https://pen.gg/campaign/antifa/
“Summer 2020: The Chemnitz Art Festival “Gegenwarten” invited us to make an artistic contribution. With a project budget of about 24.000 euros, we could do what we want! The only requirement from the curators: it should have something to do with Saxony. What could you do with so much money?!
But because these were public funds, we needed a trick to move the money. A friend had a great idea: why not buy objects of antifascist work from antifa groups for 1.000 euros each and exhibit them in a museum, as a part of an art exhibition. So we would have the money properly spent at the museum and at the same time we could expand upon antifascist work and dispell bourgeois myths about the group.
For weeks, we looked for objects suitable for a weeks-long exhibtion. We concentrated on a specific area of antifascist work– the fight against Nazis and racism. It was important for us to show the movement’s diversity and to expose media and political clichĂ© of Antifa as stereotypically violent, black-masked antifascists. We talked to many antifascists, researched in archives like Apabiz and quickly found what we were looking for. A beer crate from the Ostritzer Friedensfest, a spray can from the “Sprayer Grandma” Irmela Mensah-Schramm, the smartphone that filmed the racist hunts in Chemnitz and the indictment of the NSU tribunals. The shopping cart from the Connewitz New Year’s Eve, the Antifa pin of Martina Renner, the banner of the VVN-BdA, the YPJ flag of the flag of the UTA Women’s Council of Dresden.”
“That Nazis are upset about anti-fascism is not surprising. But when Ebay objected to our use of their website to auction off the items – that took us by surprise. Our online auction had been running since the opening of the exhibition and had already brought in over 3,000 euros. But during our Wednesday morning over coffee, we see Ebay suddenly pulling the squared timber off their website. Their reason: “Glorification of violence”. We thought, “ok this is surely a mistake, they’ll realize this and the auction will come back”, but instead Ebay blocked our entire account then deleted all our auctions“
