I don’t think there’s a generally applicable answer.

Interviewee: Nora Sternfeld

OK, what can such a link look like…I don’t think there’s a generally applicable answer, rather a host of specific answers. Both of us have experienced many such answers together. I believe a critique of representation is an essential component of activism addressing institutions. Take the case of ethnographic museums for example, restitution demands are key, but there are also demands to rename streets and squares in public space. I think it’s only right that this concern is raised and taken seriously, and that a solution is found in cooperation with one another. That would be an initial and very simple cooperation between institutions and activism. To listen to the demands made of institutions and decide what appears to be useful and sensible. Secondly, there is then what emerges out of situations when people work together who – or least many of them – are in both camps, activists and persons anchored in institutions. Both of us belong to this group. I wish that I can succeed – through working seriously and meticulously on questions which matter to me – in producing a context in which demands are formulated, crystallised, or brought to my attention. Or when they aren’t any specific demands, but moments of politicisation arise, aspects of organisation, where I can be useful.