We at BAK, basis voor actuele kunst stand in full allyship and solidarity with ruangrupa, all artists and activists of documenta fifteen, and the broader lumbung ecosistem. The collective learnings of decolonial praxis that this edition of documenta have brought to Kassel have been an important and invaluable achievement. This labor reveals the urgency of addressing racist and imperial political agendas perpetuated in Germany today. To echo the words of writer and researcher Sami Khatib:
. . . the charge of “antisemitism” was the fruitless attempt to discipline and lecture ruangrupa and the participating artists. With documenta15 coming to an end, we can say that this attack failed. Almost no one at documenta gave in to the lame attempt to frame the Palestinian struggle and resistance to Israeli apartheid, occupation and human rights violations as antisemitic. Documenta15 is still open, the powerful Palestinian propaganda films are still on display. It is actually amazing to realize that these films of various quality and times (mostly 1970s) can trigger the pathetic lamentations of a German cultural elite whose state is one of the main beneficiaries of the Palestinian tragedy. May the specter of the Palestinian revolution keep on haunting German ideology and drive its mouthpieces mad.
Please consider signing the statement released by the Lumbung community as a gesture of solidarity here [1].