Frankfurter Hauptschule at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein

Artists: Frankfurter Hauptschule

Exhibition title: kANzELKuLTuR

Venue: NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein, Aachen, Germany

Date: January 23 – March 12, 2022

Photography: Simon Vogel / all images copyright and courtesy of the artists and NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein

Note: Extinguish the romantic straw fires?! With the cool oil of cancel culture?! By Diedrich Diederichsen is available here

Exhibition predicts fascism in 10 years, with money-back guarantee

The artist group Frankfurter Hauptschule opens its first solo exhibition entitled “kANzELKuLTuR” at NAK Neuer Aachener Kunstverein on 22nd January 2022. Here, the collective explores the connection between the shift to the right, esotericism and a new art trend in Germany. The prognosis: within the next ten years, fascism will reign again. The artists hold the bet with the offer that whoever buys a work of art will get their money back in ten years if their prediction does not come true.

To describe the current mood in Germany, reference is increasingly made to the Weimar Republic. On the one hand, we are witnessing a closing of ranks between vaccination opponents, esotericists and organized neo-Nazis; rising election results and tax money for the AfD, combined with often “neutral” reporting by the media. On the other hand, more and more people are welcoming increased sensitivity to discrimination and advocating for diversity. But civil society is also divided. For many, “politically correct” language regulations or restrictions on artistic freedom out of consideration for the feelings of the audience go too far; they oppose “cancel culture”.

Internationally, the situation is reminiscent of the years before the First World War. Great powers like the USA, Russia or Germany are engaged in hot and cold proxy wars, supporting this or that country, this or that paramilitary movement, in order to gain power and influence. The smoldering international confrontation and the resurgence of a Nazi party at home can be read as clear symptoms of galloping fascization.

In this context, the exhibition also asks why young artists are wading knee-deep in mystical imagery right now. On art school circuits, in exhibitions by up-and-coming artists, and on Instagram: motifs of German Romanticism and Nordic mythology. Medieval squiggles, dragons, knights, swords, pagan symbolism are unmistakably piling up; as materials one finds branches, cloth, wax, healing stones, earth, smoke and so on.

A spokeswoman for Frankfurter Hauptschule:

“If the triumphal procession of esotericists, Nazis and Eso-Nazis continues, the discussions about cancel culture will soon become irrelevant, because then freedom of expression will be canceled along with democracy anyway. The AfD is slowly but surely being courted to take power. The matter seems to be settled: everyone is in the mood for a suicide party. We are betting on fascism.

In the art scene, we see the rapidly growing trend of a new romanticism. In its dreamy flight from the world, anti-Enlightenment affects flash up. Behind the tendency to the occult lurks the fascination for the aesthetics of fascism, for kitsch and death. Romanticism has already paved the way for the Nazis. This nonsense talking art must be canceled!”

Frankfurter Hauptschule is an art collective of roughly 20 people from Frankfurt am Main. In 2018, Frankfurt’s police commissioner was outraged by an intervention in which the group burned down a patrol car in public space. In a double action in 2019, it caused public debate when it threw toilet paper at the Goethe House in Weimar and opened an exhibition of nude images of children in Cologne. In 2020, the fictitious theft of a Beuys sculpture and its transfer to Tanzania triggered an international echo. Since the winter semester of 2021/22, Frankfurt Hauptschule has been teaching at the Berlin University of the Arts.