Second curator's tour through the exhibit - NO HOPE NO FEAR

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Almost everyone knows it: the sense that nothing can really be done about the course of world events, or the burning crises of our times. Ohnmacht* is a sobering and paralyzing feeling that can be overpowering – but there is seldom opportunity to talk about it, and ideas on how to deal with it are few and far between.

To address this situation, in 2023 FORUM STADTPARK renames itself “Fortress Ohnmacht” and puts forward a number of possibilities for action. Birke Gorm’s “Ohnmacht Monument” invites visitors to reflect on the topic, while in “Archive for Ohnmacht”, it is possible to listen to experiences of Ohnmacht and ways to deal with it, gathered from activists working in a wide range of contexts. A “Cellar for Leftist Preppers” uses dark humour to deal with the motif of fortification in response to the threat of total societal collapse, while in “Hotel Bellevue”, guests will spend all night discussing the question of how to “prep” in order to avoid landing in a future defined by bunkers and fortresses. A series of events titled “Café End Times” casts a melancholy and critical gaze on the fading present-day and future worlds that will no longer come to be, while an “Ohnmacht Zine” sums up strategies and builds bridges between theory and concrete action.

“No Hope No Fear” confronts Ohnmacht with both humour and bitter earnestness, asking the question: how might we come to grips with feelings of powerlessness and expand our frame of view to consider forms of collective power and action? Perhaps the doctrine of hope will be replaced not with resignation, but with a new, fresh courage.