New Publication: Relational Remembrance

Volume 12 of the ANTON WILHELM AMO LECTURES at Martin Luther University Halle-Wittenberg has been published – the series has, since 2013, annually invited internationally acclaimed scholars to present research in the spirit of Anton Wilhelm Amo while critically interrogating the academic format of the LECTURE itself.

No. 12 brings into print Michael Rothberg's LECTURE "From Memory Wars to Memory Work: Relational Remembrance in Pınar Öğrenci's Aşît [The Avalanche]". Rothberg is Professor . Rothberg is Professor of English and Comparative Literature and Holocaust Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, and is internationally known, among other works, for his book "Multidirectional Memory" (2009; German tr. 2021), in which he argues for a concept of memory that does not pit different experiences of historical violence against one another, but instead examines their entanglements.

In his LECTURE, Rothberg applies this framework to Aşît [The Avalanche], an essay film by Berlin-based artist and filmmaker Pınar Öğrenci. The sixty-minute film was first shown at documenta fifteen in 2022 and follows Öğrenci as she traces the intertwined histories of Armenians and Kurds in southeastern Turkey. Through a careful montage of image, sound, and archival material, Aşît uncovers layers of memory buried under enforced silence and state suppression – a work of cinematic memory that draws connections between distinct experiences of violence without conflating them.

Rothberg reads Aşît as a model for what he calls "relational remembrance": an approach to the past that acknowledges entangled histories and resists narrow national memory frameworks. The publication thereby bridges art practice and memory theory, illuminating the possibilities that open up when memory work is thought from postmigrant perspectives.

The booklet is freely available as an open-access publication: