Ulf Aminde’s artworks and films deal with public space, challenging conventional forms of remembrance through projects that evoke collective learning environments and experimental settings that seek not only to represent social issues but to shape them. Aminde creates projects of critical memory in which the political structures of commemorative spaces are exposed and shared, avoiding the dangers of instrumentalization in order to foreground the perspective and agency of those most affected. His recent participatory project Anti-Racist Memorial Keupstraße (2016–ongoing) was created with survivors and residents of a commemorative space for the victims of racist attacks by the National Socialist Underground (NSU) terrorist network in Cologne, specifically on Probsteigasse (2001) and Keupstraße (2004). As with Aminde’s other projects, the emphasis on social change is crucial as he believes that ‘social change becomes possible when we acknowledge structural conditions that continually reproduce racism and make the decision to change these conditions’. For the exhibition, Aminde creates sixteen flags entitled Klage that resignify HKW’s entrance as a space of commemoration, featuring a list of people from different communities in Germany who have been killed as a result of right-wing violence since 1990. As a participatory project, Klage sets in motion an initial phase of activation that begins a process which, rather than presenting a finished memorial site, asks for deliberation on what should be part of it.

Work in the exihibiton: Klage (Remembering the victims of right-wing violence in Germany since 1990 // 1st activation, 13 September 2024) (2024), series of 16 flags, dimensions vary. Design: operative.space. Courtesy of the artist