Vibrancy in Memory Across Generations

Keynote presentation from the 2024 Summer Forum in Berlin, June 1

Rachel Libeskind, Christoph Mauny, Justin Merrick, and moderator Marc Skvirsky explore the following questions: What does “living remembrance” look like in different contexts, such as the United States and Germany? How can we remember and commemorate so that large sections of society and especially younger people with different cultural, religious, and educational backgrounds can actively participate? What role do approaches that move people emotionally play in this? And what can be gained by engaging with the past on an artistic level? 

Panelists

Justin Merrick is the executive director of the Center for Transforming Communities in Memphis, which does on-the-ground cultural and civic engagement by lifting up the culture of individual neighborhoods, especially through the arts. He seeks to mobilize people around issues of policy, history, and inclusion at the grassroots level, as well as among institutions and youth. He is also a Grammy-nominated, multi-genre artist and educator with a background in opera, jazz, hip-hop, rock, and soul music.

Rachel Libeskind is a multidisciplinary artist whose research-based practice explores the construction of history and the enduring power of images. In her works, which are composed of collage, installation, video, and performance, Libeskind appropriates and recontextualizes images to break through imposed boundaries — between the personal and the public, the ancient and the contemporary, the social and the cultural — and reveal unexpected parallels. Libeskind has had solo exhibitions, installations, and performances at the Center for Jewish History, New York; the Watermill Center, Long Island; Pioneer Works, Brooklyn; the Bombay Beach Biennale and Mana Contemporary, Miami. Born in Milan and raised in Berlin and New York, Libeskind now lives in Berlin. This year, Libeskind will be featured in a solo exhibition at the Jule Collins Smith Museum of Fine Art at Auburn University, Alabama. She is the creative director of LABA Berlin, a fellowship for Jewish artists.

Christoph Mauny lives in Weimar, where he combines art education and the promotion of democracy as an education officer at the Weimar Painting and Drawing School. He previously worked for the Friedenstein Foundation in Gotha for eight years, where he introduced a progressive educational concept with creation of a youth committee, the opening of a socio-cultural branch with open workspaces in the city center, and aesthetic interventions in public spaces — including the façade projection “The Gotha Synagogue lives.” He also introduced a progressive educational concept that explored the boundaries of museum work. He initiated the transformation of Gotha's train station into an audio book with “Gotha hört Alexander Kluge” and the educational project of the unfinished memorial “Deutsche Erinnerungslücke KZ Ohrdruf,” (German Remembrance Gap, Ohrdruf Concentration Camp), which deals with the first concentration camp liberated by the US Allies. Since his doctoral thesis “Kaleidoskop Kluge,” he has also been working with the writer and filmmaker Alexander Kluge.

Marc Skvirsky recently retired as vice president and chief program officer of Facing History and Ourselves. Over the course of nearly four decades, he helped grow the organization from a small educational nonprofit with a handful of employees to an international organization with 10 offices and partnerships around the globe. He currently advises several nonprofit organizations and foundations and is a faculty member of the Institute for Nonprofit Practice.