DR: In 2019, you curated the show The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online at HMKV Hartware MedienKunstverein. If you think back, some of the nightmares have come true – in a way already pointed out by the exhibition. How do you feel about it? 

IA: To tell you the truth, the nightmares were already real back in 2019. The alt-right was a scene that already existed back then – the only difference being that a broader audience was not really aware of it. Including me. I first heard about it from a friend and colleague, Florian Cramer, who teaches at the Willem de Kooning Academy in Rotterdam. In early 2017, he gave a lecture about ‘Meme Wars: Internet Culture and the “Alt-Right”’.[1] He started off with lots of direct quotations from the subculture of the alt-right. Usually, I can follow Florian’s presentations, but this time I did not understand a single word. I could not grasp what he was talking about. I was really shocked, which piqued my interest. I wanted to know more about this. In the 2019 exhibition, my intention was to share my research on the alt-right – and the artists who addressed this subculture very early on – with a broader audience. The exhibition started off with a glossary of terms circulating in the alt-right. I think it provided a good overview of, among other things, the weaponisation of language. 

How do I feel about “some of the nightmares coming true”? Well, back in 2019, Donald Trump was already president of the United States (2017–21). Making the exhibition felt a bit like making a forensic analysis of how this rise to power of the alt-right had become possible. However, the show was not only about America’s recent past, but also about the present and future of Germany and Europe. 

Exhibition poster The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV in the Dortmunder U, 30.3. – 22.9.2019. Design: e o t . essays on typography.

Glossary in the entrance area of the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV in the Dortmunder U, 30.3. – 22.9.2019. Photo: Hannes Woidich

Simon Denny Founders Rules, Ascent – Above the Nation State Rules, Game of Life: Collective vs Individual Rules, 2017, in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV. Photo: Hannes Woidich

When I look at it from today’s perspective, I have to say that I am (still) shocked to see how well the alt-right masters the tools of communication (social media) and propaganda (fake news). You know, it is as if the concept of ‘tactical media’ was hijacked and brought to the next level by the alt-right, including the current social media strategy of the Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) in Germany. The concept of ‘tactical media’ was originally developed in the relatively optimistic mid-1990s in rather left-wing and activist contexts. It was coined in the context of the Next 5 Minutes festival series in Amsterdam (1993–2003).[2] 

A recent discussion about the ‘Echoes of Tactical Media’ put it like this: “We witness the memeification of everything, sprawling reactionary media ecologies and a rising flood of synthetic bullshit. Tactical media may have sketched a shape of things to come, but the diagram can’t be assumed as exclusive to any kind of progressive agenda (if it ever could).”[3] Actually, that’s what I would like to research further: whether the concept of ‘tactical media’ was brought to perfection by the alt-right. And whether it can again be re-appropriated. 

DR: I quote from the book that accompanied the exhibition. “The term ‘alt-right’ is problematic, because it conceals central elements of this movement: it is a collective term for various right-wing to far-right extremist groups and ideologies that are loosely linked to one another. The common denominator here is the assumption that the ‘identity’ of the white US American (and in the case of the European counterparts, the white European) population is under threat from any of the following – immigration, multiculturalism, Islam, Judaism, feminism, cultural Marxism and political correctness – and needs to be defended by all means.”[4] In the exhibited works, this is reflected, for example, by the piece by Milo Rau.

IA: Milo Rau’s/IIPM – International Institute of Political Murder’s video Breiviks Erklärung (Breivik’s Explanation, 2012, 78:00 min.) consists of a re-enactment of the (non-public) explanation given before a Norwegian court by Anders Behring Breivik. Breivik, a right-wing extremist and anti-Islamic terrorist, killed seventy-seven people in 2011 in Oslo and on the Norwegian island of Utøya – predominantly participants of a camping trip run by the social democratic youth organisation AUF. 

In 2012, Breivik was sentenced to twenty-one years in prison with subsequent preventive detention – the maximum sentence in Norway. In April 2012, Breivik explained his actions before the Oslo district court – in camera. In defence of his actions, he invoked the degeneration of Norwegian culture, which, he claimed, was a result of multiculturalism, Islam and, in particular, “cultural Marxism”.

In the documentary theatre of Milo Rau/IIPM, Breivik’s one-hour explanation is presented word for word, however, with the greatest possible distance: performed matter-of-factly by the German-Turkish actress Sascha Ö. Soydan while chewing gum, Breivik’s speech – when detached from omnipresent media images – is “de-dramatised” (Milo Rau) and reduced to its mere text, the racist mindset of which is frighteningly close to that of established right-wing nationalist discourses.

Milo Rau / IIPM — International Institute of Political Murder, Breivik's statement, 2012, in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV. Photo: Hannes Woidich

 

DR: Could you please explain how you developed the parcours of the exhibition? 

IA: This exhibition dealt with right-wing extremist online culture and traced the development from a (sub)culture of transgression in online forums such as 4chan to platforms such as Breitbart News. It was about memes, white supremacists and the Dark Enlightenment. The Alt-Right Complex presented twelve projects by sixteen artists from twelve European countries. The twelve projects in the show explored very different aspects of the alt-right complex. The exhibition presented both works that look at the US context and those that examine the phenomena in Europe or, more specifically, in Germany.

The artist duo DISNOVATION.ORG developed a form of speculative cartography of current political memes in their piece Online Culture Wars. Visitors to the exhibition could take these maps home as a guide to orienting themselves better in ‘real’ life after their visit. In his ten-channel video installation, Steve Bannon: A Propaganda Retrospective (visual ecology), the Dutch artist Jonas Staal explored the cinematic and political work of Bannon, a former Breitbart chairman and chief strategist and senior consultant to Donald Trump, in order to analyse the mechanisms of modern-day, alt-right propaganda. The artist duo UBERMORGEN conducted extensive visual research on the web for their work BREITBART RED, which they used to build an immersive installation where visitors are confronted with ‘art for the right wing’.

DISNOVATION.ORG, Online Culture Wars, 2018–2019, in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV. Photo: Hannes Woidich

The Slovak artist and curator Boris Ondreička, on the other hand, used Satan Watching the Sleep of Christ by Joseph Noel Paton – a nineteenth-century painting done in the style of the Pre-Raphaelites – to develop a whole political theory on today’s alt-right memes.

The New Zealand artist Simon Denny created cryptic board games, which he uses to question the beliefs and philosophies of influential Silicon Valley billionaires with a penchant for doomsday prepping. The game instructions were on display in the exhibition. The Canadian artist Dominic Gagnon and the German artists Vera Drebusch and Florian Egermann focused on preppers, taking us into their cosmos, as well as other concerned citizens who express paranoid fantasies to visionary hysteria – for example, conspiracy theorists and gun fanatics whose YouTube videos have long been deleted (they live on in Dominic Gagnon’s work).

In Breivik’s Explanation, Swiss director Milo Rau and the IIPM – International Institute of Political Murder revive the defence speech held by the Norwegian extreme right-wing and Islamophobic terrorist Breivik held in camera – alienated by its performance by the German-Turkish actress Sascha Ö. Soydan. It shows toxic masculinity in its purest form. The British artist Nick Thurston even created an entire library of hate speech for his work Hate Library – comprised of material gathered from various internet forums. Like weighty hymnbooks, the volumes are displayed on music stands arranged in a circle (similar to the European flag), as though in preparation for a – European – group singing lesson.

Nick Thurston, Hate Library, 2017, in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV. Photo: Hannes Woidich

In their comic Bruchlinien: Drei Episoden zum NSU (Faultlines: Three Episodes on the NSU), Paula Bulling and Anne König concentrate on female figures in the context of the National Socialist Underground, a German far-right terrorist group. For the third part, which they completed for the exhibition, the artists spoke to Gamze Kubaşık, the daughter of the NSU murder victim in Dortmund, Mehmet Kubaşık. 

The museum docu-fiction project From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) by the Hungarian artist Szabolcs KissPál explored political communities (in this case, the Hungarian nation) as complexly constructed entities. The walls of the museum had been painted in the colour of the right-wing populist governing party in Hungary, Fidesz (orange). 

Lastly, the Serbian artist Vanja Smiljanic´ presented Waves of Worship (WOW), the final part of her three-part examination of the relationship between religious movements and nationalism. In her installation and lecture performance, Smiljanic´ looked at the web-based UFO religion, the Cosmic People, and the Flag Nation Society, a Christian community that expresses their beliefs in the form of flag worship.

Szabolcs KissPál, From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) 2012, 2016, in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV. Photo: Hannes Woidich

Szabolcs KissPál, From Fake Mountains to Faith (Hungarian Trilogy) 2012, 2016. in the exhibition The Alt-Right Complex, On Right-Wing Populism Online, HMKV. Photo: Hannes Woidich

DR: In the exhibition, you combined parts that transfer knowledge about the scene and their wording with a parcours of works that are situated between activism and art. Could you explain your thoughts about it? 

IA: I found it very important to a) present the artworks dealing with the alt-right and b) transfer knowledge about the heavily coded language used in alt-right subcultures. 

The glossary presented in the entrance area of the exhibition explained more than thirty symbols (14, 168:1, ((( )))), platforms (4chan/8chan), companies (Breitbart News, Cambridge Analytica), terms (accelerationism, cuckservatives, the Dark Enlightenment/neo-reactionary movement, manosphere, The Red Pill, social justice warriors, Gamergate), practices (doxing, sock puppets, lulz, memes, trolls), groups (Identitarian Movement, NSU, preppers, Reconquista Germanica, Reichsbürger, white supremacists), individuals and figures (Anonymous, Steve Bannon, Nick Land, Mencius Moldbug, Paulchen Panther, Pepe the Frog, Richard Spencer, Peter Thiel, Milo Yiannopoulos) and belief systems within the context of the alt-right (ethnopluralism, toxic masculinity, transhumanism). 

In addition, the exhibition included two videos that document lectures by
Florian Cramer and Angela Nagle, two of the most distinguished European researchers on the alt-right at the time.

DR: Was the exhibition accompanied by discursive events? 

IA:  Yes, we hosted a lecture performance by the artist Vanja Smiljanic´: Waves of Worship (WOW), as well as three lectures by Florian Cramer (‘Right-Wing Extremist Avant-Pop: From the “Autonomous Nationalists” to “Alt-Right”’), Klaus Walter (‘The Kids Are Alt Right? Porn, Pop and the Culture Wars of the New Right’), and Jonas Staal (‘From Alt-Right to Popular Propaganda Art’). In addition to these events, we also gave guided tours (even for kids).

DR: What do you think about the recent development that right-wing parties are on the rise, which also threatens the support for critical art? 

IA: I simply do not understand why a political party like Alternative für Deutschland (AfD) has not been made illegal. Their programme clearly goes against the German constitution. I fear that with the upcoming elections in Thuringia, Saxony and Brandenburg in September 2024, the AfD will end up as the strongest party, at least in one (if not all) of those Länder [states]. OK, they will then have to form a coalition with other parties, which will be difficult – maybe also impossible. 

What will happen if they are in the government is pretty clear: just read their party programme and listen to their statements. To get an idea, look at what happened in countries like Poland, Slovenia and Hungary: culture is the first target, because it is about identity. Luckily, Germany is a federal state, so it means that only parts of the country will be affected. So far.

DR: How would you change the project if you did it as a new version? 

IA: One could, of course, think about adding more projects, such as The White Album (2018) by Arthur Jafa (US). This 40-minute video about fanatical gun lovers, German ‘cybergoths’, viral video stars and, above all, white self-pity would be a must.

However, I think I would make a totally different exhibition because the context has changed significantly. It is not only about certain terms listed in the glossary that are known today to a broader audience. Indeed, we have seen a very creepy restructuring of the political landscape, whereby many issues that were formerly voiced in alt-right subculture became topics of mainstream politics. Maybe the focus would be on this process of normalising alt-right topics. 

DR: And how can curators react to the new antisemitism? I know that’s too general a question – I mean, how can they react to the increased antisemitism since 7 October 2023?

IA: As we all know, unfortunately, antisemitism is not a new phenomenon. However, the current weaponisation of the term ‘antisemitism’ in Germany is. In some cases, it is used to silence dissenting voices – for example, those who criticise the politics of the Israeli state. Accusing somebody of ‘antisemitism’ (maybe because s/he is presenting voices from the Global South) can seriously damage a person’s career in Germany. Political parties like the right-wing AfD (and others for sure) are silently rejoicing while watching this spectacle. The seed of suspicion has been successfully planted in the field of culture. 

But your question was more specific: how should curators react? Well, I think it is rather simple: continue to exhibit Jewish and/or Israeli artists, Palestinian artists, as well as Ukrainian and Russian artists and so on. Boycotts are not productive. They do not lead anywhere. 

DR: Recent political research shows that female voters are much more left-wing than male voters, and that lonely, isolated men can more easily become right-wingers on the political scale. Klaus Theweleit attributes this to the soldierly men and the murderously violent men who have had an early traumatic experience and the disturbed development of the subject. Can we draw conclusions from this for artistic and curatorial action? 

IA: These are certainly very important analyses and findings, but I don’t see what kind of conclusions you can draw for artistic and curatorial actions, really. Art is not a pedagogical tool, you see? You can certainly point to these issues in your artistic and curatorial work in order to make these issues more visible. But you can only fight these developments by educating people. This means that you will have to address these issues before the symptoms can even emerge. Simply treating the symptoms will not help.

Inke Arns, PhD, director of HMKV Hartware MedienKunstVerein in Dortmund, Germany (www.hmkv.de). She has worked internationally as an independent curator and theorist specialising in media art, net cultures and Eastern Europe since 1993. After living in Paris (1982–1986), she studied Russian literature, Eastern European studies, political science, and art history in Berlin and Amsterdam (1988–96 M.A.) and in 2004 received her PhD from the Humboldt University in Berlin. She has curated numerous exhibitions – among others at the Bauhaus (Dessau), MG+MSUM (Ljubljana), KW (Berlin), Museum of Contemporary Art (Belgrade), CCA (Glasgow), La Panacée (Montpellier), Jeu de Paume (Paris), CCA Ujazdowski Castle (Warsaw), HKW (Berlin), Muzeum Sztuki (Łódź), La Gaîté Lyrique (Paris), BOZAR (Brussels) and Kunsthalle Wien (Vienna). Recent exhibitions include Genossin Sonne (Comrade Sun, 2024–25), Was ist Kunst, IRWIN? (2023), House of Mirrors: AI as Phantasm (2022), Technoshamanism (2021) and Artists & Agents – Performance Art and Secret Service (2019). Curator of the Pavilion of the Republic of Kosovo (artist: Jakup Ferri), 59th International Art Exhibition, La Biennale di Venezia (2022). She is the author of articles and books (most recently: Tutorials, 2024) on contemporary art, media art and net culture, and has edited numerous exhibition catalogues. www.inkearns.de

Dorothee Richter, PhD, is Professor in Contemporary Curating at the University of Reading, UK, where she directs the PhD in Practice in Curating programme. She previously served as head of the Postgraduate Programme in Curating (CAS/MAS) at Zurich University of the Arts (ZHdK), Switzerland. Richter has worked extensively as a curator: she initiated the Curating Degree Zero Archive and was artistic director at Künstlerhaus Bremen, where she curated various symposia on feminist issues in contemporary arts, as well as an archive on feminist practices entitled Materialien/Materials. Together with Ronald Kolb, Richter directed a film on Fluxus: Flux Us Now, Fluxus Explored with a Camera. Her most recent project was Into the Rhythm: From Score to Contact Zone, a collaborative exhibition at the ARKO Art Center, Seoul, in 2024. This project was co-curated by OnCurating (Dorothee Richter, Ronald Kolb) and ARKO (curator Haena Noh, producer Haebin Lee). Richter is Executive Editor
and Editor-in-Chief of OnCurating.org, and recently founded the OnCurating Academy Berlin.