Rosefeldt’s ‘Asylum’ presented in Turkey after 10 years

German artist Julian Rosefeldt questions the accepted standards and prejudices and created stereotypes and myths and reproduces and brings them to life through an aesthetic approach. Rosefeldt’s film installation “Asylum” can be seen until Jan. 27 at the Dirimart Garibaldi art gallery in the Beyoğlu district of İstanbul. Rosefeldt’s work -- which was made 10 years ago -- can be seen by a Turkish audience for the first time as part of a six-month screening program under the directorship of Heinz Peter Schwerfel, which presents six artists who are well known for their involvement in art and film.

“In the first aspect, it’s a work about political asylum,” says Rosefeldt in an interview with Sunday’s Zaman. “I tried to make a work about people in our society that live with us in our daily life but who we don’t know much about. Instead of doing a documentary work, I tried to talk about our own ignorance about these people. I wanted to do aesthetically a totally different piece that is more questioning of the viewer and more questioning of our prejudices and the stereotypes we have in mind when we think about these people.”

Rosefeldt worked with about 120 people, most of whom were asylum seekers and the rest were art students. “I created nine groups -- each connected to certain stereotypes and a certain kind of cliché connected to a minority in Germany,” explains Rosefeldt. I invented for each group a kind of virtual scene that has no sense, and it reminds us of Sisyphus of Greek mythology, the king punished by being compelled to roll a rock up a hill his entire life. The life of many asylum seekers in our society, in France or England, is a Sisyphian life because they are struggling and struggling, but many times they don’t really succeed.”

Escaping the clichés

In inviting the audience to think and question their ignorance and prejudice, content and technique collaborate in Rosefeldt’s work. While the artist shoots his film on celluloid, he makes diverse references with the different quality of his images. “The work hypnotizes you through the aesthetics of very slow action unfolding. You can think about xenophobia, but you also can think about working in general, you can think about the history of art, you can see in the film a tableau vivant like a reference to the history of painting, and you can think about our way of seeing foreign [cultures] when we travel, when we go to the countries where these people come from.”

The various references and implications thus unite at a point where stereotypes and clichés emerge. “When a German goes to Asia and films some religious ceremonies, he already has in mind what he wants to find, but he never really understands what he’s shooting,” says Rosefeldt. “For instance, German tourists come to Turkey and film the minarets and love them, but when the same thing happens in Germany they get very scared. They think it’s dangerous for their culture and their society. So the work invites viewers to think about all these things.”

“In countries like Germany you have a lot of ignorance and stereotypes; people are just not interested in the cultural context of where immigrants come from,” confirms Schwerfel. “It stems from ignorance and not caring who these people are and how they live. So when these people build minarets in Cologne, people are afraid because they don’t know. This is why he uses stereotypes because for instance Pakistani immigrants sell roses and that’s all we know about them. We don’t know how they live, whether their families are with them, whether there’s a mafia that controls them. We have a lot of prejudges and stereotypes.”

On the other hand, Rosefeldt notes that it’s usually hard to escape stereotypes and clichés. “I’m very open minded; I travel a lot; I’m married to a Brazilian woman, and even I can’t avoid the cliché in my head sometimes,” says Rosefeldt. The tricky thing is that there’s truth in every cliché, and you can’t escape that. The first Turks coming to Germany were invited by Germany, and they were very welcome. Many of them came from very poor parts of Turkey, and they’re still not integrated, but other Turks who come to Germany from İstanbul and Ankara send their children to rich schools in Berlin because they don’t want their children to be connected to the Turkish cliché. There’s a truth in the cliché that the Turks are not integrated, but of course not all Turks are like that. But for Germans, it’s difficult to understand.”

Moreover, the danger about stereotypes is that they are ceaselessly reproduced via various channels. “These typical myths and stereotypes are cultivated and created through the media, maybe the news, maybe advertisements, maybe the cinema industry, but many of our behaviors and social attitudes are learned from the media. And I talk a lot in my work about the introduction of these media realities,” says Rosefeldt.

For Schwerfel, since Germany was not a country that was used to receiving migrants until about 50 years ago, clichés in the German society are deeper than they are in some other European countries that have a history of colonialism and that are thus familiar with immigrants. “Migration to Germany is recent, they are not used to what we call multiculturalism or a multiracial society,” he says. “It’s a necessity that all countries open up. I would love to live at a time when there are no national countries anymore and you don’t have to show your passport when you go to İstanbul.”

While both Rosefeldt and Schwerfel are optimistic about the future of multiculturalism and integration in Europe, they are aware that many politicians in Europe try to gain popularity in public opinion through rightist and sometimes even racist policies. “That’s the problem in democracies where you have elections,” says Schwerfel. “As elections get closer, the politicians become more populist because they need the votes. Unfortunately, there are very few politicians who are visionary in the sense that they do not care whether they are re-elected or not.”

“Our president once said that Islam is a part of our society, which I think was very, very good,” adds Rosefeldt. “That was the first president who ever said that, and it was an important speech. I think the general understanding is that multiculturalism is a part of our society, and it’s a reality, and it’s an absolute need of our society; the voters are always more intelligent than the politicians. What is missing is the information exchange.”

In this sense, as Rosefeldt indicates, there are various initiatives to fill the communication gap. “Now many imams in Germany are very progressive,” he notes. “From their side they understood that it’s not good for them if the whole world thinks that you are a potential terrorist, and they are trying to be more informative, more active in the communication, and they don’t leave it to the Germans to ask.”

The second aspect of the concept “asylum” for Rosefeldt is “madhouse.” “‘Asylum’ was the first project of a series of projects,” explains Rosefeldt. “In many of my works I focus on human existence. If you would like find a red line that would combine most of my projects, it’s the absurdity of human existence. In that sense, I mention the madhouse because all these people in my film are doing completely senseless things, and I try to reflect from an extraterrestrial view on earth. You can see many of our rituals as completely absurd rituals.” “It’s a little bit like the world is a madhouse,” confirms Schwerfel.