Hito Steyerl Pulls Out of Berlin Event on ‘Current Context of the Middle East Conflict’

Artist Hito Steyerl will no longer give the keynote speech at a controversial Berlin event that is set to address Israel’s war in Gaza, antisemitism, Islamophobia, and more.

That event, titled “Art and Activism in Times of Polarization,” is set to be held on Sunday at the Neue Nationalgalerie. It is being organized by writer Saba-Nur Cheema and Anne Frank Education Centre director Meron Mendel.

Cheema and Mendel, who are married to each other, have both publicly commented on antisemitism and Islamophobia in Germany, with the latter being one of the most outspoken critics of Documenta 15, an exhibition that faced widespread controversy in 2022.

The symposium, according to its description, “will address questions regarding the responsibility of political art in the current context of the Middle East conflict. In particular, the themes of anti-Semitism, racism, artistic freedom, and expressions of solidarity within the art world will be discussed.”

Currently set to participate are Ruth Patir, the artist who represented Israel at the Venice Biennale; Candice Breitz, a Jewish artist whose exhibition at the Saarland Museum in 2023 was canceled after her statements on the war in Gaza; Eyal Weizman, a member of Forensic Architecture, which has conducted research on Israel’s military actions in Gaza and elsewhere; and Muhammad Toukhy, a Palestinian artist based in Haifa.

It also includes Israeli artist Leon Kahane, who recently said that using words like “genocide” and “apartheid” to describe the conflict in Gaza amounted to antisemitism, and Andreas Fanizadeh, an Austrian journalist who claimed that the pro-Palestine BDS movement had influenced the making of Documenta 15.

Last week, Strike Germany, a movement that calls on artists to cancel their shows to express their solidarity with Palestine, posted to Instagram that the symposium was intended to conceal the Neue Nationalgalerie’s support from the “hard-line Zionist German state that funds it.” The post claimed that the event “only thinly veils [Cheema and Mendel’s] obvious opposition to the Palestinian struggle and to all attempts of addressing it in the cultural sphere.”

According to the German publication Süddeutsche Zeitung, Steyerl, who was initially expected to give the keynote speech, dropped out sometime after the post.

Starting this weekend, Goldin is having an expansive show of her photography at the Neue Nationalgalerie, though the event’s description does not mention her exhibition. Goldin has publicly voiced her support for Palestine.

“I want it to be clear that I was not aware of the symposium until an ally sent me the press release, which connected it to my name and my show,” Goldin wrote in a comment on the Strike Germany Instagram post. “I wanted it canceled from the beginning, but I was only able to divorce my name. It is clear to me that the museum organized this symposium as a prophylactic to secure its position in the German discussion – in other words, to prove they do not support my politics. They knew who they were inviting.”

Steyerl and a representative for the Neue Nationalgalerie did not immediately respond to ARTnews’s requests for comment.