Solidarity in Question

What if the internationalist project of “solidarity” continued the global Cold War by way of images, exhibitions and architectures? What if solidarity itself was a particular form of political paradox? The conversation addresses questions of solidarity constituted around 1980 between East-Germany, Palestine, Algeria and Chile. A moment in which the act of “showing solidarity”, in the words of East German filmmaker Iris Gusner, became a “bureaucratic act.” A moment in which solidarity as a declaration of socialist internationalism overlaps with the United Nations discourse of human rights that aimed to supersede it. The question of solidarity thus emerges in the tensions within and the torsions between state-sponsored programs and informal alliances, socialist friendships and emancipatory camaraderie, between protocols, policies and pathos.

With Kader Attia and Doreen Mende, introduction and moderation: Paz Guevara