Very few international solidarity movements have been as influential as the Vietnam movement. It involved an entire generation and formed the breeding ground for future political activities regarding the Third World. Beyond worldwide protests and demonstrations, the struggle was highly supported by artists, cultural workers, and intellectuals. In 1967, the philosophers Bertrand Russell and Jean-Paul Sartre organized the Russell-Sartre Tribunal at Folkets hus in Stockholm, aiming to investigate the US war crimes in Vietnam. The Tribunal members included some of the most prominent thinkers of that time, such as the writers Simone de Beauvoir, James Baldwin, Sara Lidman, and Peter Weiss.

As a consequence of cultural workers taking an active part in the political movement, the most urgent social issues were also raised within the context of art. One of the most interesting examples is Peter Weiss’s Viet nam Diskurs, from which the exhibition borrows its name. The play formed the starting point for Weiss’s new genre “documentary theatre,” in which the stage functioned as a platform for education and political mobilization. The 1968 premiere at the Schauspielhaus in Frankfurt caused a big scandal. Viet Nam Diskurs opened its political agenda, aiming to educate Western society about Vietnam’s history and pointing towards anti-colonial and non-imperialistic alternatives.

In 2016, Peter Weiss celebrated his 100th birthday. The exhibition thus serves as an apt opportunity to highlight Weiss’s fascinating and cross-genre artistic practice. Through plays, novels, and paintings, Weiss portrayed the contemporary with a sharpness that scarcely faded in relevance. Viet Nam Discourse, The Aesthetics of Resistance, and other works contain analyses that are also highly relevant in our time. For this exhibition, von Osten and Spillman collaborated with Gunilla Palmstierna-Weiss, who, as set and costume designer, played a central role in producing Viet Nam Diskurs. The exhibition returned to the play’s innovative form, choreography, and public reception. A contemporary reader was confronted with the extent to which the Vietnam movement affected the emergence of the New Left in Europe and the United States. A temporal archive included interviews, historical documents, photographs, testimonies, and a meeting place for studies and activations of the exhibited material.