Panel discussion: Ayşe Güleç, Michaela Melián, Nora Sternfeld, Mirjam Zadoff: Against the Grain. On Memory Work

Ayşe Güleç is an educator, author, curator, and research activist at the intersections of anti-racism, art, art education, and migration. Since 2019, Güleç has been working as curator in the Artistic Team of documenta 15 (2022). In 2021, she curated the exhibition Offener Prozess, shown at the Stadtmuseum Jena, Neue Sächsische Galerie (Chemnitz), Maxim Gorki Theater (Berlin), and La Vallée (Brussels). Previously, she was Head of the Art Education Department at the Museum für Moderne Kunst MMK (Frankfurt am Main). As Head of Community Liaison at documenta 14 (2017), she established interlocal connections between artists and socio-political contexts and built up the Society of Friends of Halit. She was one of the initiators of the collective anti-racist movement that implemented the first NSU tribunal in 2017, has been active against racism for many years, and is part of the Kassel Initiative 6 April. From 1998 to 2016 Güleç worked as Head of the Education & Migration Department at the socio-cultural center Schlachthof in Kassel in the field of migration as well as local and European education, building various networks of collaboration. For documenta 13 (2012) she was a consultant and member of “Maybe Education” and also coordinated training for art mediators. In 2007 she developed the documenta 12 Advisory Board as a special form of mediation, subsequently becoming the board’s spokesperson.

Mirjam Zadoff is Director of the Munich Documentation Centre for the History of National Socialism, having previously held the Alvin H. Rosenfeld Chair for Jewish Studies and the position of Associate Professor for History at Indiana University Bloomington. She is a member of the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and was visiting faculty at ETH Zurich, UC Berkeley, HU Berlin, and Augsburg University. Her publications include: Werner Scholem. A German Life (2018), Next Year in Marienbad. The Lost Worlds of Jewish Spa Culture (2012), and forthcoming, edited together with Nicolaus Schafhausen, Tell Me About Yesterday Tomorrow.