Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education Cancels We Still Need to Talk – a Symposium on German Memory Culture by Candice Breitz and Michael Rothberg

On October 24, 2023, Germany's Federal Agency for Civic Education (Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung, bpb) announced the cancellation of We Still Need to Talk, a symposium initially scheduled for December 8 to 10 in Berlin. At the invitation of the bpb, Jewish South African artist Candice Breitz and Jewish American Holocaust studies scholar Michael Rothberg, the author of Multidirectional Memory, had been working towards the symposium for nearly a year.

A since-deleted online announcement by the bpb described the symposium as a forum that would "invite reflection on the interwoven histories of various victims of National Socialism; consider the relationship between that violence and other traumatic histories perpetrated by the German nation; probe the ethics and aesthetics of relating to the suffering of others; and seek to better understand the relationship between antisemitism and other prevalent forms of hatred, given the increasing normalization of rightwing ideology within political discourse in Germany.” The schedule featured 40 speakers from diverse backgrounds, including art, academia, journalism, and activism.

The symposium’s title referred back to We Need to Talk, a series of events designed to address the role of art and artistic freedom in the face of rising antisemitism, racism, and Islamophobia. Planned in the context of Documenta 15, the series was controversially canceled in May 2022.

We Still Need to Talk was at first to have been hosted by Berlin’s Akademie der Künste in early 2023, before it was vetoed by the Senate of the Akademie headed by Jeanine Meerapfel in December 2022, at which point the bpb stepped in as a new institutional partner. In a statement announcing the second cancellation of the same symposium, the bpb cited the events of October 7: "In the current situation, we do not see ourselves in a position to lead and moderate this debate constructively in order to achieve the desired educational goal in an objective and respectful manner.” In a public letter circulated soon after, Breitz and Rothberg noted, “It is a bitter irony that our speakers have been prevented from entering into public dialogue at a time of horrific violence in Palestine and Israel, as well as in light of a related and escalating crisis in the public sphere in Germany itself.”

Breitz and several other Jewish cultural workers organized a protest titled We Still Still Still Still Need to Talk in Berlin on November 10, in response to the wave of cancellations and the ongoing bombardment of Gaza. A crowd of around 2000 people gathered without national flags to call for an immediate ceasefire and the release of all hostages.
On November 24, 2023, the Saarland Museum canceled an exhibition of Breitz’s work, in rejection of the artist’s criticism of the civilian death toll in Gaza. The museum’s decision was based on slanderous reportage in the German press.