Memory and Justice
  • Intro
  • Topics
    • Case study: Argentina
    • Nazi crimes: legal proceedings and the lack thereof in Germany
    • Memory and the Courtroom
    • From Nuremberg to The Hague and the Pinochet effect
    • Former Yugoslavia
    • Colonial crimes and their consequences
    • Trauma and memory. Do truth and justice heal?
    • Regarding the Pain of Others
    • The Congo Tribunal
    • The Situation in Syria and Iraq
  • Program
  • Speakers
  • Exhibition
  • Reservation
  • Contact
  • Imprint
  • Deutsch

Program




    17:00 – 18:00

    Artist talks next to exhibited works

    Studiofoyer:

    17:00: Nghia Nuyen, Berlin DE
    On cloud of unknowing, 2016

    17:30: Forensic Architecture / Christina Varvia, London ENG
    On Saydnaya: Inside a Syrian Torture Prison, 2016
    18:00 - 18:15

    Welcome

    Welcome DE/ES/ENG Thomas Krüger, president, Bundeszentrale für Politische Bildung, Berlin Wolfgang Kaleck, General Secretary ECCHR (Moderation)
    18:15 - 19:30

    Film screening

    DESEMBARCOS – When Memory Speaks Jeanine Meerapfel, documentary, ARG/GER, 1986–1989, 74 min, OV Spanish / german subtitled The film DESEMBARCOS – Es gibt kein Vergessen (There Is No Forgetting) originated in a film workshop run by Jeanine Meerapfel in Buenos Aires in 1986. The film looks at the memories of people involved in the then-recent events that unfolded under the dictatorship as well as the societal debate on impunity.
    19:30 - 21:00

    Case-study Argentina

    Talk: ES/DE/ENG Jeanine Meerapfel, President of the Akademie der Künste, Berlin Estela de Carlotto, President of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo, Buenos Aires Moderation: Wolfgang Kaleck Director Jeanine Meerapfel and Estela de Carlotto from the association of the Grandmothers of the Plaza de Mayo give their accounts of the Argentinian experience. Following a long period of impunity, the Argentinian human rights movement managed to secure the trials and convictions of over 500 of those involved in the repression. Argentinian society made use of a variety of methods to come to terms with the crimes of the military dictatorship (1976 - 1983) – an example of a society’s comprehensive approach to addressing mass crimes.
      10:00 – 11:15

      Nazi crimes: legal proceedings and the lack thereof in Germany

      Discussion DE/ENG/ES

      Thomas Walther, lawyer and joint plaintiff representative in Nazi trials, Kempten
      Gerhard Werle, legal academic, Humboldt University, Berlin
      Moderation: Ronen Steinke, writer, journalist, Munic

      In some respects the legal proceedings initiated in response to the Holocaust and mass murder during National Socialism set historical standards. What is often forgotten, though, is that after the Nuremberg trials, held following World War II by the Allied victors, the West Germans did little to pursue prosecutions for crimes of the Nazi regime, particularly those committed by those among the elites of Nazi society.
      11:30 – 13:00

      Memory and the Courtroom

      Discussion DE/ENG/ES

      Gila Lustiger, writer, Paris
      Ilija Trojanow, writer, Berlin
      Erich Hackl, writer, Wien
      Moderation: Peter Seibert, literary scholar, Kassel

      This panel discussion is dedicated to the link between legal proceedings and societal remembering processes as a literary theme. In conversation with Gila Lustiger, Erich Hackl and Ilija Trojanow, Peter Seibert explores the question of collective memory. In their work these authors have addressed the long-term effects of regime violence and persecution on the lives of individuals and on society as a whole.
      13.00-14.00

      Talk

      Talk: ENG/DE/ES

      Peter Weiss, lawyer, vice-president Center for Constitutional Rights, New York
      Moderation: Claire Tixeire, jurist, ECCHR, Berlin
      14.30-16.00

      From Nuremberg to The Hague and the Pinochet effect

      Paneldiscussion ENG/DE/ES

      Reed Brody, human rights lawyer, New York
      Juan Garcés, jurist, lawyer in the Spanish Pinochet-case, Madrid
      Moderation: Beate Rudolf, jurist, director of the German Institute for Human Rights, Berlin

      The Nuremberg trials, the creation of ad hoc tribunals such as the tribunals for the Former Yugoslavia and for Rwanda and the establishment of the International Criminal Court in The Hague all mark steps forward in the success story that is the expansion of international criminal justice. However, this development is also rife with contradictions, as discussed by guests who have been actively involved in this system in various ways.
      16.15 - 18.15

      Filmscreening: The Battle of Algier

      The Battle of Algier, Gillo Pontecorvo, I / DZ, 1966, 123 min, OV/German subtitles
      Intro: Mark Sealy
      EN

      The Battle of Algiers tells the story of the bloody conflicts between the Algerian liberation movement FLN and the French military in 1957.The film shows the terror tactics of the rebels and how the French army responded with torture and extrajudicial killings.
      18.30 - 20.00

      The Battle of Algier, Colonial crimes and their consequences

      Discussion ENG/DE/ES

      Omar D., photographer, Paris/Algier
      Scott Horton, human rights lawyer and editor Harper Magazine, New York
      Moderation: Mark Sealy, photographer, curator Autograph ABP, London

      The colonial crimes that have yet to be properly addressed represent a gap in the ongoing success story of international criminal justice since 1945. This panel looks at the widespread use of torture by the French Army during the Algerian war and the knock-on effects in contemporary Algerian history. The discussion will also examine the transfer of certain torture techniques and methods of repression beased on examples from Algeria, Argentina, Iraq and Guantánamo.
      12:00 - 13:35

      Filmscreening: Long Night’s Journey Into Day

      Long Night's Journey Into Day, Deborah Hoffmann, Frances Reid, AUS / USA 2000, 94 min, English subtitles

      The film tells four stories of the Apartheid from the perspective of the South African Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It shows perpetrators and survivors seeking to address the racist violence of the Apartheid era.
      14:00 - 15:30

      Artist talks

      Artist talks in the Sesselclub (in front of Clubraum):

      Silvina Der-Meguerditchian in conversation with Banu Karaca DE

      Eduardo Molinari in conversation with Naomi Hennig ENG
      16:00 - 18:00

      Common Ground

      Video excerpts form the theatre play Common Ground, (dir. Yael Ronen) DE

      Discussion with actors from Gorki Theater: Orit Nahmias and Jasmina Musić
      Moderation: Rüdiger Rossig, Journalist, taz, Berlin DE

      The play Common Ground performed at Berlin’s Maxim Gorki Theater was created in collaboration with actors from the former Yugoslavia. It shows how the bitter fighting about the acknowledgment of war crimes committed in the Yugoslavian conflict persists into the next generation. The play also shows that it is possible to find some paths towards rapprochement.
      18:00-20:00

      Filmscreening: Sturm

      Sturm, Hans-Christian Schmid, D / DK / NL a.o. 2009, 110 min, OV, German subtitles
      Intro: Rüdiger Rossig, Journalist, taz, Berlin DE

      Sturm tells the story of the prosecutor Hannah Maynard who brought war crimes charges against the former Bosnian-Serbian General Goran Đurić at at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia in The Hague. The political negotiations carried out in the background of the proceedings appear irreconcilable with the calls for justice made by witness Mira.
        10.00-11.00

        Reading: Erich Hackl

        Reading DE/(ES) Erich Hackl (Writer, Vienna) reads from his novel Sara und Simón
        Guest: Sara Méndez, activist, survivor of the Operation Condor, Montevideo
        Moderation: Karina Theurer, jurist and editor, Berlin ES/DE/ENG
        11.00- 13.00

        Trauma and memory. Do truth and justice heal?

        Paneldiscussion: ES/DE/ENG

        Beatriz Brinkmann, activist, Santiago de Chile
        Fabiana Rousseaux, psychologist, Buenos Aires
        Sara Méndez, activist, survivor of the Operation Condor, Montevideo
        Moderation: Knut Rauchfuss, doctor und journalist, Medizinische Flüchtlingshilfe Bochum

        The consequences of torture and other acts of violence have a societal as well as an individual dimension and can leave a societal and political legacy over generations. Beatriz Brinkmann and Sara Méndez, two activists from Chile and Uruguay, have firsthand experience of this. The fate of Méndez and her son is portrayed by the Austrian author Erich Hackl in his novel Sara und Simón. Together with medical doctors Fabiana Rousseaux and Knut Rauchfuss they discuss whether legal proceedings and societal efforts to address past wrongs can help to heal individual and collective trauma.
        14.00-16.00

        Regarding the Pain of Others

        Paneldiscussion: ENG/DE/ES

        Mark Sealy, photographer, curator Autograph ABP, London
        Eyal Weizman, architect, Forensic Architecture London, vie skype
        Moderation: Kathrin Röggla, writer, vice-president of Akademie der Künste, Berlin

        How can or should we observe the suffering of others, how can we best bear witness? And to what extent do we ourselves become part of the war of images, as described by art history and visual image scholar W.J.T. Mitchell? This discussion focuses on the portrayal and representation of violence and human suffering. In her essay Regarding the Pain of Others, Susan Sontag asks “what to do with the feelings that have been aroused, the knowledge that has been communicated,” and wonders if the visual representation of atrocities may also serve suppressed desires for spectacular images.
        16:30 – 18:00

        The Congo Tribunal

        Excerpts from: „Das Kongo-Tribunal“ Film, Dt. 2016 OV/DE/ENG

        Followed by talk: DE/FR/ENG/ES

        Sylvestre Bisimwa , lawyer, Bukavu/ Democratic Republik of Congo
        Milo Rau, theatre director, Cologne
        Wolfgang Kaleck, lawyer, ECCHR, Berlin
        Moderation: Kathrin Röggla, writer, vice-president of Akademie der Künste, Berlin

        The establishment of the Russel Tribunal on the Vietnam War in the 1960s marked the emergence of the “tribunals of public opinion”. Such tribunals attracted a lot of attention, both as a means of public education as well as theatrical reenactments – not least thanks to the work of theater director Milo Rau and his tribunal on crimes in Congo. Kathrin Röggla, Wolfgang Kaleck, Milo Rau and Congolese lawyer Sylvestre Bisimwa discuss the content and impact of this tribunal and present scenes from the film made about the Congo tribunal.
        18.30-21.30

        The Situation in Syria and Iraq and its consequences for Germany and Europe

        18.30 - 19.15 Reading by Najem Wali (writer, Berlin) DE/(ENG)

        19.15 - 21.15 Paneldiscussion DE/ARAB/ENG/ES

        Anwar al-Bunni, Syrian Human Rights Lawyer, Berlin
        Martin Glasenapp, formerly officer for Syria at the NGO medico international
        Rosa Yassin Hassan, writer and activist, Hamburg
        Moderation: Andreas Fanizadeh, journalist, taz, Berlin

        The focus of this panel is on the current human rights violations in Syria and Iraq, issues that have been brought closer to us through the arrival of people fleeing these conflicts. The Berlin-based Iraqi writer Najem Wali will read from his works which describe the contemporary history of Iraq. Syrian human rights activists will discuss possible ways of addressing a situation of ongoing conflict. The conversation will also touch on the potential and risks of foreign policy and military reactions from the international community and from Germany.

        21.15-21.30 Closing remarks: Wolfgang Kaleck
        11:30 – 14:00

        Film: Standard Operating Procedure

        Standard Operating Procedure, Errol Morris, USA 2008, 118 min, English, German subtitles
        Intro: Scott Horton ENG

        The documentary Standard Operating Procedure centers on the photos of detainee abuse taken at the US prison in Abu Ghraib in 2003. Questions are raised about the value of these images as pieces of evidence, since the real perpetrators, those who truly bear the blame, remain unnamed.
        14:00 – 16:00

        Film: The Look of Silence

        The Look of Silence, Joshua Oppenheimer, DK 2014, 103 min, OV/english subtitled
        Intro: N.N.

        In The Look of Silence,Joshua Oppenheimer returns to the topic of the mass murder of communists from 1965 to 1966 in Indonesia. In a departure from his first film The Act of Killing (2012), here he examines events from the perspective of the victims. The film accompanies protagonist Adi in his conversations with perpetrators.
        16.00 – 18:00

        Film: The Missing Picture

        The Missing Picture, Rithy Panh, F 2013, 92 min, OV/english subtitled
        Intro: Patrick Kroker ENG/DE

        Using clay figures and archival recordings and drawing on his own story, Rithy Panh reconstructs the atrocities of the Khmer Rouge in Cambodia. The director has firsthand experience of these crimes, having lost most of his family in the 1970s. Panh masters the difficult task of portraying a brutal history, one largely undocumented through images and other visual evidence.
        @ 2016 GEDÄCHTNIS UND GERECHTIGKEIT