Monuments, statues and street names bear witness to what a society seeks to preserve, what it denies and what it erases. Public places of commemoration thus also become a space for negotiating the social reality of the present. A current example of the attempt to intervene in collective memory are the monument takedowns in the course of the Black Lives Matter movement in the US. A major project that discusses innovative ways of remembrance culture in the U.S. and Canada is Shaping the Past (a co-op between the Goethe-Institut, the Monument Lab and the Bundeszentrale für politische Bildung ), which brings together activists from the U.S., Canada, Germany and Mexico. Two fellows of Shaping the Past, Ulf Aminde and Free Bangura, are in conversation with two activists and artists from Weimar, discussing practices of anti-racist memory culture and decolonization in public space.

Moderation: Lena Jöhnk (Goethe-Institut Washington DC)

Part of the radio program „GenerationFM“ during the Kultursymposium Weimar 2021.