A History of Anti-Racist Fighting
“This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past” is the name of a work by artist Cana Bilir-Meier that can now be seen in Graz, Austria. The Super-8 film deals with racism based on the attack on the Olymia-Einkauszentrum (a shopping mall) in Munich in 2016. The work captivates through its variety of different perspectives.
Predicting the past — a paradox. “This Makes Me Want to Predict the Past” is the title of the Super-8 film by artist and film maker Cana Bilir-Meier. The work will be shown as part of the “Image Wars” exhibition opened on July 4, 2020 in the artists’ house “Halle fuer Kunst & Medien” in Graz, Austria. The exhibition is about images that are reminiscent of acts of violence, terror, and trauma, but about which can control or trigger those.
Reference to early cultural migrant works
“The title alludes to the construction of the past and future,” says Bilir-Meier about her film.
Her film covers the racist attack on the Munich Olympia-Shopping Centre in July 2016. Bilir-Meier queries how history is told.
“History is often seen as something final,” she says adding “If we talk about this racist attack or about those in Halle and Hanau today, it is not only today, but a history of a continuity of racism. Racists attacks have been going on since the 1980s.”
At the same time she points to the continuity of the fighting against racism.
“If we do anti-racist work today, we have to think about the history of anti-racist fighting.”
She refers to the first theatre play made by migrants engaged in the cultural sector in Munich in 1982 — in which her mother was involved. The premiere was overshadowned by a bomb threat.
Bilir-Meier made her film in 2019 and it was awarded a “Special Mention Award” at this year’s Kurzfilmtage Oberhause (short film festival Oberhausen). In the film, the artist follows two teenage girls through the shopping centre where the terror attack happened and refers repeatingly to the 1982 theatre play, scene fotos of the play are shown: in once scene, the medical examination of a migrant guest worker is simulated, a doctor looking into his mouth — in the film the two girls re-enact that scene on the steps of the Olymia-Shopping-Centre.
Racist culprit with migrant background
Cana Bilir-Meier does not leave it to the perpetrator-victim asssignment:
“It is important to me, that we scrutinize the racism within our own communities” like the attack at the Olympia-Shopping-Centre. “The young man who committed the racist attack had his own migration background.”
How essential is the medium film for your art?
“For me it is a tool,” says Bilir-Meier. “When I was in school, a lot of histories I haven’t been told. History of migration — how did my grandparents get here? The history of colonialism.”
It has been similiar at the academy of arts.
“I learnt a lot of great things, but I didn’t see many works and films.”
It was only through communities and friends that she discovered those untold stories.
“For me, filmmaking is also a way of making these lost stories and many other stories of our society visible. To link the past with today.”
Reach out if you would like to see Cana Bilir-Meier’s film.
This story has been originally published in German on Deutschlandfunk Kultur based on an interview moderated by Max Oppel with the artist Cana Bilir-Meier on July 3, 2020. There is also a 10 minute podcast version available in German.
