An Archival Impulse: The Return of 1970s Leftwing Terrorism in Contemporary German Art

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As the controversial Kunstwerke exhibition “Imagining Terror” (“Zur Vorstellung des Terrors”, 2005) has shown, an intimate bond exists between left-wing terrorism and the arts. From the 1970s onward, the arts have steadily been preoccupied with West German terrorism, turning it into one of the most prominent yet also most contested topics in German art today. Part of its attraction lies in its interdisciplinary character, connecting terrorism to various fields such as media theory, art history, and memory studies. As such, leftwing terrorism has come to constitute its own kind of archive, and probing into it can uncover traces beyond its immediate topicality. Drawing primarily on two recent essays – Hal Foster’s “An Archival Impulse” (October 2004) and James Meyer’s “The Return of the Sixties in Contemporary Art and Criticism” (Antinomies of Art and Culture, 2008) –, the following article will take a look at contemporary German art’s renewed fascination with leftwing terrorism, asking what might be at stake when a new generation of artists simultaneously draws on and expands upon this archive. Some of the trends one can observe in this process are a reformatting of history, a shift in focus to themes previously tossed aside and forgotten, and a retelling of stories as counterfactual. They speak to an interest in the 1970s that is not only topical but also aesthetic in nature. Artworks exemplifying this kind of archival impulse include Thomas Demand’s “Attempt” (2005), and Andree Korpys/ Markus Löffler’s “Conspirative Housing Project Spindy” (1997-2001).