 Good morning, everyone. Thank you for my advice. Rector, director general, dear friends and colleagues. I'd like also to greet Uriel and the technical team that have made this conference possible. We are the European Observatory of Memories. We wanted to create and to design this event, even though we've been working on these memories for the LGBTQ community, but we wanted to make it more systemic. And I think that it's really worth to have this sort of partnership with the Catalan government and with the university on public policies related to this matter. And as Xavier Florenzo was saying, this is an important thing. It's important to talk about the memories, the struggles and from societies that unfortunately are not as free as democratic as they should sometimes. And this is why we resolved to this support and motion. The memory is a process, is a democratic construction from the present looking on to the past, this also conflict is a struggles for this conflict and this transgression and this transgressiveness has brought these struggles forward in the past but also in the recent past for this community. So this cycle of conferences will incorporate some other communities. Next year we've discussed this with colleagues at the European Commission to look at subaltern memories on the Roma people, the Gypsies and we will be approaching these from a cross-national viewpoint in a compared approach, incorporating all partners in our network throughout Europe. After this prepos-pandemic we are so happy to have her here because we haven't seen her for long and I'm really pleased to introduce an expert on memorial transmission in the public space and the creation of spaces in these subaltern memories on these conquests of the public space from different viewpoints, from different perspectives. And as a honorary professor of public art at the University of Arts in Berlin I'm sure she can shed much light on this and very interesting information on this topic under a European perspective but also well aware of the situation elsewhere in the world. Stephanie has participated on several occasions on memorials mostly in Germany and she has also published a pioneering book on researching and analysing Holocaust memorials at the city of Berlin. And without further ado let me thank the participation of the Catalan Government and the University of Barcelona through the Solidarity Foundation. Let me stress by the way that these new programmes that from the European Commission are being promoted I think that are right on track because I think it's right to call it citizens' right equality and values. It is also very appropriate to look at memory from the citizenship perspective to look at memories considering the present day struggles but also the recent past struggles and also to interact this with cooperation and partnership programmes which is at the very heart of our foundation and this is why we have so many pillars and we have the director, Xavier here with us but these will help us build a more democratic, a more just society even though we may be facing some shortcomings, some deficits because it's not just a healthcare crisis but we also have this political crisis and we should be well aware of that we have seen how the Andalusian regional elections or the French elections well you see how there's been a rise of the far right and this populism approach that completely disregard this sensitivity and we really need to be well aware of these safeguards so once more I think that we should celebrate this type of programmes the level incorporating gender justice, democratic memory discrimination, xenophobia, racism and so on and so forth so without further ado because I'm sure that we will listen to Stefanie Thank you Jordi for the introduction I'm sorry that I don't speak Catalan very sorry, good morning I'm very pleased to be here and to speak at the beginning of the conference many thanks for the invitation to Eurom to the University of Barcelona Solidarity Foundation and to Oriol, Jordi, Fernanda and Rika and everybody else in the team my presentation gives a short overview of some remarkable monuments and memorial installations in public space in various European countries some of them are dedicated mainly to homosexual victims of persecution by dictatorial and fascist regimes especially to victims of persecution under the Nazi regime other monuments focus on the recent past and the present and have emerged in the context of the gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender movements commitment to equal rights and societal recognition in my lecture I will first present some concrete examples from European cities afterwards as the organizer of the conference has requested I will focus on the national homosexual memorial in Berlin the impression is obvious that the essential questions and discussions around this Berlin monument are similar to debates in other cities some of these questions are asked and negotiated anew again and again is this okay with a loudspeaker? I think sometimes it makes a boom, no? can you understand me? lower? okay, okay let me begin with a few reflections remembering and commemoration are always in a field of tension between the past and the present many monuments and memorial installations to gays and lesbians refer to the oppression of these groups by dictatorial regimes especially to exclusion, persecution and multiple murders by the Nazi regime in Germany and in the occupied countries of Europe if we compare the genesis of these monuments with the genesis of other monuments however we see that here the remembrance of historical persecution is particularly strongly linked to the concern of the initiative groups to set a visible sign for their own current self assertion in the present time remembering and commemorating is much more than just to mourn the dead it's about asserting oneself in an environment that is still full of resentment from subtle rejection to outright violence a physical permanent monument in public space is always at the same time a self affirmation of one's role in society the activists who campaign for such a memorial are usually members of the younger generation and stand up for their rights with a self confidence and imagination this also has an impact on the aesthetic concepts members of these initiative groups are usually particularly open to unconventional artistic ideas however a lot of time passes from the first demands for a permanent monument in public space through the debates to the realization setting up monuments requires a lot of patience 10 or 20 years are not unusual battles must be waged against political and social rejection money must be found for realization and efforts to find an appropriate artistic form often lead to serious conflicts among the initiative groups themselves allies are sought, networks are formed however rivalries often arise when it comes to the dedication of the monument strategies for forming alliances often leave injuries politics and administrative bureaucracies require compromises science and research bring new insights to the topic in the best case a monument dedication can help promote public recognition of the moment's purpose monuments purpose in the worst case memorialization remains merely a symbolic political act to cover up political failures and draw a line under them in many countries and cities monuments for gays and lesbians have been built in the last decades I will present some of them to you now some in more detail others in short keywords here I will focus on western Europe in eastern European countries politics and the church have largely rejected and forbidden gay and lesbian monuments in public spaces due to their homophobic and transgender hostile attitudes in some countries for example in Belarus the repressions has even the repressions have even become worse due to the political crisis and to the war against Ukraine individual projects such as the Warsaw rainbow 10 years ago are a major exception they remained temporary the monument by artist Julia Wojcik was in the form of a large steel arch covered by more than 20,000 artificial flowers in rainbow colors the arch was first erected in front of the European parliament in Strasbourg in 2011 to mark Poland's presidency of the European Council and then moved to Warsaw in 2012 there it led to heated debate it was opposed by the church and by right-wing extremists and had to be guarded day and night by police officers it was set on fire six times once it was even completely destroyed and restored again people threw rotten eggs against it and finally it was removed in 2015 many people had campaigned for the rainbow to remain however the artist explained that her work had no ideological meaning whatsoever she said that she had created the rainbow as a temporary project from the very beginning with my next example I'm going back more than two decades and although I'm focusing on Europe today I want you to take a look to the United States for good reason the most significant early example of a game monument and probably the first ever is Skype to George Seagal's Gay Liberation Monument in New York City it shows a white painted bronze ensemble of a homosexual couple and a lesbian couple in a relaxed pose the artist created it back in 1980 on behalf of a private foundation that wanted to commemorate the 1969 so-called Stonewall Rebellion in New York City at that time a raid, a police campaign took place against the Stonewall Inn on Christopher Street in Greenwich Village a bar which was frequented by homosexuals and drag queens this police action was followed by protests and solidarizations by the first demonstrations and in the period that followed by the formation of the so-called Gay Liberation Movement initially however the Gay Liberation Monument could not be erected as planned in the neighboring Sheridan Park violent protests by local residents have prevented the installation there so the sculptures were moved to the grounds of Stanford University in Palo Alto, California there it was damaged several times by vandalism a second version erected in a park in Madison in the state of Wisconsin was also attacked it was not until 1992 after long controversial discussions that the monument was inaugurated in Greenwich Village at the place that had been the historical turning point in the struggle for equal rights in 1969 the memorial is one of the few that addresses gay and lesbian love in an equally figurative way this is due to the explicit wish of the sponsor and donor Peter Putman the memorial does not serve to honor the dead and does not refer to the persecution under dictatorship it shows no stylistic references to traditional memorials but with its figurative alienating realism it is anchored in the artistic development of the time with its extraordinary formal language it has set standards for contemporary memorial art so it makes sense to look at it a little bit closer George Siegel, one of the world's protagonists of environmental art took real people as modelers he wrapped them with plaster-soaked bandages then roughened the exteriors by hands then cast the hardened plaster forms in bronze and painted them with white paint the essential result of this technique is not naturalism but the similarity of detail and despite the human scale but on the contrary the result is extreme alienation especially in public space the monochrome white-gray skin of the figures create a fictional impression as if a moment of everyday life had been permanently frozen as if the figures were released for contemplation the people walk around them and touch them yet they are clearly kept at a distance George Siegel has similarly created other environments that are outstanding examples of contemporary memorial art such as the sculpture group The Holocaust in Lincoln Park in San Francisco The game monument in Greenwich Village is neither dramatic nor symbolic in design it expresses no mourning, no protest and no assurance of victory it shows the loving devotion, the physical touch as everyday moments of the relationship of couples in 1984 the Mauthausen Memorial Museum the first memorial sign was erected to explicitly commemorate the homosexual victims of the concentration camp the memorial sign has the shape of the triangle which was used at that time to mark the different prisoners groups the memorial plaque is made of old pink marble so it has the color assigned to male homosexuals at that time they were marked with a rosa vinkel, the pink triangle the words Tod geschlagen, Tod geschwiegen beaten to death, hushed, dead silent these words indicate that discrimination against homosexuals continued after 1944-45 and that a real discourse on repression had not yet been established until now the Mauthausen Memorial plaque served as a model for other plaques the same or different design in the memorial museums of Sachsenhausen, Buchenwald, Dachau and here in Neuengame as well as at the memorial sites in other countries the rosa vinkel, the pink triangle emblem was also used outside of memorials in numerous monuments and commemorative signs of the game movement for example in San Francisco there is an entire pink triangle park was created or in Tel Aviv, Sydney, Anchorage, Montevideo, San Juan in Puerto Rico Cologne and many other times in Warsaw two gay activists had planned in 2007 to erect a monument in the form of the pink triangle to the gay victims of Nazi terror however, despite some support from Warsaw city parliamentarians the realisation did not succeed the memorial plaque in Mauthausen was the result of an initiative of Austrian homosexual associations its design follows the reinterpretation of the pink triangle originally the mark was soon onto the prisoners clothing in the concentration camps and served the SS guards to identify the groups in the 1970s and 1980s however this control and marker signs of the SS was transformed into a positive and self-conscious collective identifier of the homosexual movement the equilateral triangle is particularly significant in proportion theory and as a symbol in art history in the memorial context it is used primarily as a graphic sign and information carrier for the survivors of the camps and their organisations in concentration camp memorials and cemeteries the triangle is used as a design element for honouring the dead victims of Nazi persecution especially in the context of the LGBTI movement many contemporary artists use the triangle in their designs for monuments in memorial signs to gays and lesbians varying in different ways this ignores however the fact that the historical pink concentration camp triangle was only applied to male prisoners there was no special identifying sign for lesbian women in the Nazi concentration camps lesbian women also did not form a separate prisoner category in the camps they were intimidated in other ways lesbian women were sent to camps not nearly so often as gay men to put it more precisely only in individual cases and then usually categorised as political prisoners or as so-called asocials the special circumstances of the persecution of lesbian women by the Nazi regime were not researched by historians until in the recent past in the current debates about the dedication and about the design of monuments the parallels and differences in the nature in the extent and in the severity of the persecution of gays and lesbians under this dictatorship play a major role I come back to this at the end of my lecture the homo monument in Amsterdam was realised in 1987 you find a beautiful picture in the middle of your program I just saw this this morning the monument is located at the Westermark right in the centre of Amsterdam a large square which is surrounded by canals the dedication of the monument does not only refer to homosexual victims of national socialism but includes all homosexual people in the past and present who were and who still are oppressed or murdered because of their sexual orientation the initiative came from Dutch gay and lesbian groups it dates back to individual actions by activists in the 1970s and received a major impetus in 1979 from a parliamentary submission supported by a coalition of various organisations including international ones this was followed by the establishment of the homo monument foundation and by the formation of a committee that determined the central location and held an art competition the artist Karin Dahn had developed her design from the Concentration Camp Triangle which I had mentioned before she designed an expensive floor sculpture composed of pink granite triangles as an expensive overall concept the installation, though framed by linear floor markings is not easily to discover the three angles of the triangle are aligned with historically and currently significant points in the urban space of Amsterdam city as triangles within a triangle the three angles perform different functions and are each specially designed one triangle reaches beyond the K wall into the Kaiserskracht kennel with its steps it's meant to symbolise the present the triangular element in the water serves as a place of remembrance and celebration it is oriented to the national monument on the Damm Amsterdam's central liberation and peace memorial dedicated to the victims of the German occupation during World War II the second triangle is intended to symbolise the future it has the form of a platform for resting and serves as a meeting point its outer point is directed towards the headquarters of the COC the main Dutch organisation for the rights of the LGBT lesbians, gay, bisexual and trans the COC the centre for cultural and leisure was founded in 1946 and is the oldest still existing LGBT organisation in the world the third triangle embodies the past it refers to the neighbouring Anne Frank house it also contains a line of poetry from the context of the Dutch gay movement I make a quotation such a boundless longing for friendship by Jacob Israel Der Hahn the Amsterdam homo monument has not provoked aggressive protests this is probably due to the legendary Dutch tolerance but it's also due to its design the large form created a kind of communicative city square the triangular emblem also serves as an architectural design principle for various inviting special areas thus it is up to passers-by to interpret it either as a symbol associated with Nazi terror and gay self-confidence or as a pure geometric element for a city square a monument of particularly artistic interest is the bronze angel in Frankfurt am Main it was created in 1994 by Rosemary Trocke whose work is close to conceptual art the dedication to the homosexual victims of the Nazi regime is expressed in the inscription of the plinth the text also warns of ongoing persecution for her work the artist used the damaged plaster model of an angel with ribbon a lost angel from a sculpture group at the Cologne Cathedral Rosemary Trocke made a black bronze cast of it but beforehand she added a violation, a wound to the sculpture in the wax cast by separating the head from the torso and putting it back on twisted with a visible fracture in this positioning the head of the angel seems to turn towards the courthouse behind it which can also be interpreted as a symbol for bending or twisting the law Rosemary Trocke herself referred to Walter Benjamin's Angel of History the backward looking prophet who embodies mercy and compassion also androgyny in addition other references can be found including religious ones for example in the small square whose design is part of the overall concept two circles enclose the monument one formed by four badges the other by four box hedges this resembles the famous art historical motive of the Madonna in the Rose Grove Madonna del Roseto Madonna en la Roseleda the monument is located in the centre of Frankfurt's homosexual culture and subculture it came about through the efforts of the initiative Memorial Gay Persecution the Red Green City Council of Frankfurt agreed but did not give any money the initiators had to finance the art competition and the realization themselves with the help of donations the Stolpersteine the stumbling stones by the artist Gunther Dämnig can now be found not only in Germany but all over the world the artist lays stones in the street pavement which are made of concrete in the dimension of old paving stones the surfaces consist of shiny gold press plaques into which the names and life dates of people are stamped who once lived here and who were murdered by the national socialists Gunther Dämnig's Stolpersteine stumbling stones settings are always accompanied by grassroots activities initiated and supported for example by school groups or residents or surviving descendants of the victims like no other project in the field of commemoration it has developed from the idea of a small marker in the mid 1980s into a popular success story the largest decentralized memorial in the world as it likes to be called with more than 80,000 stones in Germany and other countries in 2015 the first stumbling stone was also laid in Spain in Navas, Catalonia in 2013 the first stumbling stone was laid in Berlin for a homosexual victim the dancer and choreographer Fritz Heilscher he died in a sub-camp of the Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp where a particularly large number of homosexuals were murdered Salzburg was the first city in Austria where Stolpersteine were laid a few laters in 2012 there were for the first time five stones for homosexual victims in Munich after years of discussion a memorial dedicated equally to lesbians and gays persecuted under national socialism was inaugurated in 2017 for this they chose the site of the former in Schwarzfische the first gay bar in Munich where also the first major raid in 1934 took place the monument by Ulla von Brandenburg shows a colorful floor Mosaik which is supposed to stand for the tolerant urban society today here in the competition design the Mosaik looks like a carpet in the realization made of colored concrete it looks a little different the colors refer to the rainbow colors the floor in lay also includes you can see it a pink triangle and a black triangle a black in memory of lesbians women who were often imprisoned as a social as I said before so-called as socials were marked with a black triangle in the Nazi concentration camps the memorial project was initiated by the Rosa Liste München, Pink List Munich a political group that represents the interests of gays, lesbians, bisexuals transsexuals and intersexuals in local elections discussions in Düsseldorf also lasted for two decades in 2021 the monument by sculpture Klaus Richter was inaugurated a group of bronze figures holding one hand loft and holding each other together with the other hand it's dedicated to lesbian, gay, bi, queer, inter and trans people who were victims of Nazi persecutions but is also intended to remind discriminated people today in Vienna too the initiative had been calling more than 20 years for the erection of a monument to homosexual victims of the Nazi regime they were supported by the anti-discrimination office for LGBTIQ affairs which the city of Vienna had already established in 1996 there were several competitions, two big conferences and a whole series of temporary installations I show only a few of them here the location for the planned monument was also changed several times sorry it's so small, I hope you can see it der Rosaplatz, the pink place of Hans Kuppelwieser the result of the first competition in 2006 a water surface colored pink reminiscent of the pink triangle in the pink surface the lettering queer this was not realized because it turned out that no coloring dye is permanently harmless the Mannwache, solemn vigil by Ines Dujak an artistic intervention at the site of Vienna Gestapo headquarters in 2010 every week on Fridays people with picture boards stood there for one hour the boards showed photos of crying people's bleeding from the ear the pain of remembering too late, too late was a temporary installation by Karola Därtning and Julia Rode in 2011 the letter were made of resistant plants and they say non-recognition was too long Schwule Sau, which means gay pig by Jakob Linnak-Nebel a temporary installation in 2013 the artist used defirmatory terms with intention and presented them on his own naked body thus homophobia is exposed and discussions are provoked the result of a second art competition in 2020 oversight hands on a mirrored surface designed by Mark Quinn from Great Britain two men's hands and two women's hands are touching each other tenderly however the hands are brutally chopped off perhaps a reference to the times of Corona the competition result was not realized the artist himself withdrew it he said that the realization would be too elaborate and wasteful in difficult times of existential reorientation and of global wasting of resources finally the result of a new competition in May 2020 some weeks ago Arcus Shadow of a Rainbow by Sarah Ottmeyer and Karl Kolbitz the colorful rainbow colors symbol, LGBTIQ movement are translated into various shades of gray perhaps an arc of triumph mourning and commemoration stand in the foreground this piece of art shall be realized still this year in 2022 I have reported about the Vienna project a bit more detailed because here it becomes clear how interesting especially temporary projects can be now very briefly some more examples from European cities in Bologna the memorial stone for homosexual victims of racist Nazi fascism has the shape of a triangle set into a square surface it was inaugurated in 1990 on the anniversary of the liberation from fascism and it was initiated by Archie Gay the largest Italian association for civil rights of homosexual and bisexual people also in 1990 a monument in Rome stands in a square where the German occupiers had gathered arrested people for deportation into the camps silhouettes with shackled hands emerged from a cotton steel wall they represent five different groups of prisoners and they bear a concentration camp triangle on their backs one of the five silhouettes bears the pink triangle the homo monument in the Hague, Den Hague Netherlands, was erected in 1993 an abstract matters culture suggests a moving winding ribbon or a close fluttering in the wind the artist Tio Ten Hague has taken the shape and colourfulness in reference to self-confident homosexual life he said the green lawn symbolizes society the blue base symbolizes awareness the notch symbolizes conflict and this transition from blue to pink in the upper part symbolizes liberation about 5,000 people were murdered in the Nazi SS concentration camp Risiera di Sanz Saba in Trieste it's unknown how many of them were homosexual in 2005 homosexual groups erected a black granite plaque with a pink angle on the memorial site the inscription protests against all discrimination you know the following two monuments from your city and region better than I do in Sages south of Barcelona a monument was erected in 2006 on a beach that as a popular meeting place for the gay community has been subject to repeated police checks the pink triangle bears the inscription Sages against homophobia and in Barcelona itself the monument honors the victims of sexual discrimination lesbians, gays and transsexual people after a long controversy about its possible location in the surroundings of the Sagrada Familia Basilica the monument has been finally located in 2011 in the Tutadella Park a triangle made from pink marble I end this short overview with a look at London there the tribute to homosexual victims is included in the general Holocaust Memorial the very controversial new Holocaust Memorial plan for 2025 is also to include homosexual victims it's not yet clear in which way but there is something cheerful, surprising around Trafalgar Square homo and trans traffic lights they were initially meant to be temporary in 2016 during Christopher Street Day but now they shall remain permanently the idea came from Vienna and has since been implemented in several other European cities including Madrid now I come to the Berlin Memorial one second the monument to homosexuals persecuted under national socialism was erected in Berlin in 2008 it's a national monument which means its basis is a resolution of the German parliament it is part of the ensemble of national memorials to victims of national socialism in the very centre of Berlin consisting of the Holocaust Memorial the memorial to the murdered Cindy and Roma the memorial to the victims of the euthanasia murders and precisely the homosexual monument this memorial has a particularly difficult and long history of origin it began with the first Berlin Memorial for the homosexual victims of the Nazi regime the Triangle in a downtown district which has been the centre of homosexual entertainment culture since about 1900 and was particularly affected by Nazi raids and bans in 1989 on the initiative of two homosexual associations this commemorative plaque was erected there based in form and inscription on the Mauthausen plaque mentioned at the beginning ten years later the artist Salome erected the Rainbow Steely a few steps away from it financed by a private initiative complimenting the memorial triangle that looks back at those persecuted by the Nazi regime this art object was designed as a cheerful sign of the present a metal pen in the bright colours of the gay and lesbian rainbow flag with a pink tip reaching towards the sky during the competitions for the Holocaust Memorial that was around 1995 the gay memorial initiative was formed which later became the initiative named commemorate the homosexual victims gradually it succeeded in gaining the support of numerous politicians and civic groups for the idea of a national memorial together with the lesbian and gay association the initiative recalled the promise made by the Bundestag the German parliament in 1999 the promise said that the memorial foundation which was established for the future Holocaust Memorial should also make sure the commemoration of the non-Jewish victims of national socialism this parliamentary promise was the result of the decision at that time to dedicate the Holocaust Memorial exclusively to the Jewish victims and not also to the other groups of victims who had been persecuted for racist motives thus it was consequent that the other groups demanded their own national memorial too in 2003 the Bundestag the German parliament decided to take up the initiative's concern and create a national memorial for persecuted homosexuals an area was chosen on the southeastern edge of the Tiergarten the large park in the very center of Berlin between the Brandenburg Gate and the Potsdamer Platz directly opposite the field of Steele of the Holocaust Memorial which you can see to the right of the pink circle which is the site of the homosexual monument this area of the park had also been a popular meeting place for gay men for 250 years the initiatives really sorry the initiatives recalled I quote that the persecution and oppression of gay people continues to the present day the memorial should therefore also be a place of self assurance this reference to the present was explicitly included in the parliamentary resolution I quote with this memorial we want to honor the persecuted and murdered victims keep the memory of injustice alive and set a constant sign against intolerance hostility and exclusion against gays and lesbians end of quotation a two-stage art competition followed with participation from the Lesbian and Gay Association and the grassroots new society for visual arts among the participant artists were international known protagonists most of them took up the initiators concern to create a communicative place where the focus should not be on individual mournful remembrance but on encounter and dialogue the design by the Danish Norwegian artist duo Michael Elmgren and Ingard Rexit was awarded as first prize the monument was erected three years later in 2008 it has the shape of a monolithic cube almost like a small pavilion however it's hermetically closed except for a small glass window through which one can look into the inaccessible interior the cube refers in form material and proportions to the steely form of the neighboring Holocaust memorial which you see here however the cube stands on its own and is much larger in scale than one of those pillars in the large field looking through the stained glass window into a perspective narrowed interior one sees a video projection developed by director Thomas Winterberg based on the conceptual idea of the artists Elmgren and Rexit two young men are immersed in an apparently endless kiss the artists describe two essentials for their designs the first essential they said is the knowledge that the visual picture of homosexual affection still generates great reservations and rejections in society despite all the progress made in the area of legislation and despite increasingly tolerant social manners therefore such caresses should be made directly visible in the midst of heterosexually occupied public space in this way the project contributes to the formation of identity and to the appropriation of urban space for this purpose the artists choose the representation of a kiss a tender and innocent act they said at the same time a positive image that everyone could identify with a permanent video the second essential motive of their design is the single standing cube which as mentioned quotes the stele of the holocaust memorial but is larger and is a little bit slanted in an almost ironical way one could have the impression that the cube is looking over or waving over to the holocaust stele field in this way you see the field in the background in this way similarities of the homosexual victims with other victims groups are visualized but also their special role as outsiders then and now in addition the hermetic looking concrete cube represents a protective space for the tender act of kissing with its small viewing windows window it refers to the difficult tension between public and private in the controversial debate that began after the inauguration two points of criticism dominated on the one hand especially historians and representatives of memorial museums objected that the monument left no space and no point of contact for mourning commemoration of the homosexuals tortured and murdered in the concentration camps instead they said it serves to establish the identity of today's community and neglects in a self centered way the honoring of the debt to which this project should actually be dedicated and they criticized that the adoption of the holocaust memorials stele motive might give the incorrect impression that homosexuals like Jews were systematically persecuted with the intention of extermination in fact however the jewelry had selected elm green and directed sign precisely because it contains this consistent relation to the present day much sharper however was the critical protest against the video lesbian woman so it was said had been forgotten and excluded from this monument because the video shows the kiss of two men especially for a national monument the suppression of the female aspects should not be tolerated the result of this controversy was the decision of the minister of culture himself the temporary installation of new videos by other filmmakers which was intended to take into account the demanded same sex perspective the new video by gerald back house entitled kiss without end was produced in 2012 it shows five kissing scenes of male couples and female couples in different situations in which they are suspiciously observed by others this is told in the form of small stories without special artistic quality and it was enforced as a political intervention in the artwork of elm green and trexat the German parliament had explicitly underlined that the lesbian monument should be a statement against the exclusion of gays and lesbians the debate about the video however continues to this day references to the special conditions of the persecution of lesbians under national socialism are mixed with arguments about the necessary same respect of homosexuals and lesbians today in 2014 to 2017 the original video by elm green and rexat was shown again for a while in 2017 however it became known that one of the two performance in the video was conspicuous for racist and sexist remarks therefore this video will definitely not be shown anymore so small since 2018 we can see a video by the Israeli artist Yael Bartana she also shows the various stories of kissing female and male couples in different times and situations you can find all the three videos on the website of the holocaust memorial foundation you can see them here you can see Yael Bartana on the right side of the group during the inauguration of the video let me come to end with some concluding remarks monuments are works of art works of art whose aesthetic quality may still impress even after a long time however they are always documents of the concrete historical period in which the work of art was created there are documents of the stylistic art movements of the time and documents of the priorities set by the initiators and by the sponsors for such a monument at that time therefore a distant between monument and viewer is always present like any work of art and in what style it was created memorial art always unfolds its effect in the present of the viewer and in the context of the respective societal situation new individual experiences critical reflections and social changes always lead to new debates and interpretations especially in the case of our topic it becomes clear how strongly the entire remembrance cultural context can change in just a few years in Germany for example the conflict over whether the persecution of lesbian women during the Nazi era should be equated with the persecution of homosexual men gradually loses its sharpness thanks to more extensive historical research true in Nazi Germany only homosexual men were criminalized by the so-called paragraph 175 many lesbian women however were persecuted intersectually that is in the context of other Nazi persecution strategies for example for political resistance for non-conformist living for prostitution or for not being white which means for racist movement motives for racist motives concentration camp museums in particularly have been quite late in sharing these research results this required the long-standing initiatives and demands of women's groups as well as lesbian and gay association in Germany a monument for the lesbian inmates of the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück was realized just now few weeks ago in memorials fair a ball was the inscription in memory of all lesbian women and girls in the women's concentration camp Ravensbrück and Uckermark you were persecuted, imprisoned, also murdered you are not forgotten the ideas for this fair came in 2014 from the initiative autonomous feminist women's lesbians from Germany and Austria however the ceramic ball broke apart in the pottery firing kiln almost a metaphor for the tension that has accompanied this project over years so the inauguration in May had only a symbolic character and will be made up for in the fall and the other groups of LGBTI plus movement are they being included the commitment of the gay and lesbian movement to equal rights and social recognition has shaped many previous monument settings especially in the 1990s and in the first decade of the 21st century however this commitment has long since expanded to include other groups such as transgender queer, non-binary and others in these processes the existing monuments are also being reinterpreted in the best cases they are open to a changed or expanded reception over time and we see in current and future memorial projects these groups are widely included thank you very much for your attention thanks a lot Stephanie we could see this kind of universe of memorialization and memorials a kind of transmission in a public space also not only memorial is about the stone and interactions of architectural and public art also could be performance and demonstrations of course and this has to be pointed so I'm giving the floor to you, to all of you for any questions we have some time for Q&A so you can ask your questions, make your remarks I've been talking for long everybody's tired this is Blau hello good morning, I'm Santos I'm here representing a union in Catalonia UGT union and also the LGBTQ plus community your presentation has focused on memorials on monuments that we as activists have been always claiming to give visibility to the LGBTQ plus struggle I would like to mention that our enemies despise our struggle and for example there's a despise by museums hello testing one, two, three one, two, three, it's canal dos hello testing one, two, three one, two, three, testing can you hear me Stephanie, one, two, three one, two, three, is it working now? okay let me start again I'm Santos, I'm representing here the LGBTQ plus group of UGT, Catalan union and I'm an activist myself and I was mentioning that our enemies the enemies of our group have always wanted to despise our struggle because they think that it's not an actual struggle and they believe that it is connected to fads or trends and it's superficial so monuments and memorials give visibility to our struggle but you haven't mentioned museum like museum memory and what is included in museum because in the US it's true that they have foundations mason foundations that claim human rights and they do have LGBTQ plus memorials as of the second world war that started to happen but before that they had attempts to claim and give visibility to the group but in Europe we don't have many museums, the one in Berlin the one in Amsterdam but they are tiny and residual and we are lacking these claiming of human rights of the LGBTQ plus community because it's very apparent that if you are in a museum you go through the main gate of history you go down in history because it's something permanent but many people believe that the LGBTQ plus movement is just a fad a trend something that started in the 60s with psychedelia and they despise our struggle what do you think about including the LGBTQ plus concept in any museum as a claim just like any other struggles like feminists I agree completely to your sentences I hardly know any larger museums which deal with LGBTQ purposes, you are right and I wish that I'm sorry I wish that could be the fact that's all I can say because I'm not I know the very small museum in Berlin which is a private museum sometimes gets some money from sponsors or even from the Berlin senate for certain exhibitions but that's all it's still there very small I think that this should be included in cultural policies it's easily said not so easily done and we have representatives of the administration that can attest to that but we need public policies that include that in a cross cutting manner that mainstream all perspectives and that's why it's important to work in a cross cutting manner but as you have seen there are many monuments and memorials that have been funded privately it's like a permanent conquest and you're more knowledgeable about it than myself but it's about conquering the public space with these initiatives what has been subaltern and invisible for a long time that's my opinion just sharing it any other question it's a remark that has to do with what you just said there's the Schulles museum in Berlin where they try to offer a memorial from a museum that's an important topic and I wonder would you think Stephanie very often if you want to retrieve the memory you need objects to talk about to exhibit memory objects and unfortunately LGBTQ plus memories are not tangible they are not material it's not that they didn't exist where they are because they've been erased or they belong to highly concealed personal archives so it's difficult to have them in museums it's true that there have been projects in Spain and locally to try and create memory networks and then we could discuss what kind of objects we would like to commemorate I think in San Diego in California they took the first glory hole that was taken from a public toilet and was taken to a public museum as one of the first known sexual encounter places in San Diego so these things can be done but we will have to discuss in the case of Europe a museum of a state nature and they have public funding and of course there are political interests behind that probably the Catalan government is much more open to these kind of initiatives I come from Madrid the Madrid government would be willing to support a glory hole being exhibited in a museum or any other initiative and in the Reyna Sofia museum we have more archive like projects and there's this connection between the archive and the museum and it's about hosting collective memories the Mercury Collective that started in the 70s they have donated everything that they have left of their collective memory to the archive and they are open to the public so it's good to show this to the public so that they can access to it in an easier manner and use them even if it's in a temporary exhibition but it's very difficult when you lack the material the tangible object to claim a memory that is there but you need to put a lot of effort into it to retrieve it and with the help of public institutions I would like to make a very short some very short remarks yes thank you the Schwules Museum in Berlin which you mentioned they have a lot of objects I don't think that the lack of objects is the problem, the problem has other reasons and even if it was the problem you would not be able to use it and you would not be able to use it and even if it was the problem you can very well make historical museums with few objects and other media in different fields but talking on the other side about state museums in Germany we have only one state historical museum divided into cities Bodin and Berlin so maybe the museum should have another form of Träger who buries it the Holocaust foundation underneath the Holocaust memorial there is also an exhibition they partly also try to include changing exhibitions for the homosexual and lesbian persecution but that's not what you meant there was another question there I'm Montserrat Esquerda I belong to the working group of historical memory of the LGBTQ plus group in Sieges and on Wednesday we opened an exhibition in the Sieges Museum based on a proposal, an initiative to claim a homosexual person who spent his last years in Sieges Jose Zamora, a figurine artist who had worked in Paris theatres and in Madrid during the Belle Epoque and then in the post-war period and we wanted to present this project to the museum not only because of the value of these artists but also the role he played in the 40s when he arrived in Sieges he decided to spend long periods in Sieges because he found a certain level of tolerance and he led a very open and free life throughout his life but this exhibition project has allowed us to discuss the community, the group in Sieges as of the 50s and 60s and now we want to give continuity to these and organise an exhibition on the Sieges of the 80s and 70s so we want to make it to the museum in Sieges with tiny exhibitions with these pretexts that we have the artwork of these people and we want to talk about the LGBTQ plus group in Sieges which is the gay capital of Catalonia so this has been the premise it was not a question it was just sharing some information thank you very much touch on me that you're all invited Pepito Zamora was not repressed, no he belonged to the group of Antonio de Ollos but he went into exile we don't know why but he was not repressed he was not a victim of repression he made it he was able to live in Sieges in the post-war period we do not have enough biographical data but it's true that within that group some went into exile but he spent a quiet life in Sieges the last 20 years of his life but in Madrid he led an open homosexual life without many hurdles we have Ricardo Conesa our historian who is from Sieges and we have developed a project to organize a memorial space in Barcelona and there's a part on the first floor a permanent section on LGBTQ plus there's history and if we have some witness stories that'd be great, you can be in touch and we can include that I'm José Antonio Frias can you hear me? not much I'm a professor at the University of Salamanca at the documentation and library studies faculty and I'd like to supplement what was mentioned by Moisés not long ago the general directorate of LGBTQ rights of the quality ministry granted me a project about the situation of sources the condition of sources to gather data about LGBTQ people in Spain and we have been talking here about museums, objects memory, etc it's all very scattered I'd say it's true that there are some art centres or museums that have worked hard especially the Neumudeja in Madrid with the transfeminist queer archive they have incorporated all kinds of materials the main problem lies with reaching out to the people who have these materials they have included for example the etyra collective archive this is a group of sex workers that just disappeared but these are objects with high memorial value or the pink sachets in which they handed out condoms so the main problem is that intangible memory is key the memory of spaces of locations, of music and I think that the challenge that we have ahead is to generate new stories, new narratives by incorporating different sources of information because sometimes for example prisons in Tefía the agricultural colony where homosexuals were imprisoned by the Franco regime that is being recovered as a memory site or in Torremolinas the Begoña passage I mean there are some spaces that are being recovered but sometimes the interpretation is not very accurate what we need to do is to build new narratives about spaces, about locations on the basis of objects, references cultural references, literary work it's the only way we have to recover that intangible memory that has been key and that we need to recover, thank you Hi, a slight change of topic my name is Kai, I'm just a high school student but I wanted to know that most of these monuments are pretty normative and this lack of representation of trans, non-binary and even intersexual collectives it's a kind of erasure that our community has been suffering always and the question is basically like what do we do with it what do we do with the lack of representation of the non-binary and trans identities in the artistic areas and the lack of popularization of the existing representation of it thank you sorry, it's difficult to give an answer how can I tell you what is to do to make things better perhaps I can answer with some thoughts about how memorials in public space work when we look back to memory development and in the public space we can always see that the representation in public space comes late it comes always much later than historical research, then discussions in the public, in the university in the grassroots movement it comes late we have at the moment in Germany and especially in Berlin although this very difficult debate why is the topic of colonialism and the crimes of German colonialism not really arrived in public space we have researchers for about six or seven years we have groups initiatives, we have this and that in the center of Berlin we have only one single memorial plate at the place where in 1886 the German Reich and 12 other nations came together to decide what they make with Africa which is a huge story and I'm sure that there will also monuments to come in the next years but maybe this will take some time and competition and different ideas so I hope that also what you say now the lack of representation in the public space will come later I don't know how to enforce it we could increase the public budget to invest memory is always low cost maybe not in Germany but if you take Spain as a reference we have a lot of problems in Spain and Catalonia too in Germany we don't have enough money for many memorials we have the big state monuments, that's right they are very representative and some kind of problematic too between the central national level and the small projects but we don't have a national level and we don't have a small project it's always a very big debate but we can begin also with in Catalonia and this kind of symbolic changes could be changing first of all the references in the public space but it will take such a long time more questions and we will bring this to a close before I forget last question and with this we wrap up Stephanie's presentation on this Q&A hello I'm Charlie I'm from the international studies boss learner institute and I will ask in English because I feel more comfortable by the way it was very interesting you referred to the idea of LGBT rights as democratic or at some point they were conflated with ideas of democracy do you think maybe we need to have caution in doing these things because it leads us to view LGBT rights as something western or occidental focused just as the idea of democracy do you think we do need to have caution when we talk about these things because otherwise it removes the internationalisation of LGBT rights and makes us view them more as a western concept was that a question? I'm not sure if this was a question or a statement I think it was a statement I'm sorry maybe you speak very quick in English you were asking for the international context yes of course this is a big problem because we have countries where even the existence of being homosexual or lesbian especially homosexual is an existential problem for life and they have death penalties and we should not forget the real how heavy problems are compared to ours and we have to look at those countries thank you so we wrap up now thank you very much for your attention the symbolism of this triangle is for organisations civil society, the government and everyone else can keep making headway in this discussion thank you very much see you later