Events Schedule

As part of a challenging decolonial exhibition curated by the radical Indonesian collective ruangrupa on the theme of lumbung or collective sharing, another Indonesian art collective, Taring Padi, were accused of using historical anti-semitic tropes in images in a huge outside mural. This alluded to alleged Israeli state involvement in government massacres of left wing activists and indigenous groups in Indonesia in 1965. The dispute led to a violent national level debate on politics and art, the removal of the work, and the resignations of senior curators, revealing once again the apparently pathological sensitivities surrounding anti-semitism in Germany. Our Tokyo guests – two of East Asia's leading art and media theorists – use the case as a starting point for reflection on ongoing issues in artistic representation and anti-semitism – and the politics of "anti-semitism" – in the light of pro-Palestine protests. Discussing the work of Judith Butler, in particular, they will go on to develop reflections on protest movements in art, and questions of media and technology that are linked to the infernal dynamics of controversy that fuel these politics.