Benjamin Nienass, Author at Public Seminar

Activism

Memorials Against Violence in Mexico

A conversation on memory activism for truth and justice

March 25, 2025 • by Alexandra Délano Alonso, Natalia Mendoza and Benjamin Nienass

Since 2006, Mexico has seen more than 300,000 murders and more than 110,000 people disappeared. Faced with a constant increase in violence, activists have turned to a new strategy: collective actions and demands centered around the work of memory. In their new book Las Luchas por la Memoria Contra las ...

Memory, Fidelity, Appropriation

A Response to Jonathan Bach’s What Remains

October 24, 2017 • by Benjamin Nienass

And yet, the fact that all major parties refused to view the AfD as a legitimate contender -- let alone a potential coalition partner -- indicates that German public memory still somehow “works.” However, the attempts to make sense of the election through the prism of memory serve as a ...

Borders and the Politics of Mourning

September 28, 2016 • by Alexandra Délano Alonso and Benjamin Nienass

In early 2014, the artist Anton Christian placed a shattered wooden boat in front of the impressive baroque Cathedral of St. Jakob in the heart of the Austrian city of Innsbruck. Christian had found the boat on the shores of the Adriatic Sea and brought it to Innsbruck to evoke ...