Impressions of dOCUMENTA (13) Barbara Wolbert Download PDF Abstract Long before dOCUMENTA (13) opened in 2012, designated documenta director Carolyn Christov-Bakargiev pledged that “her” documenta would stay clear of what she called the “Biennale-Syndrome.” What was the Biennale-Syndrome, and why did she want to avoid it? What seemed to be the challenge here? The Venice […]

Bettina Stoetzer Download PDF Abstract In his book Landscape and Memory, Simon Schama argues that an engagement with the legacies of German nationalism requires a track through the woods: throughout German history, forests have played a key role as origin myth to found a national identity (Schama 1995). In today’s forests, these entanglements between the […]

Barbara Mennel Download PDF Abstract The article “Ming Wong’s Imitations” analyzes the installation Life of Imitation, created by visual artist Ming Wong for the Singapore Pavilion at the 53rd Venice Biennale in 2009. Life of Imitation restages a key scene from Douglas Sirk’s 1959 melodrama Imitation of Life, in which the African American character Annie […]

Katrin Sieg Download PDF Abstract Rainer Werner Fassbinder’s tackling of race, immigration, and interracial relationships in his early plays and films is often applauded for offering a prescient treatment of topics largely neglected in the late 1960s and early 1970s. His experimentation with and blending of both queer and leftist political styles appeals to contemporary […]

By Peter WaterhouseTranslated by Andrew Ziesig, Ilija Wolinski, Kathleen Stack, Ashley Sherry, Kara Saunders, Kelsey Rader, Laisa Neuner, Judith Menzl, Morgen Daniels, Anna Dorste, Anneliese Chittock, Sarah Allen, and David Gramling Download PDF Translators’ Preface I first heard the words ‘Klangtal’ and ‘The Sound Valley’ in 2012, at the University of Luxembourg, during a symposium […]

by Emine Sevgi Özdamar Translated by Leslie A. Adelson Download PDF Translator’s Introduction Emine Sevgi Özdamar, born in 1946 and raised as what the author herself calls a ‘child of Istanbul’, first attracted widespread attention from German literary critics in 1991 when she was awarded the prestigious Ingeborg Bachmann Prize for Literature for her first German […]

Download PDF Abel, Marco. The Counter-Cinema of the Berlin School. Rochester: Camden House, 2013. 348 pages. Cloth, $90.00. Fisher, Jaimey. Christian Petzold. Urbana, IL: University of Illinois Press, 2013. 208 pages. Paper, $22.00. “What is the Berlin School?” is the central question for Marco Abel’s most recent book, the first to address the recent trend […]

Dear Readers, We are pleased to announce the publication of a special topic, guest edited by Angelica Fenner (University of Toronto) and Uli Linke (Rochester Institute of Technology), on “Contemporary Remediations of Race and Ethnicity in German Visual Cultures:” Introduction Angelica Fenner and Uli Linke, guest editors The New Diversity and the New Public: Impressions […]

Claudia Breger Download PDF Abstract Although not around to stay, the first Turkish German detective to be featured in the Germany’s most popular television crime series, Tatort nonetheless represented a major TV event (2008–12). In his sixth episode as an investigator in a series famous for its continued engagement with topical social issues, Cenk Batu […]