Max Czollek: Militant Art and the Archive of the Present

With five theses, Max Czollek advocates an “archive of the present” as an archive of militant art. Czollek, known as critic of “memory theatre” and “integration theatre” and advocate of a radically plural society appeals to the state-funded mandate of cultural institutions and archives to depict society in its diversity and to accompany its debates. This includes continually reconsidering the familiar and questioning the relevance of what was previously excluded. In this way, art in this country has long been understood as a place of transcendence. At the same time, art has always been a means of expression for those who had to fear for their social or physical survival. For the latter, art is part of their survival strategies. Art is therefore also the place where the defenceless become able to defend themselves. An “archive of the present”, according to Czollek, must be dedicated to them.

Following his lecture, Max Czollek talks with Werner Heegewaldt, Director of the Archive of the Akademie der Künste.

Max Czollek lives in Berlin. He studied political science at the Free University of Berlin and did his doctorate at the Centre for Research on Anti-Semitism at the Technical University of Berlin. He is member of the poetry collective G13 and co-editor of the magazine “Jalta - Positionen zur jüdischen Gegenwart”. Together with Sasha Marianna Salzmann, initiator of “Disintegration. A Congress of Contemporary Jewish Positions” (2016), the “Radical Jewish Culture Days” (2017) at the Maxim Gorki Theater Berlin, Studio Я as well as “Days of Jewish-Muslim Guiding Culture” (2020) at theatres throughout the German-speaking world. His poetry volumes are published by Verlagshaus Berlin, the essays by Carl Hanser Verlag. Since June 2021 Czollek is academic-artistic director of the initiative “Coalition for Pluralistic Public Discourse” (CPPD) founded in June 2021.