77sqm_9:26min at documenta 14

77sqm_9:26min

documenta 14

Kassel, 10 June – 19 September 2017

The Parliament of Bodies, the Public Program of documenta 14, emerged from the experience of the so-called long summer of migration in Europe, which revealed the simultaneous failure not only of modern representative democratic institutions but also of ethical practices of hospitality.

As part of this program, The Society of Friends of Halit presented documentation of their investigation, research, and activism into the murder of twenty-one-year-old Halit Yozgat on 6 April 2006 in a family-operated internet cafe in Kassel, Germany. Halit became the ninth victim in a string of racially motivated murders of immigrants conducted by the Nationalsozialistischer Untergrund (NSU, or National Socialist Underground). A Hessian secret service agent, Andreas Temme, was present during Halit’s murder but claimed that he neither heard the gunshots, noticed the sharp smell of gunpowder, nor saw Halit’s body behind the counter when he left. The Society of Friends of Halit situated the shots that killed Halit Yozgat within a long history of racist violence that is deeply rooted in German society. We used the term “NSU Complex” to describe this combination of neo-Nazi terror and institutional and structural racism.

The Society hosted a series of presentations and discussions during documenta 14 in Kassel specifically addressing the killing of Halit Yozgat and the presence of secret service agent Andreas Temme at the scene and time of the murder. The installation includes the three-channel video 77sqm_9:26min  and accompanying written report by Forensic Architecture at the Neue Neue Galerie (Neue Hauptpost).

Images of the exhibition © Mathias Voelzke