My colleague Sina Khani and I have been working on a project together for months. With the Amsterdam based artist collective The Unsafe House, we will create The Unsafe Event in Leipzig in July. It’s an exhibition in which the boundaries of the artist’s freedom of expression will truly be pushed. Cause both The Unsafe House, Sina and I agree that art is suffocating under political correctness in our present times. And we all genuinely love art. Sina and I are also inviting artists from Leipzig and Berlin to take part. The following story is a chapter in my book called Everything I Think Is Wrong With The World. 

Sina Khani was supposed to go on a date with a woman called Lina Elisabeth Tühmer. She’s a tall, German art student of the University of Fine Arts in Hamburg. But Lina Elisabeth Tühmer blocked Sina on all social medias a few hours before they were supposed to meet. Sina calls me and tells me. “I thought you were getting along?” I ask him. “I thought so too, but something must have happened, I just don’t know what, and now I have no way of asking her”, Sina says, sounding disappointed. 

A few days earlier, Sina had been visiting me in Leipzig. We were sitting in bed one afternoon, talking about The Unsafe Event, me on my computer, Sina on his phone, writing, making our plans, both content in our usual habitat. “Look, I’ve been chatting with this woman called Lina Elisabeth Tühmer for about a year, and she now seems interested in The Unsafe Event”, Sina told me and showed me their instagram chat. Lina Elisabeth Tühmer then sent Sina the profile of someone I know from the Leipzig art scene. She recommended us to invite this person to collaborate with us for The Unsafe Event. “They are a great artist”, Lina Elisabeth Tühmer wrote. “If you work with them, they won’t let you down”, she added. 

The artist Lina Elisabeth Tühmer was recommending us had already been on my mind for a while. Their name is Jola Wollny. They’re a non-binary performance artist who studies at the Academy of Fine Arts in Leipzig. They do performances in which they roll around in muddy puddles in forests around Leipzig wearing ripped clothes. Jola and I used to get along very well. So well that I invited them to do a performance with me in the BSMNT offspace in Leipzig. This was a year ago. Jola happily accepted and so we started collaborating. In our performance, I emerged from a pink coffin leaning up against one of the walls of the space. I was wearing a pink juicy couture tracksuit and smothered clown make-up all over my face. An ASMR microphone was attached to the inside of the coffin, so the excessive chewing sounds coming from my mouth as I ate one piece of candy after the other would fill the gloomy basement space with sleazy snacking sounds. After having been quietly observed like that by the audience for a while, I stepped out of the coffin to take a stroll around crowd. I walked slowly among the people, starring intensely at whomever dared to lock eye contact with me, all the while filming them with my phone. If I’d lock eyes with a seemingly straight man, I’d make sure to act extra creepy and flirtatious towards him. I eventually ended up in the corner of the space, where Jola was sitting, attempting to drink 10 liters of black water. I stood still and starred at them, the audience right behind me. I continuously chewed one piece of candy after the other, and as Jola started throwing up the black water, I filmed myself watching them while continuously stuffing myself with the candy. 

Almost immediately after our collaboration ended, Jola disappeared from my life. I tried to care for our relationship by reaching out and taking initiative to spend time together, but unsuccessfully so. I began to suspect Jola of using me for their own benefit, then ghosting me when they’d gotten what they wanted from me. I eventually reached out and directly confronted them with my impressions: That there had been an abrupt disconnection between us after our performance, certainly not initiated by me. What had happened? Nothing, Jola told me. They said they were just busy and overworked. I accepted this as the truth, but eventually started feeling frustrated again as Jola kept asking me for favours: “Can you help me carry a piece of furniture a couple of blocks?”, “Can I borrow some money?”, “Can you pick me up at the studio and drive me home?”. At first I really didn’t mind helping them out, but after a while I began to feel exploited and disrespected. I stopped making efforts to care for our relationship as well, and so it just vanished into lots of unresolved question marks. 

Now, one year later, I thought Jola’s performance art would be an interesting act to add to The Unsafe Event. So I made a little video for them, inviting them to take part. I didn’t send the invitation video at first. I told Sina I was reluctant to do it, cause I know Jola is a subscriber of the exact political dogma that Sina and I want to kill. I knew it could be risky to send the video to Jola. They can be quite judgmental. And I’m being very honest in my video, criticising wokeism as a danger to the artist’s freedom of investigation. I knew this might not exactly please Jola, but I was hoping our differences of opinions wouldn’t affect a possible future collaboration. 

Back in my bed, Sina told Lina Elisabeth Tühmer that we had already been thinking about Jola as a participating artist at The Unsafe Event, but that we were unsure about whether it would really make sense. Lina Elisabeth Tühmer then responded to this with a voice message: “If you don’t want to curate Jola because he’s queer, that’s absolutely ridiculous”. I listened, terrified, what an awful misunderstanding! I took Sina’s phone out of his hand and replied with a voice message: “Hello Lina Elisabeth Tühmer, I’m Ronja, and it is certainly not because of their queerness that we’re doubting a collaboration with Jola. The whole concept of The Unsafe Event is to curate artists based on their artistic vision and ideas, not based on their identities and/or political opinions. I think Jola can be a very good artist, that’s why I’d like to have them on board. But to them, identity politics are very important. And this is where the conflict potential between Sina’s and my artistic vision and Jola’s lie. Which is why I’m thinking it might not work out”. “Ah. That makes sense”, Lina Elisabeth Tühmer replied. So far, so good. Crisis averted. She started following me on instagram later that day. 

“What the fuck is this!”, Sina says to me over the phone, “Why did Lina Elisabeth Tühmer block me?”. “I don’t know”, I say, “But I did sent the invitation-video to Jola yesterday”. “Oh my god! That must be the reason!”, Sina bursts out, and I start feeling uneasy about it all. “Can you call Jola and ask him directly? And don’t forget to film it!”, Sina says. “Hm. I don’t know if they watched the video yet. But they did see my message. They haven’t reacted to anything yet, though”, I say. “I think Jola watched the video, hated it, then told his friend Lina Elisabeth Tühmer that you and I are both toxic, problematic, patriarchy-loving assholes, and then they both cancelled us!” Sina says, and I’m sad to think that he might actually be right. “Can you check and see if Lina Elisabeth Tühmer also blocked you?”, Sina asks me, and I’m horrified to discover that she actually did. I can’t find her anymore when I type in her name. “I fucking knew it! What brainwashed, 2 stupid, dumb, silly wokies! Why did you want to work with Jola in the first place anyway? All he does is sit in a corner and drink his own piss and throw it up, so not interesting, so fucking boring, completely outdated! And we don’t have a budget to pay for a cleaning lady anyway!”, Sina bursts out, “Or cleaning gentleman”, he then adds. “Yeah. I really hoped they would be smarter than this”, I say, and hang up.  

I think about my complicated relationship with Jola. It’s not the only one, but as opposed to other conflicted relationships I’ve had, I feel like there are blindspots everywhere when it comes to Jola and I. I’m honestly not sure why they didn’t want to be friends with me. I’ve often even felt like they just suddenly decided they didn’t like me anymore. And it’s not just Jola. It’s the whole scene around them as well. It’s a scene I perceive as rather hateful, really. 

My former friend The Lost Case says the work that I’m doing right now with Sina and The Unsafe House is stupid. She says: “I think you are smart, so I don’t understand why you’re acting so dumb at the moment”. This makes me feel shocked by her disappointing level of reflection. I sincerely thought The Lost Case was smarter. The Lost Case is friends with Jola. I know they’re talking about me behind my back. I can see it, hear it, feel it, sense it, know it. They bring the self-righteousness out in each other, both claiming they’re victims of evil, oppressive structures. Jola because they’re queer and have ADHD, The Lost Case because she’s a refugee and a woman. I can imagine them sitting around, wrapped in the protective cotton coat of their own entitlement, acknowledging each other and agreeing about everything. Especially that they find me and my work “problematic” and that I’m just a white, privileged, stupid girl from Denmark who’s upholding patriarchy by working with allegedly toxic cis-men. But in my eyes, these very men are beautiful, complex, queer, middle eastern individuals, who are in fact woker than woke, lefter than left! Artists, who might behave rather outrageously once in a while, though all for the meaningful purpose of creation. And they are honest. I’m beginning to think that the problem with Jola is that they just haven’t been honest to me about what they wanted from me. I can’t help but think about an Instagram post Jola did about our performance a few weeks after the show. The post consisted solely of photos of Jola. There was not one single photo of me in there. The post made it look like the performance was entirely created by Jola, and that I had had no part in it whatsoever. “My love, I’ll do another post with you in it during the next days, I promise!”, Jola texted me. And they never did.

This is my idea of being incarcerated: To have someone else self-righteously judge me for my random background, labelling me as useless, cause I don’t abide to whatever limited ideas of morality they’ve set for themselves. How conservative can it get? No, really: If I’m constantly being reminded of my own whiteness and my own background, and these completely coincidental features of mine are being used as reasons not to respect me or my work, we can never progress. How is this not the exact faschism they think they’re fighting against? Hyper un-aware and super un-woke, wake the fuck up! Also, if Jola Wollny and The Lost Case keep insisting on staying in whatever victim position their identities are granting them the privilege of staying in, they will never be able to liberate themselves from these very victim positions. It’s almost as if they want to stay victims, like their self-claimed position of victimhood is this safe space they’re so enthusiastic about. What is this idea of progression they have? They’re just plain blind if they think that what they’re doing is “woke”. It makes me think of an interview with Jonathan Meese I’ve watched recently. He’s talking about how people nowadays are too busy glorifying their own mediocracy to really be progressive and move forward. I’m starting to think this is the case of The Lost Case, Jola and their scene. 

I get a message from Sina. “I told Lina Elisabeth Tühmer that she’s a lefty nazi”, he says. Oh no, I think, and call him. “How did you even get in contact with her?”, I ask him, “I thought she’d blocked you everywhere?”. “There was one of my Insta accounts she’d forgotten to block. From the Creeps of the Middle East account. I wrote her from that one”, Sina says. “Well, did you ask her first why she blocked you?”, I ask. “No, it’s obvious why she blocked me, it’s because she’s a woke faschist. Her art is drawings of fucking horse whips! She’s been reproducing these highly uninteresting drawings for years! Why the fuck do you think she blocked me?”, Sina yells. For fuck sake. I’m dealing with another giant man child here. Sina’s unprofessionalism is stressing me out and it’s beginning to make me angry now. Ugh! “Sina, you have to get your temper under control. You should have asked Lina Elisabeth Tühmer about her motifs before attacking her like that! It’s way smarter, don’t you see?”, I say, blood pressure raising, this is bad. “You’re being a liability to me right now, and I need to be able to trust that you’re always doing what’s best for our project. Verbally attacking a woman is not helping us in any way! It gives people good reasons to dislike you, which then falls back on me, which then falls back on our work. Why didn’t you think of that?”, I say, my voice and blood pressure now both at a fast speed. “No!”, Sina yells out loud, “This is who I am! You can’t control me. You have to let Sina be Sina! This is what happens every time I collaborate with people, this is why no one else besides Tarik and The Unsafe House can work with me! Everyone else is always trying to tame me, but I’m a wild horse! The only interesting version of me is the untamed version! I’m like the sun, I burn down the Amazon rain forest, but I also give live to plants! And I’m saying this in the least narcissistic way imaginable!”. I take a deep breath. “But if you’re insulting and offending people and behaving like a fucking asshole, of course no one wants to work with you in the end! What do you expect?”, I say, “Tarik is even worse than me, you just wait and see!”, Sina yells, “Tarik gets physically violent, I’m just verbally violent, I’m really not that bad!”. I go quiet. It’s useless to keep talking to Sina at this point. This so-called “wild horse”, who thinks he’s the sun, yet claims he’s not a narcissist, while he’s sabotaging my relationships and adding unnecessary stress to my daily life. I hang up without further notice. 

Since I know Sina, he’s always encouraged me to be the most myself. That is, not make any stupid compromises, speak my mind freely, trust my own intuition. To liberate myself from any chains that might be holding me back. Like fear and shame. He’s probably the most authentic feminist I'll ever meet. But where to draw the line? Is full liberation really just setting yourself free, every single part of you, your inner demons, the evil monster that inhabits every single one of us. Of course there has to be some restrictions! And that’s what we call civilisation, isn’t it? Sina is not asking of me, or anyone else for that matter, to act like him. To be rude, verbally abusive and offensive. But he’s insisting on the right to be this way. And it makes it very hard for people around him to actually be around him. Cause his words hurt. And he is unpredictable. But what is the solution then? To vote a person like Sina completely off the island? To try and change him? Or to just live with his demons, try to embrace them in a way? And if we go with the last option, at what cost then? But really, wouldn’t cancelling Sina be an absolute waste of talent? Full liberation is destruction of what’s keeping us from being liberated, whatever it is. This is why we have to be able to separate art from civilisation. Cause art is the frame in which we can allow us selves to act, think and behave uncivilised. Art will remain harmless. Art is morally unjustifiable and unethical, when it has to be. And it’s not hurtful. It is art. Let art be art. Let the artists be artists. Then we can act civilised towards each outside of art. Out there, in the (un)real/fake/artificial world. 

In my bed, I check Jola’ story on Instagram and see a photo of them and Lina Elisabeth Tühmer hanging out at an exhibition in Berlin. I immediately take a screenshot and send it to Sina. “I know”, he replies, “I already dropped a broken heart emoji on his story”. “Oh my God, you’re officially too impulsive”, I text him. “Shut the fuck up! Don’t tell me how to behave”, Sina answers, and I start to feel a wave of anger rising inside of me again. I hate it when he speaks to me that way. “I didn’t tell you how to behave. I only commented on your behaviour”, I reply. “I don’t give a fuck. Don’t upset me. You have to let Sina be Sina. That’s the only way this works, that’s the golden rule. You can’t control me.”, Sina replies, and I have no words left besides: “lol”. But Sina isn’t done: “I’m not joking!”, he says. “Why are you being so overly sensitive right now?”, I ask him, feeling more and more frustrated and worried. This might escalate, and I want to avoid it without surrendering to him. “You see what happened with Creeps? The film crew and I had to end the collaboration because they told me the same shit you’re throwing at me right now!”, Sina says. “Stop threatening me, it’s beneath you. And also, are you the only one who’s allowed to be yourself fully, to be rude like that? Is there space for me as well here?”, I write to him. “No there isn’t. And goodnight”, Sina replies. “Goodnight you fucking asshole”, I text him, turn off my phone and fall asleep.