After Year Zero - Haus der Kulturen der Welt

AfterYearZero
GeographiesofCollaborationsince1945
19.09.–24.11.2013
Opening18.09.2013,6pm
PressConference
18.09.2013,5pm
ExhibitionHall
SubjecttoChange
PRESSCONFERENCE
Wednesday,September18,2013,5pm
ExhbitionHall
ThePressConferencewillbeholdinGerman,butwewilltakecareofgivingEnglishresumées.
Speakers:
BerndM.Scherer,DirectorHausderKulturenderWelt
AnselmFranke,Curator
AnnettBusch,Curator
Theartistsarepresent:
JohnAkomfrah,KaderAttia,JihanEl‐Tahri,YervantGianikian&AngelaRicciLucchi,TheOtolithGroup
(AnjalikaSagar/KodwoEshun
Pleasenotethattheopeningoftheexhibitionwithartists’andcurators’talkswillimmediatelyfollowthe
pressconferenceat6pm.(alltalkswillbeholdinEnglish)
TheprojectAfterYearZerotakesasitsstartingpointtherealignmentofglobalrelationshipsafterthe
SecondWorldWar–Europe’s“hourzero”However,itdoesnotrecountthepost‐1945confrontationofthe
ideologicalblocsoftheColdWar.Rather,theprojectfocusesontheworld‐historicalcaesuraof
decolonizationandtheassociatedattempttofundamentallychallengeandtransformtheframework
conditionsoftheeraofcolonialmodernity.Theexhibitionbringstogetherinstallationsandfilms–
includingfournewproductions–byJohnAkomfrah,TheOtolithGroup,KaderAttia,YervantGianikian&
AngelaRicciLucchi,andJihanEl‐Tahri,whichdealwiththehistoryofthecolonialmodernityand
decolonizationafter1945.
AfterYearZeroiscuratedbyAnselmFrankeandAnnettBuschincooperationwiththeparticipating
artistsoftheexhibitionandresearchcuratorHeidiBallet.
ExhibitionarchitectureandgraphicdesignbyZakGroup.
AfterYearZeroisaproductionoftheHausderKulturenderWelt.TheprojectAfterYearZeroisbasedona
seriesofworkshopsheldin2012inAlgiers,Dakar,Paris,andJohannesburgunderthetitle“Mattersof
Collaboration,”incooperationwiththeGoethe‐InstitutBrusselsandwithfundingfromthe“Excellence”
programoftheGoethe‐Institut.
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
PRESS RELEASE
AFTER YEAR ZERO
Geographies of Collaboration since 1945
Exhibition
Sept. 19–Nov. 24, 2013
Opening Sept. 18, 2013, 6 pm onwards
Exhibition Wed.–Mon. and bank holidays 11:00 am–7:00 pm
Admission €6 / €4 reduced
Conference
Geographies of Collaboration I and II
Oct. 3–5, 2013 and Nov. 23–24, 2013
Berlin, September 18, 2013
The project After Year Zero takes as its starting point the realignment of global relationships after the
Second World War – Europe’s “hour zero” However, it does not recount the post-1945 confrontation of the
ideological blocs of the Cold War. Rather, the project focuses on the world-historical caesura of
decolonization and the associated attempt to fundamentally challenge and transform the framework
conditions of the era of colonial modernity. Its central point of reference is the first Afro-African conference,
held in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, at which some 600 delegates from 29 nations and liberation
movements drafted a model for collaboration by the global South under the banner of an anti-colonial
modernity. This milestone in the history of decolonization launched, among other things, the Non-Aligned
Movement. “Year Zero” here designates an historical break, the beginning of a new time reckoning, a
symbolic reference point for a social order.
In their contributions to the exhibition “After Year Zero” and the conference “Geographies of Collaboration,”
artists, filmmakers, and theoreticians pursue specific exemplary questions concerning the politics of
historiography and the articulation of historical consciousness. For instance, how has the Pan-African
movement positioned itself and changed since 1900? What role did an analysis of the continuity of colonial
history and fascism play in the liberation movements? What echoes has the Négritude movement had in
global pop culture since 1945?
This investigation does not revolve around the confrontation, or the separation of identities, between the
global North and South, but around models and geographies of collaboration, and reflection on the
processes by which the “universal” is generated. By highlighting particular historical developments, it takes
into account the fundamental interconnection of European and African history along with their respective
narratives. A picture emerges of the continuing challenge posed by colonial history and its aftermath for
prevalent historical models and political consciousness.
The exhibition brings together installations and films – including four new productions – by John Akomfrah,
The Otolith Group, Kader Attia, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, and Jihan El-Tahri, which deal with
the history of the colonial modernity and decolonization after 1945. John Akomfrah, recipient of numerous
film awards and cofounder of the Black Audio Film Collective, shows two video installations. In a new work,
he takes on the relationship of the language of the liberation movements to the political realities in the
former colonies in Africa. “The Unfinished Conversation” (2012) is devoted to the cultural theorist Stuart
Hall and his vision of a post-racial society, as well as his views of the global developments and dislocations of
the 1950s. The London artists’ collective The Otolith Group, initiated by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun,
mounts a new production for HKW that reflects on the Pan-African horizon of expectation for
decolonization, taking as an example Ghana after its independence from Britain in 1957. In his works, Kader
Attia investigates cultural practices of mutual appropriation and representation between Africa and
Europe. His new production examines the interconnection of colonial history and the Christian mission,
focusing on the Vatican’s vast collection of African art and cult objects, which is largely withhold from public
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
PRESS RELEASE
view. The four-channel installation by Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, based on years of
archival research, sheds light on Fascist Italy’s imperial war in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and on the psychology
of “fascistic man.” The question of power and its influence on the people who possess it runs throughout
the works of the author and filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri. For the exhibition, she has compiled archive
materials and in-depth interviews from the decolonization era that highlight the historical and
contemporary role of Egypt. Other contributions include e.g. Project Travelling Communiqué (Zoran Erić,
Kodwo Eshun/The Otolith Group, Armin Linke, Doreen Mende, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić, Stevan
Vuković).
A conference in October and November surveys diverse “geographies of collaboration,” working with the
potential of the gray area in this term. It deals with, among other things, the implicit parameters of the
global order and the essential role of Africa in the European construction of a universal history. Further, it
discusses the historic significance of the Bandung conference of 1955 – including for the construction of
the Congress Hall in Berlin (re-named 1989 as Haus der Kulturen der Welt and actual venue of After Year
Zero – and the history of the global influence of African music, and it delves into the changeable categories
of the “universal” in the production of art and culture.
The project includes an online publication with contributions by authors, artists, and academics.
After Year Zero opens on Wednesday, September 18, at 6 pm with artist discussions between The Otolith
Group, John Akomfrah, and Kader Attia, and the curators, Anselm Franke and Annett Busch, as well as a
screening with Jihan El-Tahri.
Additionally, on Thursday, September 19, beginning at 6 pm, HKW will show two film rarities in the
context of After Year Zero: At 6:00 pm From the Pole to the Equator
Directors: Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Italy 1986, 101 min., silent film, followed by a Q&A
session with the filmmakers.
Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi journey into the universe of Luca Comerio, who with his 1920 documentary film
of the same name created the myth of heroic European colonialism, in particular that of Fascist Italy.
This will be followed at 8:30 pm by Cuba, an African Odyssey
Director: Jihan El-Tahri, France 2007, 120 min., original version with English subtitles, with an introduction
by the filmmaker.
Fidel Castro and Che Guevara took the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of
the postcolonial Republic of Congo, as a sign that the African liberation movement was threatened with cooption by the West. This launched the era of Cuba’s active exertion of influence on freedom movements in
Africa: a Cuban odyssey.
After Year Zero is curated by Anselm Franke and Annett Busch in cooperation with the participating
artists of the exhibition and research curator Heidi Ballet.
Exhibition architecture and graphic design by Zak Group.
After Year Zero is a production of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt.
The project After Year Zero is based on a series of workshops held in 2012 in Algiers, Dakar, Paris, and Johannesburg
under the title “Matters of Collaboration,” in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Brussels and with funding from the
“Excellence” program of the Goethe-Institut.
Haus der Kulturen der Welt is an official partner of BERLIN ART WEEK www.berlinartweek.de
Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the
Federal Foreign Office.
Further information: www.hkw.de/en/afteryearzero
Photos for download: www.hkw.de/en/pressefotos
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
DURING BERLIN ART WEEK
18.9.2013
Eröffnung
Gespräche mit Künstlern und Kuratoren
Opening
Talks with artists and curators
ab 18 h / from 6pm
Musik und Bar
Music and Bar
20:30 h / 8:30pm
19.9.2013
Screening: From the Pole to the Equator
18 h / 6pm
Anschließend Diskussion mit den Filmemachern Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi.
Followed by a discussion with the directors.
Screening: Cuba, an African Odyssey
20:30 h / 8:30pm
mit einer Einführung der Filmemacherin Jihan El-Tahri.
Introduced by the director Jihan El-Tahri.
22.9.2013
Ausstellungsführung
Guided exhibition tour
15 h / 3pm
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
LISTOFWORKS
JohnAkomfrah
TheUnfinishedConversation,2012
3channelHDvideoinstallation,color,sound,46min
JohnAkomfrah
TransfiguredNight,2013
DoublechannelHDvideoinstallation,color,sound,30min
Allworkscourtesytheartist,CarrollFletcher
JihanEl‐Tahri
FlagMoments,2013
Singlechannelvideo,b/w,sound,6min39sec
JihanEl‐Tahri
InterviewswithMokhtarHallouda,VictorMoche,PrinceAmrAl‐Faisal,2013
Singlechannelvideo,color,sound,17min51sec/30min/18min46sec
JihanEl‐Tahri
ThePriceofAid,2009
Singlechannelvideo,color,sound,11min(excerpt)
Allworkscourtesytheartist
TheOtolithGroup
IntheYearoftheQuietSun,2013
SinglechannelHDvideoinstallation,color,sound,25min
Courtesytheartists
YervantGianikian&AngelaRicciLucchi
Imperium,2013
Mixedmediainstallationwith4channelvideoinstallation,color,sound,3min10sec
Courtesytheartists
KaderAttia
Dispossession,2013
Installationwithdoubleslideprojection(2x80colourslides)andvideo,color,sound,13min
Courtesytheartist,GalerieNagelDraxler,GalerieKrinzinger,GaleriaContinua
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
THEARTISTS
JohnAkomfrah
JohnAkomfrah,acreativeartistandculturalactivist,hasproducedvariousdocumentaries,featurefilms
andgalleryinstallations,allofwhichhavewonprizesandcriticalacclaimacrossAfrica,Asia,Europeand
NorthAmerica.KnownprincipallyasoneoftheoriginatorsofBlackBritishCinema‐andlatterlyasa
trailblazerforBritishdigitalcinematography,AkomfrahwasafoundingmemberoftheBlackAudioFilm
Collective,theseminalBritishfilmmakingcollective.Hisfilmessaydocumentary,HandsworthSongs
(1986)woninternationalprizes,includingtheBFIJohnGriersonAwardForDocumentary.Sincethen
John’sworkhasbeenshowninavarietyofgalleriesandexhibitionsandhewasmadeaEuropeanCultural
laureatebytheEuropeanCulturalFoundation(2012).HismostrecentpiecesofworkarePeripeteia,
Psyche,AttheGravesideofAndreTarkovskyandTheStuartHallProject,asinglechannelworkpremiered
atthe2013SundanceFilmFestivalinWorldDocumentaryCompetition.
KaderAttia
BornintoanAlgerianfamilyinFrance,KaderAttiaspenthischildhoodbetweenthetwocountries.
ThegoingbackandforthbetweentheChristianOccidentandtheIslamicMaghrebhavehadaprofound
impactonhiswork.IttacklestherelationsbetweentheWesternThoughtandextra‐Occidentalcultures,
particularlythroughArchitecture,theHumanbody,History,Nature,CultureandReligions.
Thephilosopherandartist’sfirstsoloexhibitionwasheldin1996intheDemocraticRepublicofCongo.He
gainedinternationalrecognitionatthe50thVeniceBiennale(2003).Hisrecentexhibitions
includeReparatur5.Acts,asoloshowatKWInstituteforContemporaryArtBerlin,Construire,
Déconstruire,Reconstruire:LeCorpsUtopique,asoloshowatMuséed'ArtModernedelaVilledeParis,
dOCUMENTA(13)Kassel,PerformingHistories(1)atMoMA,NewYork,the4thMoscowBiennale,The
GlobalContemporary.ArtWorldafter1989,ZKM,Karlsruhe,ContestedTerrains,TateModern,London.
YervantGianikian&AngelaRicciLucchi
Milan‐basedfilmmakersYervantGianikianandAngelaRicciLucchiworktogethersince1970.Theyare
renownedfortheiraccomplishedworkwitharchivalfootagederivedprincipallyfromthebeginningofthe
20thcentury.Muchoftheirworkisexplicitlypoliticalandgroundedintheideaofthecinematicapparatus
asadetachedobserverofmodernity'svastupheavals:colonialism,warandstatelessness.Theirfilmshave
beenpresentedatseveralfilmfestivalsaroundtheworldsuchasCannesFilmFestival,VeniceFilm
Festival,RotterdamFilmFestival,Berlinale,FilmotecaEspanolaMadridandFIDMarseille.Theirmost
recentwork'PaysBarbare'premieredattheLocarnoFilmFestivalinAugust2013andwilltourtothe
TorontoFilmFestivalamongotherfestivals.Theirvideoinstallationshavebeenshownatthe2001Venice
Biennial;MaisonHugo,Paris(bothcuratedbyHaraldSzeemann),JeudePaume,Paris;MoMA,NewYork;
TateModern,London,andMuseumofContemporaryArtinChicagoamongotherplaces.Morerecently
theirworkfeaturedinthe2012TaipeiBiennialandthe2013VeniceBiennial.
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
THEARTISTS
TheOtolithGroup
Foundedin2002byAnjalikaSagarandKodwoEshun,TheOtolithGroup’sworkexploresthehistoriesand
potentialsofsciencefictionandTricontinentalism.RecentsoloexhibitionsincludeThoughtform,Museu
d’ArtContemporanideBarcelonaandMAXXIMuseonazionaledelleartidelXXIsecolo,Rome,2011;A
LureaPartAllureApart,Betonsalon,Paris,2011,Westfailure,Project88,Mumbai,2012andMedium
Earth,REDCAT,LosAngeles,2013.
RecentgroupexhibitionsincludeThereisalwaysacupofseatosailin:29thBiennialdeSaoPaulo,2010;In
theDaysoftheComet:BritishArtShow7,HaywardGallery,London,2011,dOCUMENTA(13),Kassel,
2012,ECM:ACulturalArchaeology,HausderKunst,Munich,2013andTheWholeEarth:Californiaand
theDisappearanceoftheOutside,HausderKulturenderWelt,Berlin,2013.
In2010,TheOtolithGroupwasnominatedfortheTurnerPrize.
JihanEl‐Tahri
El‐Tahri,anEgyptianandFrenchdirectorandproducerofdocumentaryfilms,startedherworkingcareer
asajournalist.Between1984and1990sheworkedasanewsagencycorrespondentandTVresearcher
coveringMiddleEastpolitics.In1990shebegandirectingandproducingdocumentariesforFrench
television,theBBCandotherinternationalbroadcasters.Sincethenshehasdirectedmorethanadozen
filmsincludingtheEmmynominatedTheHouseofSaud,whichexplorestheSaudi/USrelationsthrough
theportraitsoftheKingdom’smonarchs.ThePriceofAid,afilmaboutthesystemofInternationalFood
Aid,haswonthe2004EuropeanMediaprizeandwithCuba:AnAfricanOdysseyEl‐Tahrihasalsoreceived
internationalawards.HermostrecentfeaturedocumentaryBehindtheRainbow,releasedin2009,
examinesthetransitionalprocessinSouthAfrica.El‐Tahrihasalsowrittentwobooks,The9Livesof
YasserArafatandIsraelandtheArabs:the50YearsWar.
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
THEPANELISTS
ArminLinke,DoreenMende,TheOtolithGroup,BranimirStojanović,MilicaTomić,StevanVuković
‐authorsofProject"TravellingCommuniqué.ReadingaPhotoArchive(1948–1980)Museumof
Revolution25.Mai,Yugoslavia"
Theresearch/projectisconceivedbyArminLinke(artist,Berlin/Milano),DoreenMende
(curator/theorist,Berlin/London)andMilicaTomic(artist,Belgrade)withtheMuseumofYugoslav
HistoryinBelgrade,supportedbytheGoetheInstituteBelgrade.Sincethen,FabianBechtle(artist,
Berlin),EstelleBlaschke(photographyhistorian,Berlin),ZoranEric(arthistorian/curator,
Belgrade),TheoEshetu(filmmaker,Rome),MajaHodoscek(artist,Ljubljana),PramodKumar(archive
historian,NewDheli),MilicaLopicic(architect,Belgrade),TheOtolithGroup(artists/theorists,
London),OlgaManojlovicPintar(historian,Belgrade),AnaSladojevic(theorist/curator,
Belgrade),BranimirStojanovic(philosopher/psychoanalyst,Belgrade),JelenaVesic(curator/theorist,
Belgrade/Maastricht),andStevanVukovic(philosopher/curator,Belgrade)contributetoprojectto
en/countertheNon‐AlignedMovementinrelationtoitstopicalities,doublebinds,architectures,and
economics.
AdekeyeAdebajo(CapeTown)
AdekeyeAdebajohasbeenExecutiveDirectoroftheCentreforConflictResolution(CCR),CapeTown,
SouthAfrica,since2003.HeservedonUnitedNationsmissionsinSouthAfrica,WesternSahara,andIraq.
Dr.Adebajoistheauthoroffourbookson:BuildingPeaceinWestAfrica;Liberia’sCivilWar;TheCurseof
Berlin:AfricaAftertheColdWar;andUNPeacekeepinginAfrica:FromtheSuezCrisistotheSudanConflicts;
andco‐editororeditorofsevenbookson:managingglobalconflicts;theUnitedNations;theEuropean
Union;WestAfricansecurity;andSouthAfricaandNigeria’sforeignpoliciesinAfrica.Heobtainedhis
doctoratefromOxfordUniversityinEngland,wherehestudiedasaRhodesScholar.
NabilAhmed(London)
NabilAhmedisanartistandwriterwhoseworkshavebeenpresentedinternationallyincludingatThe
2012TaipeiBiennale,HausderKulturenderWeltBerlin,TheCentreforPossibleStudiesSerpentine
Gallery,andSouthAsianVisualArtsCentre(SAVAC)inToronto.HehaswrittenforThirdText,Media
FieldJournalandtheforthcomingbooksArchitectureandtheparadoxofDissidenceandisco‐curatorat
Call&Response,anartistrunsoundartprojectbasedinLondon.HeiscurrentlyaPhDcandidateatthe
CentreforResearchArchitectureatGoldsmiths,UniversityofLondonwherehealsoteaches.
GarnetteCadogan(NewYork)
GarnetteCadoganisanindependentscholarandfreelancewriterwhoseworkfocusesonartsandculture
andtheirintersectionwiththehistoryofideas.Heistheco‐editoroftheforthcoming"OxfordHandbook
oftheHarlemRenaissance"andisatworkonabookaboutrock‐reggaesuperstarBobMarley.Helivesin
NewYorkCity.
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
THEPANELISTS
RangoatoHlsane(Johannesburg)
RangoatoHlasaneisavisualartist,illustratorandDJaswellastheco‐directoroftheindependentand
interdisciplinaryKeleketla!LibrarybasedinJohannesburg.Hisinvestigationfocusesontheroleofthearts
inmobilisingcommunities.Hecoordinatedcollaborativecommunitybasedartsanddevelopmentprojects
aroundSouthAfricausinginter‐generationalandinterdisciplinarydialogueasatoolforeducationand
empoweringyoungpeoplefromallbackgrounds.
JamesT.Hong(Taiwan)
BasedinTaiwan,JamesT.HongisaUS‐born,independentfilmmakerandartistwhoseworksshedlight
onphilosophicaltopicsandfigures,controversialraceandclassissues,andhistoricalconflictsinAsia.His
lastfilm“CutawaysofJiangChunGen‐ForwardandBackAgain”wasshownintheForumexpanded
sectionofthe2013Berlinale.
Keyti(Dakar)
KeytiisknownasoneofthepioneersofSenegalesehip‐hop.WithhisgroupRapadioheofferedaradical
approachtohip‐hopasameanstoempowerthepeopleandaddresscrucialpoliticalandsocietalissues.
Heisnow,withXuman,thehostofJounalRappé,asuccessfulnewsbulletinperformedinrapcoming
everyweekonSenegalesetv.
BonganiMadondo(Johannesburg)
BonganiMadondoisawriterandculturalcriticfromSouthAfrica.Hehaspublishedonliterature,music,
andthepoliticsofstyleandracematters.Amongotherawards,hereceivedtheSALALiteraryJournalism
Awardin2007andtheSteveBikoAdvancementofJournalismFellowship.Hisnewbook,"SighThe
BelovedCountry",acollectionofessays,longformjournalismandmemoirisdueoutattheendof2013
whilehisbookonBrendaFassiewillbepublishedin2014.
RastkoMočnik(Ljubljana)
RastkoMočnikisasociologistandliterarytheoristwhoalsotranslatesandteachestheoryofdiscourse,
theoreticalsociologyandepistemologyofthehumanitiesandsocialsciencesattheUniversityofLjubljana.
Hehasbeeninvolvedinvariouspoliticalinitiativesaswellascampaignsandpublishednumeroussocio‐
politicalbooks.Hisrecentbooksarebasedonthetheoriesofideology,nationandinstitution.
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
THEPANELISTS
FredMoten(LosAngeles)
FredMotenisapoetandstudentoftheblackradicaltradition.HeisauthorofIntheBreak:TheAesthetics
oftheBlackRadicalTradition,Hughson’sTavern,B.Jenkins,TheUndercommons:FugitivePlanningand
BlackStudy(withStefanoHarney),andTheFeelTrio.HelivesinLosAngelesandteachesattheUniversity
ofCalifornia,Riverside.
CharlesTonderaiMudede(Seattle)
CharlesTonderaiMudedeisawriter,filmmaker,andculturalcriticborninZimbabweandbasedin
Seattle.HeisanAssociateEditorfortheweeklyTheStranger,aContributingEditorforTheBlackScholar,
andalecturerinEnglishHumanitiesatPacificLutheranUniversity,Washington.
ShirinRai(Warwick)
ShirinRaiisapoliticalscientistandprofessorinthedepartmentofPoliticsandInternationalStudiesat
theUniversityofWarwick,UK.Herresearchinterestsareinpost‐colonialgovernance,processes
ofdemocratization,genderandpolitics.Sheistheauthorof“TheGenderPoliticsofDevelopment”(2008)
andeditorof“CeremonyandRitualinParliament”(2010).
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
ABOUT “THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION”
Smoking Dogs Films
THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION
A three screen gallery installation by John Akomfrah
The Narrative Construction Of Reality (1983): this was an essay based on a television interview Stuart Hall
gave to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In many ways, that essay will be our starting point and
will ultimately be what this project is about
THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is a three screen “ narrative construction” of the multiple realities of
one the world’s most eminent thinkers – a thinker who is both a product of Europe and the Caribbean ; a
thinker whose interests and concerns straddle across a range of disciplines and areas . These include
Marxism, Nuclear Disarmament, Culture, Race, Television, Cultural Politics, Diasporic Identities. THE
UNFINISHED CONVERSATION will be about revisiting these multiple lives, about creating a series of lived
wholes out of the sum of these discreet parts.
THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is an exercise in what Jacques Derrida calls Hauntology, an exercise in
‘spectrapoetics’ in which a life is examined in the search for ghosts and phantoms that haunt it.
Constructed as a set of moving image pieces and functioning somewhere between a history of post war
Europe and a biography of Hall, between a film essay and a gallery installation, THE UNFINISHED
CONVERSATION is about reconfiguring these interests and lives in a gallery setting.
And this narrative approach is propelled by a set interlocking themes culled from the worlds of the social
sciences, photography, literature, cinema, critical theory, black Atlantic histories and philosophy.
THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is the third part of the trilogy that started with Mnemosyne and then
The Nine Muses, two award winning archive based films, the first a site specific gallery installation the
second a cinema version that opened at the Venice Biennale and then the Sundance Film Festival. Many of
our new archeological moves in THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION will involve the insights, ideas,
memories, and recollections of and by Stuart Hall, many developed and taught during his time formulating
the faculty and the course at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. A set of courses
that imagined a whole new way of looking at the world.
Hall arrived in the UK from Jamaica in the 1950’s, graduated from Oxford and from that moment became a
tour de force on the New Left along with intellectual giants EP Thompson and Raymond Williams.
The presence of Stuart Hall straddles the imagined, factual and invented worlds of THE UNFINISHED
CONVERSATION. Hall’s ideas, voice, memories, recollections, inventions and insights will be our key
narrative spur in a work structured by two final oppositions – between the imagination and the
unimaginable.
For John Akomfrah and Smoking Dogs Films, THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is a project about one of
the most highly respected intellectual figures of our time, and one whose range of work covers every
aspect of today’s modern society. On Hall’s 80th birthday this year, he said that the question of identity, a
central tenant in his train of thought, is “ an ever unending unfinished conversation”.
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
ABOUT “THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION”
Director – John Akomfrah
The child of radical political activists who was born in Accra (Ghana) in 1957, John Akomfrah is one of the
influential figures of the 80s black British cultural scene. As an artist, lecturer, writer, critic and film
director, his twenty-five year body of work is considered among the most distinctive and innovative to be
produced in contemporary Britain.
A musician, photographer, Super 8 filmmaker and enthusiast in his teenage years, Akomfrah was also a
founder member of various cine-clubs in London throughout the late seventies and early eighties. And
through these organizations helped to champion a wide range of cinemas including Asian and European
art house, the militant cinemas of Africa and Latin America as well as American independent and avantgarde cinemas to minority audiences.
A disciple of punk’s DIY aesthetic, Akomfrah in 1982 helped found the Black Audio Film Collective, the
seminal, cine- cultural workshop and directed a broad range of work within this critically acclaimed outfit
- fiction films, tape slides, single screen gallery pieces, experimental videos, creative documentaries and
music videos. Lyrical, poetic and essayistic, his work has always traversed the worlds of fiction and nonfiction, cinema and television, the art gallery and the film festival.
His 1986 film essay, Handsworth Songs – a film essay that explored migration and memory - brought
Akomfrah to the international circuit. And the film won seven international prizes including the
prestigious John Grierson Award For Best Documentary in 1987.
His début feature film, Testament was a moving story on African political exile that premiered at Cannes,
(Semaine De La Critique) in 1980 and went on to win five international film prizes at festivals.
John’s films have explored many facets of a multi cultural and multi racial Britain. His second feature film,
the award winning Who Needs A Heart (1991) looked at the emergence of a the radical Black Power
Movement in 1970’s Britain, while his documentary, A Touch Of The Tar Brush, (1990) celebrated the
200 year history of multi racial communities in Liverpool. His documentary, RIOT (1998) Told by the
real people who lived traced the real events that lead to the mass disturbances and riots of 1981 in
Liverpool. His feature film Speak Like A Child (1997) is an intimate story of a group of children, byracial and white who are bought up in a remote children’s home.
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
ABOUT “THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION”
His drama-documentary Prostitutes (1996) look at the lives of women, mainly new migrants forced into
prostitution. And his documentary, Goldie, British Drum and Base (1999) looked at the complex life of
an abandoned by-racial child and his painful rise to fame. Stan Tracey, The God father Of British Jazz,
(2001) his feature documentary, told through the life of pianist Stan Tracey is an intimate portrait on how
Black American Jazz created the British Jazz scene. The Genome Chronicles II (2008) his film on the
Black British Artist, Donald Rodney struggling to live through the last stages of his life battling against the
chronicle illness, sickle cell anemia.
And his recent Gallery film, Mnemosyne (2009) is a retelling of the post war mass migration to Britain of
people from the Caribbean, India and Africa to the west Midlands Area, Mnemosyne’s gallery success
gave birth to John’s latest film the award wining, The Nine Muses, (2010) which is now the feature
documentary on post war mass migration to Britain of people from the Caribbean, India and Africa.
John’s other area of interest has been in African American icons and his films have explored the lives of
such historic figures such as Malcolm X (Seven Songs for Malcolm X, 1993) and Martin Luther King,
Days of Hope (1997) and Louis Armstrong (The Wonderful World 1999).
John is also one of the earliest exponents digital filmmaking in Britain with films such as The Cheese And
The Worms (1996), Goldie (1999), Stalkers (2000) and Digitopia (2001).
In 2000, Akomfrah was awarded the prestigious Gold Digital Award at the CHEONJU INTERNATONAL
FILM FESTIVAL in South Korea for “the most impressive use of digital technology” on three films: RIOT
(2000), THE CALL OF MIST (1998) and THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1999).
Since 1987 Akomfrah’s work has also been shown in a variety of galleries across the world. These include
two shows at the Documenta (Germany) as well as shows at the De Balie (Holland); Centre George
Pompidou
(France); the Serpentine and Whitechapel Galleries (United Kingdom); Museum of Modern Art and The
Walker Arts Centre (United States).
A retrospective of Akomfrah’s gallery based work with the Black Audio Film Collective entitled ,“The
Ghosts Of Songs” recently premiered in England (at the FACT and Arnolfini galleries) and is set to tour
the rest of Europe this year.
Established as one of the pioneers of digital cinema in the United Kingdom Akomfrah was awarded the
prestigious Gold Digital Award at the Cheonju International Film Festival (South Korea) in 2000 for “the
most impressive use of digital technology”.
From 2001 to 2007, John Akomfrah was a Governor of the British Film Institute. And he is currently a
Governor of film organization, Film London. He is Visiting Professor In Film at the University Of
Westminster (United Kingdom).
John has lectured throughout the world in a range of institutions including - the California Institute of
Arts; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Tisch School of Art, New York; The London Institute.
His most recent productions are Mnemosyne, a gallery installation, and the Nine Muses a feature
documentary.
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
ABOUT “THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION”
Mnemosyne premiered at the Public Gallery in west Bromwich and then opened at the British Film
Institute Gallery for two months in 2010. The installation opened in the Portuguese gallery in ,Carpe Diem
and will be on show until the end of November 2011.
The Nine Muses had its world premiere at the 2010 Venice Biennale Film Festival and went on to screen at
some of the most prestigious international festivals in official selection, including, London, Dubai,
Sundance, Karlovy Vary, Jeonju, Rio De Janeiero, Trinidad and Tobago, Vancouver and Sheffield with a one
week theatrical run at Museum Of Modern Art in New York in October 2011.
In January 2008 Akomfrah was awarded an OBE, for his “ contribution to the Film Industry ” and was
presented with the Princess Margriet Award and made “European Cultural Foundation Laureate in
Brussels in March 2012 .
Producer:
David Lawson
+447879424 645
[email protected]
Producer:
Lina Gopaul
+447867 517086
[email protected]
Production Company:
Smoking Dogs Films
26 Shacklewell Lane, London E8 2EZ; UK
Director:
John Akomfrah
Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin,
Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, [email protected], www.hkw.de
After Year Zero
Geographies of Collaboration since 1945
After Year Zero
Geographies of Collaboration since 1945
Exhibition 19.09.2013 – 24.11.2013
The year 1945,⎯the “Year Zero” of Germany and Europe,⎯brought
a reordering of global relationships. This political realignment
is not recounted here as a history of the Cold War ideological
blocs. Rather, the project focuses on the respective developments of European history and African history over the course
of decolonization, on the ways in which they intertwined, and
on the attempt by actors during this period to fundamentally
transform the framework conditions of the colonial modern era.
Probing deeply into specific exemplary questions, the exhibition and conference explore the politics of historiography
and of the articulation of historical consciousness. The central
point of reference is the first Asian-African conference, better
known as the Bandung Conference, held in 1955 in Bandung,
Indonesia, at which 600 delegates from 29 nations and liberation
movements drafted a model for collaboration in the global South
under the banner of an anti-colonial modernity⎯– a milestone
in the history of decolonization that saw the launch of the Non-Aligned Movement. The installations and films in the exhibition,⎯including four new productions,⎯highlight historical case
studies along with their inscribed, and still competing, narratives. The talks, lectures, and films of the conference in October
and November 2013 will survey “geographies of collaboration”,
illuminating the gray areas in the way this term has been used
over time.
Vitrine 1 &€4
Geographies of Collaboration Before and After 1945
The idea of Pan-Africanism originated in the European metropolises at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the
meeting of widely traveled, politically astute intellectuals. It
developed from the simple and far-reaching insight that Africa
could be greater than a single continent. Although this Africa
was more imagination than experience, it nevertheless served
as a blueprint for the formulation of a common interest directed
against European colonial powers; it formed a potential connecting element between students, dock workers, university
professors, artists, activists, or soldiers, whether in Europe,
the Caribbean islands, or the United States. Marxist theory
and analysis, and the concept of internationalism, served
as resources, but not as ideologies, and were adapted and
developed in the process.
The idea of Pan-Africanism transformed and was realised
from 1900 onwards as a congress movement (through the
visionary initiator W. E. B. Du Bois) and briefly as a mass
movement (through the businessman and journalist Marcus
Garvey). As a harbinger and an organizational form, PanAfricanism enabled Africa to take a seat at the negotiating table,
at least in the forums of the United Nations. When Ghana became
the first African country to gain independence in 1957, it was
only possible thanks to years of preparation and collaboration.
In the 1960s Pan-Africanism formed the intellectual basis for
tri-continental networking (Havana, 1966), and became established on the African continent as a politically pragmatic
organizational form: as the OAU (Organization of African Unity),
and from 2002 as the AU (African Union), which was largely
propagated and financed by Muammar Gaddafi. With his speech
in the middle of the 1990s, “I am an African,” the South African
President Thabo Mbeki once again evoked the old spirit,
remodelling Kwame Nkrumah’s farsighted idea of the “United
States of Africa” into a potential liberal economic union.
Vitrine 2
The New World Order
Between 1945 and 1989 the competing systems of the bloc
confrontation and the associated models of the world order
determined the historical-political consciousness in the Northern
hemisphere. Berlin, the city that symbolized Nazi terror, now
became symbolic of the Iron Curtain. Parallel to this ran the
“Color Curtain”, separating the colonial world from the imperialist centers and their domestic societies. The collapse of civilization in the center of Europe conclusively robbed European
colonialism of the basis of its legitimacy:⎯the universalist
ideology of its civilizing mission, which could only be upheld
through racist hierarchies and pseudo-science. During the
war the Allies won the loyalty of the colonial population through
the promise to accord them the right to self-determination,
which had already been made during the First World War, and
was subsequently broken. Even after 1945 this promise could
only be redeemed through violence. The liberation movements
drew on a history of ideas, at the center of which stood the
possibility of the actual realization of the universalist promise
of modernity. It was at the Afro-Asian Conference held in
the Indonesian city of Bandung Conference in 1955 that this
demand was met and the right to self-determination became
a political reality.
Vitrine 3
“Year Zero”: Entry into History
The third vitrine exposes some of France’s entangled relationships with its former colonies, and the ambivalence and
contradictory attitude of its government when dealing with
its colonial past. By means of “historical laws,” some with
revisionist flavors, the French governments of the last decade
have attempted to harness the historiography of the national
collective memory. Meanwhile, behind the scenes of power,
dubious deals concluded between France and its former African
colonies have contributed to the formation of an elaborate network of economic and diplomatic alliances known as Françafrique.
At different times other collaborations relating to France and
its colonies have taken place: the French revolutionary masses
joined the fight for the abolition of slavery; the contact and
exchange of ideas between black Francophone intellectuals
and their Surrealist counterparts shaped the theoretical basis
of anti-colonialism.
Vitrine 5
The Suez Canal
The fifth vitrine has been conceived by the Egyptian filmmaker
Jihan El-Tahri. The collected material depicts the evolution of
the role of the Suez Canal as a vital strategic artery in both colonial
and post-colonial history. The shortcut provided by the canal
between Africa and Europe facilitated access to the colonies
and opened new trade routes. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision
to nationalize the canal in 1956 was a turning point in NorthSouth relations, which plunged Egypt into the heart of the Cold
War. The ensuing war became an international crisis,⎯a battle
of wills⎯between the former colonial masters and the new leaders
fighting for true independence. The Suez Crisis ended with the
embarrassing resignation of Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony
Eden, while victory for Nasser opened an alternative chapter
in the New World Order.
Vitrine 6
Egypt: The Hinge of the Universal
The sixth vitrine traces shifting and competing narratives
and discourses of universality related to Africa and European
ideology in the process of decolonization. The narrative of a
universal history that had underwritten the ideology of colonial
expansion was based on a history of civilization that incorporated
ancient Egypt along racial criteria, thus dissociating it from
the African continent. The bias of this hegemonic historiography
was challenged in the 1960s by the Senegalese Cheikh Anta
Diop, who sought to reverse fundamental colonial assumptions
engrained in the historian’s discipline by proving that the
ancient Egyptian civilization was an integral part of Africa, which
he claimed was the true cradle of civilization. Cheikh Anta Diop
also successfully employed another domain of universality
in the service of his thesis. As director of the radiocarbon laboratory in Dakar, Diop advanced the new radiocarbon dating
method in archeology,⎯the archeological equivalent to a “Year
Zero,” and representative of advancement in the natural sciences,
which, epitomized by nuclear science, had served as a bastion
of continuity in Western claims to objective truths and privileged
access to universality. This is juxtaposed in the vitrine with
the universality engrained in the rhetorics of modernization and
techno-social development represented here by the project of
the Aswan Dam; with the UNESCO “world heritage” program
to save the monuments of the ancient Nubian civilization from
flooding; and with the Afro-Futurist counter-universality of
performer and musician Sun Ra, who found actual universality
in the exile of the universe fused with (black) ancient Egyptian
mythology.
Vitrine 7
Travelling Communiqué. Reading a Photo Archive (1948–80),
Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia
This project speculates about a Communiqué (public statement)
that was published in an early moment of the Non-Aligned
Movement, but never arrived in public debate. It forces us
to rethink the Movement’s basic concepts in relation to today’s
paradoxical forms of the politics of exclusion⎯perpetuated
by globalization⎯that are entangled with the politics of inclusion
legitimized by a state of permanent war. The project’s point
of departure is a presidential photo archive of the Yugoslav
leader Josip Broz Tito. What does this archive provide us with
and how can we relate, today, to the politics of universalism
beyond the dominant political and ideological concepts?
The long-term collaborative project Travelling Communiqué. Reading a Photo
Archive (1948–1980) Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia is conceived by
Armin Linke (artist, Berlin/Milano), Doreen Mende (curator/theorist, Berlin/
London) and Milica Tomic (artist, Belgrade) in discussion and with the contribution
of the Museum of Yugoslav History (Radovan Cukic, Ivan Manojlovic and Mirjana
Slavkovic), Fabian Bechtle (artist, Berlin), Estelle Blaschke (photography historian,
Berlin), Zoran Eric (art historian/curator, Belgrade), Theo Eshetu (filmmaker, Rome),
Maja Hodoscek (artist, Ljubljana), Pramod Kumar (archive historian, New Dheli),
Milica Lopicic (architect, Belgrade), The Otolith Group (artists/theorists, London),
Olga Manojlovic Pintar (historian, Belgrade), Dubravka Sekulic (writer and architect,
Belgrade/Zurich), Ana Sladojevic (theorist/curator, Belgrade), Branimir Stojanovic
(philosopher/psychoanalyst, Belgrade), Jelena Vesic (curator/theorist, Belgrade/
Maastricht), and Stevan Vukovic (philosopher/curator, Belgrade). Photo Collection
Museum of Yugoslav History (MYH), Belgrade.
Vitrine 8
A Fable of Fatal Incorporation: The Final Scene from Hyenas
The eighth vitrine displays The Otolith Group’s close reading
of the final scene from Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1992 film Hyenas,
adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 play Der Besuch der
alten Dame. In Hyenas, Linguere Ramatou, the wealthiest woman
in the world, “richer than the World Bank”, returns to Colobane,
her impoverished hometown, in a fictional West African country.
Ramatou demands the death of her former lover Dramaan Drameh
in exchange for fabulous wealth. The process by which the
townspeople of Colobane gradually persuade themselves
to sanction and commit corporate murder is revealed. In its
prophetic vision of sacrifice being incorporated into the bright
future of the global market, Hyenas both pre-figures and casts
a shadow on the forecasts for the future growth of Africa’s
economy hymned by two articles both titled “Africa Rising”,
published by The Economist and Time in 2011 and 2012
respectively.
ENTRANCE
Foyer
1
1
EXHIBITION HALL
The Otolith Group
F In the Year of the Quiet Sun, 2013
Single channel HD video installation, color, sound, 25 min
Courtesy the artists
The name of The Otolith Group, founded by Anjalika Sagar
and Kodwo Eshun in 2002, is derived from the microcrystals
in the inner ear that provide balance and orientation. The group’s
essay-films explore forms of critical futurity and the psychic
simultaneity of historical experience. In their new film In the
Year of the Quiet Sun, postage stamps produced in Ghana
between 1957 and 1966 are assembled into a political calendar
of Pan-Africanist imagery. In 1957, the same year that the Congress
Hall in Berlin was inaugurated, Ghana, under the leadership
of the revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, became the first colony
in Africa to gain its independence from the British Empire. The
CIA-backed military coup that deposed Nkrumah in 1966 systematically destroyed the visual culture of Nkrumahism; the only
images to survive this purge are postage stamps. In the Year
of the Quiet Sun is a re-arrangement of these philatelic documents
into a kinomuseum of Pan-Africanist Pop Art. The film is simultaneously informed by a close reading of “Nkrumah: The Leninist
Czar,” the controversial essay on the personality cult of
Nkrumahism, dictatorship, and scientific socialism by the influential political theorist Ali A. Mazrui, first published in Transition
Magazine in Kampala, Uganda, in 1966.
John Akomfrah
B The Unfinished Conversation, 2012
3 channel HD video installation, color, sound, 46 min
C Transfigured Night, 2013
Double channel HD video installation, color, sound, 30 min
Both works courtesy the artist, Gallery Carroll Fletcher
John Akomfrah is the director of numerous award-winning
films dedicated to the experience of colonialism, diaspora and
resistance. He is one of the founders of the Black Audio Film
Collective, which was active between 1982 and 1998 and was
groundbreaking in placing racism and black identity in Britain
on the public agenda.
The Unfinished Conversation is a three-screen “narrative
construction” of the multiple realities of Stuart Hall, one of the
world’s most eminent thinkers. As a theorist of cultural identity
and difference, Hall exerted great influence on Akomfrah and
the collective movement in which he was involved. Hall arrived
in the UK from Jamaica (then still a British colony) in the 1950s,
graduated from Oxford, and became a decisive voice of the
New Left along with intellectuals such as E. P. Thompson and
Raymond Williams. The Unfinished Conversation focuses on
Hall’s “formative years” in the 1950s and 1960s.
With Transfigured Night John Akomfrah contributes a new
production, in the form of a two-screen installation. “Verklärte
Nacht” (transfigured night), a poem by Richard Dehmel, is taken
by Akomfrah as a moment of departure to compose a dramaturgy
of a confession of infidelity on the eve of new times. Akomfrah
finds a symmetry in the poem, a mirror of the “promise”, the
post-colonial subject made to the newly independent⎯now
narcoleptic⎯entity: the post-colonial state.
Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi
G Imperium, 2013
Mixed media installation with 4 channel video, color, sound,
3 min 10 sec
Courtesy the artists
Imperium is an installation, made of montages of altered archival
materials, in which the images that remain of Mussolini’s imperial
campaign in Africa are contemplated. Imperium has been
conceived as an archeological investigation of the rise and
the anthropology of the “fascist man”, and as a contribution
to the debate on the continuities between colonialism and fascism;
it focuses on questioning fascism’s iconographic legacy and
the complicity of the viewer.
In an attempt to create a New Roman Empire, the forces
of fascist Italy first “pacified” Libya and then attacked Ethiopia,
which would be incorporated in Italian East Africa in May 1936,
forty years after the historical defeat of Italian forces in the battle
of Adwa that had secured Ethiopian sovereignty. The Italian
campaign was notorious for its brutality, including the use
of mustard gas, admitted to by Italy only in the 1990s. The
materials Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi use are sourced mainly
from the private archives of soldiers, workers, and bankers
who traveled along with the colonial mission and worked
closely with the general Rodolfo Graziani and Count Galeazzo
Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law. Interspersed with these images
is footage from Lake Nemi, a mythical place in Italy where the
sanctuary
of the antique goddess Diana is situated. Caligula built two large
ships on Lake Nemi, floating palaces that later sank in the lake.
In 1926, Mussolini’s Napoleonian year, the “Duce” traveled to Libya
and decided to find the ships of Caligula. Mussolini then initiated
the work of destroying the Diana forest and draining the lake
in order to recover Caligula’s ships in 1928.
Kader Attia
HDispossession, 2013
Installation with double slide projection, (2x 80 colour slides)
and video, color, sound, 13 min
Courtesy the artist, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Galerie Krinzinger,
and Galeria Continua
In his newly produced installation Dispossession, Kader Attia
confronts the imagery of ethnographic objects kept in the collection of the Vatican with interviews on the practice of collecting
African art and artifacts. The interviews accompanying the
photographic images discuss aspects of the trade of ethnographic
artifacts and artworks. As in some of his previous works, Attia
approaches the question of the shifts in meaning of art and artifacts as part of a colonial and counter-colonial geography of
appropriation. These geographies, manifest as contradictory
tension in the respective objects, shed light on the historical
production of the divide between the Christian and the pagan
idolater, a division that turned into the colonial separation and
the ideology of scientific objectivity versus primitive fetishism,
and of art that was embedded in cult and ritual versus that which
was secular: modern art.
Jihan El-Tahri
A Flag Moments, 2013
Single channel video, b/w and color, sound, 6 min 39 sec
D
Interviews with Mokhtar Hallouda, Victor Moche,
Prince Amr Al-Faisal, 2013
Single channel video, color, sound, 17 min 51 sec / 30 min /
18 min 46 sec
E The Price of Aid, 2009
Single channel video, color, sound, 11 min
All works courtesy the artist
Jihan El-Tahri is a documentary filmmaker whose work is
devoted to the post-independence history of Africa, as well
as the Arab world. She exemplarily seeks to understand the
geographies produced by movements and individuals and their
ideological resources, the often implicit framework conditions
of global dimension, and the anatomy of power as it has played
out in late capitalism and modernity. Her contribution to the
exhibition consists of newly produced filmic and documentary
montages, excerpts from previous films and her archives, and
expert advice. For her contribution on Egypt she concentrates
on the critical role Egypt has played since the early days of
colonialism both as physical and mythico-narrative geography,
and its changing collaborative affiliations and functions. Other
inserts into the exhibition allude to the sources of the disastrous
effects of the aid-economy in the post-Second World War
structures of the Marshall Plan, and to the slow momentum
of independence from the 1950s to the end of apartheid in 1994.
Conference and Films
3 October 2013: Writing History
The talks and films address the fundamental role of Africa as well
as inclusions and omissions in the European construction of world
history, and continuities at the nexus of colonial rule and fascism.
4 October 2013: Universal Resources in the
Space Age — Trajectories in Pop Culture
African music revolutionized European popular culture after
1945, although the specific lines of connection and influence
are often obscure. The films and talks will take a fresh look
at the imaginary, biographical and theoretical body of source
material for diverse pop genres.
5 October 2013: The Bandung Moment —
Alignments and Re-alignments
The 1955 Bandung Conference marked a clear break in the final
phase of colonialism. How did Bandung change the ideological
and power-political parameters and what has become of the
vision of collaboration of the global South?
23 – 24 November 2013: Universal Horizons
and the Categories of Art
Which institutional and museum categorizations reflect the
global power structures and the colonial legacy of the modern
era? From the “primitivism” of modern art to the globally operating system of contemporary art today, the conference contributions situate cultural production in the geopolitical geographies of
modernity.
With Nabil Ahmed, David Barton, Garnette Cadogan, Ntone Edjabe, Bassam
El-Baroni, Rangoato Hlasane, James T. Hong, Keyti, Koyo Kouoh, Kien Ket Lim,
Bongani Madondo, Rastko Mocnik, Fred Moten, Charles Tonderai Mudede,
Erhard Schüttpelz, Shirin Rai, some authors of the project Travelling Communiqué.
Reading a Photo Archive (1948–1980) Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia and
the artists of the exhibition a.o.
Films by Jihan El-Tahri, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Théo Robichet,
Ousmane Sembène, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet and John Akomfrah.
“Universal Resources in the Space Age” in collaboration with The Space Between Us.
Credits
Credits
Curators
Annett Busch,
Anselm Franke
In collaboration with the
artists of the exhibition
and research curator
Heidi Ballet
Haus der Kulturen der Welt,
Berlin
Exhibition Architecture
and Graphic Design
Zak Group
Executive Architecture
meyer-ebrecht
Architekten (Sabine
Schneller, Kerstin
Meyer-Ebrecht)
Curatorial Assistance,
Project Coordination
Elsa de Seynes
Translation
Herwig Engelmann
(English - German),
Colin Shepherd
(German - English)
Copy-Editing
Joy Beecroft (English),
Mandi Gomez (English),
Claudius Prößer (German)
Subtitling
Subtext Berlin
Special thanks to
Max Annas, Lotte Arndt,
Kristine Andersen,
Jacqueline Cabaço,
Yasmina Dekkar,
Berthold Franke,
Marie-Hélène Gutberlet,
Koyo Kouoh, Olivier
Marboeuf, Laurie Robins,
Katharina von
Ruckteschell-Katte,
Dierk Schmidt,
Territorial Agency
Visual Arts and Film
Department
Head
Anselm Franke
Program Coordination
Daniela Wolf
Program Assistance
Janina Prossek
Assistance Film program
Magdalena Wiener
Processing Cornelia
Pilgram
Trainee
Miriam Greiter
Interns
Tim Roerig,
Lisa Scheibner
Production Research
and Artists’ Support
Ulrike Hasis, Sebastian
Hauer, Marlene Rudloff,
Nada Schroer
Technical Department
Head
Mathias Helfer
Exhibition Set Up
Gernot Ernst & Team
Video Editing
Stefan von Chamier
Building Facilities
Frank Jahn, Benjamin
Brandt & Team
Film projection
René Christoph
Communications
Department
Head
Silvia Fehrmann
Press Office
Anne Maier,
Anna Bairaktaris
Internet
Eva Stein, Jan Köhler,
Kathrin May, Stefan
Schildt, Gabriel Stolz
Public Relations
Christiane Sonntag,
Sabine Westemeier
Editorial Office
Axel Besteher-Hegenbart,
Franziska Wegener,
Elisa de Bonis
Education Program
Silvia Fehrmann,
Leila Haghighat, Eva Stein
After Year Zero is a
production of Haus der
Kulturen der Welt. The
project is based on a
series of workshops held
under the title “Matters
of Collaboration” in 2012
in Algiers, Dakar, Paris,
and Johannesburg
in cooperation with
the Goethe-Institut
in Brussels and with
funding from the
Excellence Initiative
of the Goethe-Institut.
Travelling Communiqué
is realized in cooperation
with Goethe Institute
Belgrade, supported
by the Federal Foreign
Office of Germany
www.hkw.de/afteryearzero
EDUCATION
TheKids&Teensprogramme:
Whatnotionsdowehaveaboutgeographyandhistory?Workshopsforkidsandteensparalleltothe
Sundayguidedtours.
Sunday,Sep22,2013|3pm|Fee:5€
Mixtapes,Music,Memories
WithAaronSnyder
from10yearsupwards
Registration:[email protected]
Howdochangesinrecordingtechnologyinfluenceournotionsofculture?Kidsproducetheirown
mixtapesfrommusiccassettesandothersounds.
Sunday,Oct6,2013|3pm|Fee:5€
WeltinSicht–FantastischeGeografien
WithJanHolleben
from6yearsupwards
Registration:[email protected]
Howisgeographymade?Kidscreatetheirownfantasylandsandcitiesfromawiderangeofmaterials.
Sunday,Oct13,2013|3pm|Fee:5€
Diakarussell–KunstausLichtundFarben
WithVJCHRSSMTHNG
from8yearsupwards
Registration:[email protected]
Kidsmakeart.TheyproducetheirownslidesusingdiversetechniquesandarchivematerialfromHKW.
ParalleltotheworkshopsthereareguidedexhibitiontourforadultseverySundayat3pm.
Guidedexhibitiontours
EverySunday,3pm
InEnglish:Sep29&Nov3,2013
WithAnselmFranke
InGerman:Sunday,Oct27,3pm
InEnglish:Sunday,Nov17,3pm
Fee:3€plusticket
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de
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19.9.–24.11.2013
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18.9.2013
PressContact:HausderKulturenderWelt,AnneMaier,John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee10,10557Berlin,
Fon+493039787‐153,Fax+49303948679,[email protected],www.hkw.de