power comes as no surprise, reads one of Jenny Holzer’s works. And the uneducated people rising to power now thanks to the 13% will abuse that power. Learn and educate yourself. Even though you are not German, keep an eye on them. You live in this country after all. If they abuse their power, get up of your chair and protest.

They act, we react. So we will grow stronger. We will fight for our friends. By the way, we also happen to be broke so we need your help to keep up this fight. The kids need us now more than ever (this might be shameless propaganda, but at this point, I don’t care anymore, we need to keep it up, desperate times call for desperate measures)

More on East of Elsewhere to come soon, Clemmie will write a more partial post.

In the meantime, we got a lot of work to do.

Artwork by Jenny Holzer, photo by our wonderful Kimberly Lauren Bryant.