In this video installation I revisit “Five Car Stud” by the American artist Edward Kienholz, which was shown at documenta 5 in Germany in 1972. It chillingly describes a racist hate crime. At the time it had the unintended consequence that the German audience readily used the opportunity to portray racism as an exclusively American problem and to deflect from its own history. Fifty years later I examine its relevance for Germany today, where the vast majority of society has a decidedly non-racist self image, by which anti-Black racism is still largely a US problem or that of neo-nazis.

The Afro-German author Tupoka Ogette deconstructs this notion as delusional in her book Exit Racism, in which she describes the state of blissful ignorance white people are in before they have actively dealt with issues of racism in Germany.