Prachtstraße, Fanmeile, Preußenschloss

In the recent years Germany has seen yet another revival of Nationalism. Unlike in the Nineties, when Nazi-skins and the Kosovo war dominated the discourses around Nationalism in Germany, the contemporary "new Nationalism" expresses itself in culture. Building up to the 2006 world cup and the 60year anniversary of the BRD in 2009 an unprecedented amount of nationbranding-campaigns, exhibitions and events was organized to communicate Germany as a strong, yet self-critical Nation. In the term of the "purified nation" and the "Kulturnation"  and along narratives of a seemingly funny and harmless "party-otism" where "it's only about soccer" new forms of a "culturalized Nationalism" seem to take shape.

Johannes Paul Raether is an artist and author, activist and performer based in Berlin. He will show his new project 'Prachtstrasse', a slide show, which he produced since 2006. The slide-film researches the image-campaign 'Germany - Land of Ideas', an initiative of the German government and the Federation of German Industries during the soccer world championship in 2006. In this framework, six monumental sculptures were erected in the centre of Berlin - all representing 'German' inventions. Johannes Paul Raether will also discuss examples of intervening into the national consensus in culture by the means of performance, actions, happenings and artist organisation, focusing on how to articulate a fundamental critique of
the nation, as a critical cultural producer, without being embraced by the very contemporary german nationalist discourse: "the self-critical nation".