Lars Henrik Gass directed the Oberhausen Short Film Festival for almost 27 years. After a call for solidarity with Israel, activists initiated a boycott. Now Gass is leaving. In an interview, he explains how campaigns controlled by anti-democratic groups work in the cultural world today.
Most recently, the director of the Oberhausen Short Film Festival, Lars Henrik Gass, and the festival were the subject of a boycott campaign that is unprecedented to this day – because Gass had called for solidarity with the victims of the terrorist attack by Hamas on October 7th in a Facebook post. Many filmmakers and distributors stayed away from Oberhausen as a result – now Gass has announced his departure from the Short Film Festival. A conversation with him about the boycott technique used by activists, the resignation of the bourgeois cultural center – and where Gass is going next.
WELT: Is the anonymous campaign still in your bones?
Lars Henrik Gass: It was a pretty accelerated learning process for all of us. I had to understand how this affective economy works and why it also affects people who were considered reasonable. Such campaigns can obviously trigger virulent resentment, even against a festival like the one in Oberhausen with its universalistic view of the world.
WELT: It was a real “Oberhausen case”.
Gass: Apparently, we were being used as an example of how high the price can be for a demonstration of sympathy for Israel. At their core, such campaigns are a social system of reward and punishment. Anyone who contradicts the cultural code – I opposed it – is punished. Anyone who reproduces it is rewarded with group membership and access to resources. That’s what I call pressure to conform. Divergent opinions are not tolerated.
WELT: Did you ever find out who initiated the campaign?
Gass: No, probably from Germany. There is a very small group of activist entrepreneurs, especially in the university sector, who have professionalized this technique of scandalization. This includes anonymous sender status and prose that appeals to diffuse civil society ideas of humanity and cosmopolitanism in order to mobilize as large a circle of people as possible in the shortest possible time. These are anti-democratic forces that want to assert their particular interests by exploiting resentment.
WELT: Forces like the BDS movement.
Gass: BDS no longer plays a role. The new strategy of anti-Israel activism is to give the appearance of humanistic and peace-movement motivation and thus target civil society, and that works better than with BDS. In this way, many people who really cannot be accused of anti-democratic goals have indirectly supported them. They also reflexively stand firm when it comes to concrete measures against anti-Semitism that represent more than just symbolic politics.
WELT: The Oberhausen campaign was the first to be specifically directed against a person.
Gass: I was faced with a choice: either public submission – or telling the public what was happening. And that is exactly what I tried to do, in the hope that there would be consequences.
“Evidence of the resignation of the middle class”
WELT: Have any consequences been drawn?
Gass: Not to this day. Take a look at the Cultural Council’s paper of July 1st, “Securing freedom of art, combating anti-Semitism and racism in the cultural sector!” On the one hand, they want to “decisively confront” the problem, but on the other hand, responsibility for shaping this process is being given to voluntary self-regulation in the cultural sector, i.e. educational efforts. The paper completely ignores the nature and functioning of anti-Semitism. Anti-Semitism, i.e. ideology, cannot be rehabilitated through education; that didn’t work with the old Nazis either. Think of the anti-Semitism at elite American universities, which hardly suffer from a lack of education. A paper like this is evidence of the resignation of the middle class, which no longer wants or can shape the process and is retreating into simulating politics.
WELT: Were you satisfied with the support you received from the city of Oberhausen and its festival team?
Gass: In Oberhausen, people have always taken a clear stance against anti-Semitism and even maintain a memorial hall for the victims of National Socialism, which incidentally was also the target of attacks by pro-Palestinian activists. But even in Oberhausen, people did not understand that anti-Semitism is not only a problem of right-wing extremism, but also of left-wing radicalism and Islamofascism – and a new alliance of all these forces. There was at least one inquiry in the Hessian state parliament as to why the director of a festival sponsored by the state had supported the campaign against the short film festival with her signature.
WELT: That was the head of “Go East”, if I’m not mistaken. There is also someone on the new selection committee for the Berlinale competition who signed against Oberhausen.
Gass: It is not a capital crime to sign against us, but I do not see this attitude of blacklisting and boycotting as being in line with our cultural mission.
WELT: Now, sometimes public support only masks the fact that one would like to get rid of a controversial figure.
Gass: Not in my case, otherwise I would not have been offered a contract extension. Perhaps they were a little overwhelmed, shocked by the aggression that was directed against us, like all of us. I was even called a “fascist” on Facebook. We therefore had to develop a security concept for the festival that was more stable than that of the Berlinale. We had a duty to protect the guests. The introduction of a code of conduct then led to further cancellations and hostility. But there were no disruptions, there were only lively discussions.
WELT: In your opinion, what would constitute an effective approach to combating anti-Semitism in the cultural sector?
Gass: It is not a question of whether this or that art can be shown, but rather of whether there is a right to have openly racist or anti-Semitic actions and statements funded by public funds? In my opinion, there is no obligation to fund propaganda under the protection of artistic freedom. This was also the aim of the proposal by Berlin’s Senator for Culture, Chialo. We will not be able to avoid guidelines if we want to change anything. And that has nothing to do with an infringement on artistic freedom. Article 1 of the Constitution gives us the priority of protecting human dignity.
WELT: Now there is art funding for the creation of works, and there is funding for their public presentation, such as at exhibitions or in the cinema.
Gass: Problematic works like the “Tokyo Tapes” can of course be shown at the Documenta. In the overall picture of the exhibition, however, the curatorial agenda represented for me a collective regression of the bourgeois subject; no one was responsible anymore. In this respect, the “Tokyo Tapes” were a clearly anti-Semitic statement. Cultural policy and cultural administration were completely overwhelmed by this.
WELT: You have been director of the Short Film Festival for almost 27 years. I cannot think of a comparable length of time in the festival sector.
Gass: Sir Alex Ferguson was coach at Manchester United for just as long.
WELT: Where are we going now?
Gass: In Stuttgart, I will be the founding director of the House for Film and Media from February next year. The house is the first cultural building in Germany that is truly solely dedicated to film and media since the Frankfurt Film Museum 50 years ago, which we had also wanted for Berlin. It is primarily intended to be aimed at the city’s society. In comparison to the ZKM in Karlsruhe, it is more of an umbrella for all film and media initiatives, a place for media practice and presentation, which of course also aims to provide its own artistic impulses. There will be two cinemas as well as exhibition areas and studios, workshop rooms and catering – in a new building on the former site of the Breuninger car park.
WELT: That’s something: culture replaces consumption. Is the project called “Stuttgart 31” by any chance?
Gass: (laughs) It certainly won’t be my fault. As things stand, the opening is scheduled to take place in the course of 2029.
