Professional Documents
Culture Documents
MUSEUMS
A PUBLICATION OF L’INTERNATIONALE BOOKS
DECOLONISING
MUSEUMS
COVER CREDIT
Historical exhibition display in the Museum für Völkerkunde
(today Weltkulturen Museum), Oceania section. Weltkulturen Image
Archive. Photo: Hermann Niggemeyer, date unknown.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
4 54 113 155
Introduction Catch Me If You Can! Columbus, How Do I Get Rid Frontier Imaginaries
Nana Adusei-Poku of My Hangover? Vivian Ziherl
8 Francisco Godoy Vega
The Invisible and the Visible 63 158
Identity Politics and the Economy From the Collection 119 Interview:
of Reproduction in Art of M HKA, Antwerpen A Salt Box and a Bracelet Conversing Forced Closures
Nav Haq Jan De Vree with a Painting: Decolonising a Post- Vivian Ziherl
Soviet Museum in the Caucasus
23 71 Madina Tlostanova 169
Collecting Life’s Unknows “I Guess You Guys What Do We Talk About
Clémentine Deliss Aren’t Ready For That Yet… 126 When We Talk
But Your Kids From the Collection About Decolonisation?
35 Are Gonna Love It” of MG+MSUM, Ljubljana Vivian Ziherl
“Decolonising Museums” Ana Bigotte Vieira Walter Benjamin
Through the Lens of the Collections 182
and Archives of the Members 96 131 Biographies
of L’Internationale The Culture of Coloniality Around the Postcolony and the
Daniela Ortiz Museum: Curatorial Practice and
37 Decolonising Exhibition Histories
From the Collection of 104 Rasha Salti
the Van Abbemuseum, Eindhoven The Border of
Christiane Berndes the ‘Fourth World’ 144
Francisco Godoy Vega From the Collection
41 of MACBA, Barcelona
The Dutch VOC Mentality: 108
Cultural Policy 1989—1992: 148
as a Business Model Myth and Magic Institutional Fever in China
Mirjam Kooiman Francisco Godoy Vega Colin Siyuan Chinnery
INTRODUCTION
DECOLONISING MUSEUMS
Decolonising Museums is the second thematic publi- one of the most urgent civic and individual respon-
cation of L’Internationale Online; it addresses colonial sibilities in Europe. Calling upon cultural memory
legacies and mindsets, which are still so rooted and and half-gone history seems to be of utmost impor-
present today in the museum institutions in Europe tance to oppose the often politically-guided amnesia
and beyond. The publication draws from the confer- and ignorance.
ence Decolonising the Museum which took place at When proposing the ‘decolonisation’ of the
MACBA in Barcelona, 27-29 November 2015 1, and museum the first thing to clarify is what the ‘de’ in
offers new essays, responding to texts published on this term actually means. As formulated in our own
the online platform earlier this year. In different geo- research brief, ‘decolonising’ means both resisting
political regions, there have been various degrees the reproduction of colonial taxonomies, while simul-
of work to reconsider the colonial past ever since taneously vindicating radical multiplicity. These are
the 1960s, the painstaking process of decolonisa- two forces drawing in different directions: under-
tion and the institutionalisation of multiculturalism. standing the situation museums are in, critically and
Scrutinising the complex European context, one can openly, and identifying those moments that already
talk about belated processes taking place in France, indicate a different type of practice that overcomes
Belgium and Holland, the generational divides in the or resists the colonial conditioning. The term ‘decol-
discussion around ‘identity poli- onisation’ itself can appear somewhat forced to
1. Among the contribu-
tors to this thematic
tics’ and the obvious dichotomies describe these two movements as it suggests the
issue, Clémentine Deliss between the South and the North. return to a pristine state ‘before’ colonialism, yet to
and Daniela Ortiz par-
Especially in times when deal- name this double movement seems more adequate
ticipated at the seminar
Decolonising the Museum
ing with waves of refugees strug- than the common ‘postcolonial’. The current moment
at MACBA. gling for their lives has become is not ‘post’, when it comes to museum practice and
the power imbalance that was once installed through she proposes how a museum can resist the attempt
colonisation, it is still very much part of how European to produce the spectacle of the Oriental and use the
societies are organised. Offering a remedy to this collection in self-reflexive ways as a contemporary
situation however also will never mean a return, but resource to produce meaning. Throughout the issue,
always the beginning of a new chapter. What the ‘de’ Deliss’ argument is unpacked through a series of
then signifies is that it is only by addressing the past case studies: works in the collections of the muse-
and how it still lingers on today, that it is possible to ums who are members of L’Internationale confeder-
move onwards. ation are selected and presented by the staff of the
The two opening essays by Nav Haq and collection departments.
Clémentine Deliss, each in their own way, engage Mirjam Kooiman discusses recent cases of
with such a confrontation. Nav Haq thinks through institutions who are ignoring to deal with the colo-
the pitfalls of the traditional forms of institutional nial heritage in a critical manner in the Netherlands.
critique and identity politics to arrive at a new pro- Nana Adusei-Poku points to the ‘strategic tempo-
posal to address power imbalance. Instead of putting ral disjuncture’ in the attempts to counter colonial-
all the emphasis on inclusion, one should first con- ism, referring to the disconnection between the
sider in what space one is included. The big danger research done to raise awareness and understand-
of previous attempts to rectify the damage has been ing of the colonial condition on the one hand, and the
to include marginalised identities in representa- general make-up of research and education on the
tional spaces which are still prevalently white, male other. Using Fred Moten and Stefano Harney’s idea
and heterosexual. Exploring the practice of Haegue of the ‘undercommons’, she suggests that instead
Yang and other artists, he offers a new approach of correcting the existing system, it is better to con-
that takes these foundations on. Deliss, who unfor- sider starting completely somewhere else, building
tunately was unable to continue her work in the a parallel system that can interact with the main-
Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt, takes on the stream in a different way. Ana Bigotte Vieira (Part 1
museum directly and proposes a methodology she and Part 2) brings a Portuguese perspective, offer-
describes as ‘remediation’, producing a shift and a ing an essay originally written for the conference
remedy. Drawing from Carl Einstein’s radical writing, When Where the 80s?. She unpacks how discussions
around colonisation and emancipation take place from The International Art Exhibition for Palestine,
in a country which was under Salazar’s dictatorship 1978 at the Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA)
until 1974, demonstrating that the common black and in Barcelona (20 February—1 June 2015). Colin
white division that marks anything done under dicta- Siyuan Chinnery presents an overview of the devel-
torial rule as evil and everything afterwards as good, opment of museums in China and an insight into the
needs to be reconsidered for a more comprehensive rapid expansion of the cultural institutions since the
assessment of past and present events. 2000s. Finally Vivian Ziherl’s contributions close this
Daniela Ortiz critically reflects on the role of publication with a series of interviews that took place
museums in the civic debate around the migration within the framework of the Frontier Imaginaries with
laws issued by the Spanish government. Analysing Mitch Torres, Gary Foley, Elizabeth A. Povinelli and
the manner in which her own work was presented, Rachel O’Reilly.
Ortiz points to the many indirect ways in which muse-
ums take position in this charged debate. Francisco
Godoy Vega was associated with L’Internationale
Online as contributor to the Opinions section. His
articles offer a series of shorter and timely reflections
on questions of coloniality and contemporary culture.
Madina Tlostanova presents another geographic per-
spective, on the former Soviet countries, focusing on
the manner in which heritage has been treated in that
region and how the artist Taus Makhacheva “prob-
lematises the museum as an imperial institution of
aesthetic and epistemic control” in her work The Way
of an Object (2013). Rasha Salti’s essay describes
the curatorial strategies behind her recent research
in collaboration with Kristine Khouri, that resulted in
the exhibition Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts
THE INVISIBLE
AND THE VISIBLE
IDENTITY POLITICS
AND THE ECONOMY
OF REPRODUCTION
IN ART
NAV HAQ
THE INVISIBLE AND THE VISIBLE – NAV HAQ
“The art world stands Some questions seem to always remain urgent. I
would like to consider one of them: Just where are
to the real world in something like we exactly when we consider the dynamics of power
the relationship in which the City in the field of contemporary art? Following the well-
of God stands to the Earthly City.” documented artistic strategies of ‘institutional cri-
tique’ of the 1960s and 1970s onwards, we had come
Arthur Danto 1964, p. 582
to know more about art’s power relations through
the waves of socially- and politically-engaged move-
“While there is a deeply ethical ments and tendencies in art that were categorised
appeal in the desire for a more under the broad frame of ‘identity politics’. With
hindsight, this is most often typical of the 1980s gen-
inclusive representational landscape eration in the West—perhaps in the United States
and certainly under-represented and the United Kingdom predominantly. Working with
communities can be empowered defined constituencies of Otherness based on per-
by an enhanced visibility, the terms ceived ‘minority’ or ‘marginalised’ status—mostly
via notions of race, gender and sexuality—the thrust
of this visibility can often enervate of these movements was to seek the light of cultural
the putative power of these identities.” emancipation. It is fair to say that the art system, or
Peggy Phelan 1996, p. 7
what is often referred to as ‘the art world’, has over
the recent decades worked through various neces-
sary phases of attaining self-reflexivity: postmodern-
ism has allowed it to take apart its own partialities
of taste and collapsed its understanding of aesthet- offered the conditions to position the defining fac-
ics; it has become aware of how it has mediated the tor of their marginalisation—i.e. their race, gen-
cultural narrative in close alignment with broader der, sexuality—as being something intrinsic to their
socio-political hegemonies; and it has eventually art. We might think for example of artists ranging
authorised ‘other’ perspectives to enter into the from Keith Piper to Ana Mendieta in this regard. For
fold in the name of inclusivity. Broadly speaking, it Other perspectives and personas to be given the
has claimed the understanding that it possesses a kind of opportunity they were previously deprived
locus of power at its core, and that it is taking steps of was an understandable and legitimate desire in
to address it. But at the heart of it all, the question the name of inclusivity and pluralism. But what level
is—how much has really changed? Has artistic prac- of progress was this? What was lacking? Theorist
tice fulfilled the potential provided by the space that Russell Ferguson, in his introduction to Out There:
opened up especially for this emancipation through Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures (1990),
all the theorising? To what degree have the tradi- a key book on this subject, discusses the particular
tional terms of engagement between art’s infrastruc- conditions of this desire for visibility 1. He observes
ture and those wishing to be artistic practitioners that the “unquestionable, invisible, universal”, that
been addressed, and where might we go from here? is the bourgeois, heterosexual,
1. “Real changes are
It is perhaps worth undertaking the exercise of white male, has ultimately been impossible without
revisiting the trajectory of identity politics thus far, the legitimising force for both the a questioning of the
albeit with the effect of tightly condensing its dis- discourse of art and those able to master(piece) discourse
which forms its founda-
course. Much of the key practice and debate around practise within it. Ferguson sug- tion. As Toni Morrison
the subject of cultural marginalisation attributed gests that this power to legitimise points out, resistance
to the 1980s occurred as part of a broad drive by extends towards those consid- could begin with a ques-
tioning of the unspoken
groups marginalised from the art sphere demanding ered marginalised in society, with assumption of white,
to be included, but also to be able to insist on their the mode of acceptance happen- male, heterosexual iden-
own identity. For artists, there was a deep desire to ing through a process of recasting tity which underlies the
concept of the ‘univer-
be made visible—identifiable—exactly for who they them via predetermined criteria sal’ ” (Ferguson, 1990,
were. Subsequently, it could be said that they were of identification. All the while, the p. 10).
Haegue Yang, 5, Rue Saint-Benoît, 2008. 8 sculptures made of household appliances. Aluminum Venetian blinds, steel frame, powder coating,
perforated metal plates, casters, light bulbs, cable, cord, dance floor objects, metal eyelets, paint grid, metal chain, knitting yarn,
paper. Dohmen Collection, Aachen. Installation view of The New Décor, Hayward Gallery, London, Great Britain, 2010. Photo: Steve White.
invisibility of the dominant group has meant some- that created the aforementioned “unquestionable,
one’s perceived difference (as manifested in their invisible, universal” figure at the art system’s centre.
art) could only be meaningful in terms of a system of Discussing how an anonymous participant navigates
oppression. What in effect was formed was a subser- the art field, Danto states in his essay “The Artworld”:
vient relation between the invisible and the visible. It “We cannot help him until he has mastered the is of
is something we have known for a long time as the artistic identification and so constitutes it a work of
discourse of identity politics is well established. art” (Danto 1964, p. 579). This introduces the notion
The move to address under-representation in of ‘identification’—an understanding of the codes
art became like an act of holding up a distorted mir- that constitute the ‘atmosphere’ surrounding an
ror towards society in order to form an institution- artwork that can deem it identifiable as art, and only
alised sort of multiculturalism. Furthermore, through then can someone fulfil the aspiration of being part
the limited modes of representation for this kind of of the art world. “The greater the variety of artistically
‘identity art’, there ensued an identity reductionism, a relevant predicates, the more complex the individ-
severe flattening out of the ways in which identities ual members of the art world become; and the more
could be visualised and thus understood. one knows of the entire population of the art world,
We have to go back literally half a century to the the richer one’s experience with any of its members”
foundations of the so-called Institutional Theory of (Danto 1964, p. 583-4). It seems an obvious point in
Art, first raised by American writer and philosopher hindsight to state that it is the art world that defines
Arthur Danto, to the moment when the way the art what art is, and many would argue that Danto’s idea
system sustains itself was first verbalised: “To see remains profoundly relevant today. Yet it is difficult to
something as art requires something the eye cannot describe this ‘atmosphere’ concretely, as its effec-
decry—an atmosphere of artistic theory, a knowledge tiveness lies in its sheer intangibility. The implication
of the history of art: an art world.” (Danto 1964, p. of Danto’s text is that there exists some sort of codi-
580). Danto, and others considering this theory such fication—behavioural codes of such great value that
as George Dickie, fleshed out what he at that time they even act as a legitimate form of cultural capi-
might have meant by an ‘atmosphere’, determining tal. Furthermore, some sort of art community ‘meme’
that this ultimately correlated with the conditions is nurtured in this state of intangibility. It drives the
memetic behaviour that spreads between people of generic denominators for the self-representation
within a group—the art world—in order to perpetuate of the marginalised create a kind of ethical dilemma
its streaming of value. But perhaps the identity poli- for artists, with their promises of being able to enter
tics generation lacked sufficient awareness of this the base stratum of the art system, but on the condi-
meme to instigate the real change required? tion of having to perform the prescribed role of the
The discourse of ‘identity politics’ in art for a long Other. The ‘identity’ paradigm also became a kind of
time has looked highly redundant, and for very good strategy for some individuals to find success in their
reasons too. With some exceptions, it was something careers—using the kind of ‘self-othering’ found in
that had rather stifled aesthetic limitations, with its the work of many well-known but unmentionable art-
clichéd images of the self or the body holding forth ists. Even whole institutions have been built around
a marginalised status—a kind of figurative portrai- supporting this kind of practice—one thinks of
ture of one’s “otherness” if you like. ‘Identity politics’ organisations such as Iniva in London. Thus there is a
art, arguably, may even have caused more problems certain amount of baggage that comes with ‘identity
2. “Currently, how-
than it set out to resolve. The act politics’, and not all of it is help- or championed accordingly.
ever, there is a dismay- of making visible, though con- ful. At least there is one realisation Both sides believe that
ing similarity in the
sidered necessary for a certain that may be useful—the context of greater visibility of the
beliefs generated about hitherto under-represented
the political efficacy
period, could now be thought of internationalism in art today mir- leads to enhanced politi-
of political represen- as a second tier of marginalisation. rors that of 1970s and 80s insti- cal power. The progressives
tation. The dangerous
It could be seen as a ghettoisa- tutional multiculturalism in the want to share this power
complicity between pro- with ‘others’; conserva-
gressives dedicated to
tion harboured within the fold of Anglo-Saxon world. tives want to reserve this
visibility politics and art world legitimisation. As Peggy In the time since the emer- power for themselves.
conservatives patrolling
Phelan so eloquently elucidated gence of the ‘identity politics’ dis- Insufficient understanding
the borders of museums, of the relationship between
movie houses and main-
in her landmark book Unmarked: course, the art world has entered visibility, power, iden-
stream broadcasting is The Politics of Performance in rapid processes of internationali- tity and liberation has led
based on their mutual
the 1990s, visibility under these sation, and today numerous new both groups to mistake the
belief that representa- relation between the real
tions can be treated as
conditions can be considered an metropoles of culture, including and the representational”
‘real truths’ and guarded institutional trap 2. These kinds from right across the non-Western (Phelan 1996, p. 2).
world, have joined the hegemonic centres. Yet it and identification are at the fore. Once we accept that
feels evident that the old modes of legitimisation what we see as contemporary art (in the memetic
identified as prevalent in the Institutional Theory of sense) around the world is ultimately a kind of colo-
Art, along with its institutionalised multiculturalism, nial export, we can take the simple step towards
have found their way into the realm of art’s inter- understanding that the visibility and success of any
nationalism. The Western art world has legitimised artist or even metropole in the context of the art world
new, previously marginalised entrants in a similar only happens through the consensus and mould of
way to how it eventually legitimised those who were the Western art establishment. It ultimately follows
socially marginalised in its own societies the 1970s the same institutional logic described by Danto as
and 80s. Again, those previously marginalised, in this well as Ferguson. The gateway is opened, a meme is
instance by geography, have been allowed in by the planted, and then an image of art is requested – all
art world, on the condition that predetermined roles in the guise of inclusivity. Alongside national repre-
are fulfilled. Whether artists are aware enough of sentation type exhibitions, other exhibition formats
this mirroring, or even care, is unclear, but the broad such as biennials, which could be seen as the con-
apparatus is largely the same. Previously, the con- temporary versions of the colonial-era Universal or
stituencies of identity were mostly vis-à-vis race, World Exhibition, are the spaces of concentration for
gender and sexuality, which could now be replaced this legitimisation.
with the regionalism—nationality, race and ethnicity This new geographic paradigm for art has also
rolled into one—of those practicing in the non-West- been provided with its own curious lexicon that implic-
ern context. This is often, for example, through par- itly demarcates Otherness. Stepping outside the art
ticipation in the national or regional representation sphere for just a moment, we can observe how certain
format for exhibitions—for example art from India, art words reappear in particular public contexts time and
from Mexico—which ultimately positions artists as again. In South London, for example, it is not entirely
regional representatives, and thus their art as being uncommon to come across a word such as ‘vibrant’ in
intrinsically linked to their national culture. This posi- newspapers, local authority literature or elsewhere,
tioning would explain the success of artists such as when describing a district such as Brixton. What it
Shirin Neshat or Subodh Gupta. Modes of visibility really means of course, is that a lot of Caribbean folk
Haegue Yang, Yearning Melancholy Red, 2008. Aluminum Venetian blinds, aluminum hanging structure, powder coating, steel wire, mirror, mov-
ing spotlights, infrared heater, fan, drum kit, trigger, MIDI converter, cable. Dimensions variable. Courtesy of Galerie Barbara Wien,
Berlin. Installation view of Asymmetric Equality, REDCAT, Los Angeles, USA, 2008. Photos: Scott Groller.
live there—it might be a bit ‘edgy’ for some, but the excruciatingly transparent. The message translates,
locals are surely content, making plenty of noise, sell- crudely, as: “congratulations for making it this far!”. To
ing brightly coloured fabrics and exotic fruits. Similarly, the public, artists are often portrayed as if they are
art institutions have their own special lexicon for when ‘happy-clappy’ ethnics—expressive beings, always
they work with artists (and occasionally audiences) grateful, always ready and waiting for celebration to
who may sit awkwardly within their traditional institu- take place in the (one would think) momentarily self-
tional frameworks of practice and reference. The word conscious bourgeois museum. In this arena, visibility
‘local’, for example, is another somewhat discourteous and faux-celebration go hand in hand, and evidently,
term invoked when an institution wants to communi- this ‘celebration’ is unhelpful as it dissipates any
cate to the world that they do, on occasion, work with attempt at criticality and intellectual relations. Yet fol-
locally-sourced, lesser-established artists. ‘Voices’ is lowing its rapid expansion, the art world has become
another common one, with regard to ‘third-world’ art- a more complex place than it ever has been. This new
ists in this instance, evoking frail, human, emotional ‘complexity’, we should hope, has its positive traits,
stories from the battle-scarred, crisis-ridden outback. and it is this notion—the aesthetics of complexity—
The word ‘celebration’ appears regularly too. Normally that we will return to shortly.
found in either the snappy opening, or last pensive The discourse about representation of the ‘oth-
paragraph of press releases and exhibition wall texts, ered’ self is distilled in the case study of artist Renzo
it is a word often used in connection with foreign, pre- Martens’s much-discussed video Episode III: Enjoy
dominantly non-Western artists exhibiting in solo Poverty (2008). The work holds up a mirror, reflecting
shows or the ever-ubiquitous ‘national representation’ the art world’s blunt attitude towards marginalisation,
type exhibition. The type of celebration here is sprung its associated politics of visibility and economies
on groups of artists hailing from the same region or of reproduction. It focuses on the lucrative busi-
country, who succumb to exhibiting together in this ness of poverty journalism that caters for a Western
tenacious, and frankly, anachronistic format for exhi- media that consumes images of people that have
bitions. The general tone is radically different from once been exploited through heavily unbalanced
the norm, creating occasions when the pecking order socio-economic conditions, and who can therefore
between institutions and exhibiting artists becomes be exploited again through these pictures. In the film,
Martens attempts to train people from an under-priv- The key platform of visibility for marginalised artists
ileged community in Congo to benefit themselves by has been, as mentioned earlier, the exhibition. Irit
taking images of their own status as impoverished Rogoff helps us move forwards here with her insight-
(yet now complicit) people. They portray themselves ful and untypically anecdotal short text “How to Dress
as what Giorgio Agamben would refer to as ‘bare for an Exhibition”. This is her personal account of the
life’—mere biological subjects with little in the way opening of the exhibition Black Male at the Whitney
of choices or rights. The project fails of course—they Museum of American Art in New York, in 1994—an
simply do not have access to the same channels of exhibition renowned for considering representations
distribution to cater for the demand. In their attempt of African-American men. She describes the experi-
at visibility through representations as marginalised ence of viewing the exhibition, and, afterwards find-
selves, portrayed as a kind of universal basic human ing the attendees to the opening profoundly more
subject, the tiers of legitimisation for their work to be fascinating than the works of art on display. It was a
able to succeed remain inconspicuous. rare occasion for a predominantly Black-American
artistic crowd to convene within the bourgeois insti-
tution that is the Whitney. The guests had individually
used the opportunity to present themselves for the
occasion, dressing, conversing and participating in
a way that brought to the fore a much more complex
self-image. In her text, Rogoff initially asks: “In the
shift that took place from art histories to discourses
on representation within cultural criticism informed
by post-structuralism and questions of difference
during the 1980s, a certain move was made from look-
ing at cultural artefacts as reflective to perceiving
of them as constitutive. This was of course part of a
Renzo Martens, Episode 3, 2008 (video still). Courtesy
Galerie Fons Welters, Amsterdam; KOW, Berlin; and the Box,
much larger question to do with the establishment of
Los Angeles. meaning. How and where are meanings determined?
By whom? For which readers or viewers? And through through the use of ethno-centric motifs, socio-cul-
what structures of identification or disidentification?” tural affectation and ironic wordplay. Or the flirtations
(Rogoff 1998, p. 132). She then considers the notion with post-colonialist self-othering in the work of
of participation in relation to marginalisation and the Danh Vō that play heavily off the artist’s personal and
possibilities not only for an awareness of the trap family biographies as displaced migrants to Denmark
of institutionalised visibility, but also to open up the from Vietnam. (It also informs us that some parts of
idea of addressing representation through more per- Europe are only now having their first multicultural-
formative ideas of participation, including “… partici- ist moment in the art context.) The global acclaim of
pation that is generated by unconscious strategies artists such as these has been rapid, combining clas-
of self-staging, be it through dressing, of fantasising, sic ‘self-othering’, a savoir-faire of the art world, and
or fictionalising” (Rogoff 1998, p. 139). The key point much charisma. It is a visibility in awareness of the
here is that ‘representation’ is differentiated from the art meme. Yet who can be blamed for pursuing a route
‘reproduction’ of the image. To echo Phelan, who in to success?
relation to the performance of identities suggested Artists are reconsidering the politics of identity
“[p]erformance’s being, like the ontology of subjec- once more. Identity returns as an important subject
tivity […], becomes itself through disappearance”, precisely as a way to make sense of our lives under
the desire in the here-and-now of the art system the very conditions of complexity. It argues for the rea-
should be for modes of representation that do not sonable—for plurality, for visions beyond the memetic
succumb to being forced through the mechanical die criticality and legitimisation of the art world, and for
of institutionalised visibility (Phelan 1996, p. 146). the possibility of new aesthetic directions. Some are
It is evident that many artists today produce operating in the old paradigm of 1980s legitimation,
art in a way that is quite conscious of and complicit but some are raising prospects of a wholesale shift in
with how the art system accommodates the politics the consideration of identity and subjectivity in the
of identity, which though successful, also highlight artistic realm, working in a way that is more complex
some of the tensions. We might think of the work of than the art system has been able, or willing, to accom-
the collective Slavs and Tatars, who display a market- modate. Simple observation can tell us that figurative
ing of Eurasian regionalism for a Western audience representations of the self and its false universality
have been rejected, and they have been replaced by elements—large and small objects, industrial metal
the potential offered through abstraction, performa- with natural fabric—which all have to co-exist. The
tivity (as discussed by Phelan and Rogoff) and fic- elements sometimes take on anthropomorphic
tion, amongst many other approaches. And in doing so, characteristics, and through their spatial relations,
they occupy valid positions to deal with identity with- foreground ideas of cultural relativism. All of this
out the essentialist necessity of identification. functions on a formal level of abstraction in Yang’s
Identity becomes something intricate and flow- work. The role of the viewer is also operative in works
ing in the expansive practices of an artist such as by Iman Issa, whose installations possess the key
Haegue Yang. The compound nature of her works characteristic of a sort of democratic offer. Whether
fuses numerous notions of identity together, form- it is her Material (2009-12) series, or her installation
ing layers and dimensions that co-exist. It appears Thirty-three Stories about Reasonable Characters in
on one level through the works acting as a form of Familiar Places (2011), she provides sets of abstract
portraiture, often of activists who laboured for inclu- propositions and fragments that avoid the pitfalls of
sivity, referencing feminist histories via Petra Kelly identification, instilling a deliberate anonymity on
or Marguerite Duras, through to figures such as that the representation of specific places, people, events
of the spiritualist thinker and teacher G. I. Gurdjieff. and emotions, sometimes simultaneously, with which
Mainly through the symbolic use of read-made you can associate and narrativise. These artists work
objects, her works also synthesise other notions— with an implicit sense of self, as well as a critical dis-
of social class, mobility and co-habitation. She is tance from the politics of visibility. They are just two
renowned for her use of Venetian blinds in installa- influential examples amongst numerous others that
tions for example: how do we relate to them and oth- exemplify where things are also going.
ers in space as we move around, with their function It is difficult and probably even unnecessary to
of obscuring our vision? This symbolises what the describe this as an actual movement to deal in pro-
artist has referred to as “communities of absence”— gressive terms with identity politics per se, but still,
communities hidden from ‘mainstream’ culture, yet it is a transition that is in its own way redefining the
are also very present, active and indefinable. The parameters of art right before us. Maybe it could be
installations are situations for various contrasting described as being generational, which might equally
here be defined in terms of practice rather than biog- art. And so, Phelan’s proposal—to consider the place
raphy. The relation of these artists to their works is not of identities as being beyond the sole denominator
one of the figurative economy of reproduction, but of visibility in artistic practice—remains relevant and
something more urgent and experimental, mirroring largely unresolved. Yet it should and is, allowing us
more relational or intersectional understandings of to work towards a new situation. One where the cur-
identities formed through the interactions between rent paradigm of the art system is forced to annul the
biological, social and cultural spheres. The artists existing economy of reproduction for those margin-
working with this mindset adopt a more relativistic alised by addressing its unwritten, memetic rules of
attitude, foregrounding the self-determination of engagement. Thereafter, our sense of what is valued
their practice, and defy traditional socially-coerced in terms of art’s relational property can be re-con-
beliefs that they possess a stable, identifiable core. ceptualised, with a new sense of ownership of this
Rather than being stuck between the old dichotomy value. It feels timely to raise these issues during a
of the invisibility of the legitimising bourgeois art phase when many nations in Western Europe—such
world and the strategy for attaining visibility for the as Germany, Belgium, France, Denmark, etc.—are
traditionally marginalised subject, they have created experiencing the early stages of their multicultural
the conditions that allow them the freedom to float moment in the art context. Something that seems all
between both, producing a new kind of cognitive the more complicated as it is also taking place after
space. There is, as always, the risk that it may only be the advent of art’s internationalism. Of course, things
moments before what could potentially cause broad change through the new perspectives brought about
change becomes evident and is recuperated by the by subsequent generations, in both society and in
neutralising-reflex of the art system, perhaps this art. The ‘atmosphere’ will dissipate once those from
is inevitable even, but then again it is hard to catch backgrounds previously considered marginalised
something without a fixed identity, especially when it gain broader comprehension of the art world and its
is steps ahead of you. meme, understand it as a form of symbolic violence,
To begin to equip ourselves with a sense of prog- and avoid being coaxed into the trap of visibility. But,
ress, we must acknowledge a level of inadequacy for most significantly, we must acknowledge that we
self-representation within the traditional context of cannot find this progress unless we gain the belief
REFERENCES
—
Danto, A. 1964, “The Artworld”, The Journal of Philosophy,
vol. 61.
—
Ferguson, R. 1990, “Introduction: Invisible Center”,
in R. Ferguson, M. Gever, TT. Minh-ha and C. West (eds.),
Out There: Marginalization and Contemporary Cultures,
The New Museum of Contemporary Art and The MIT Press.
—
Phelan, P. 1996, Unmarked—The Politics of Performance,
Routledge.
—
Rogoff, I. 1998, “How to Dress for an Exhibition”,
in M. Hannula (ed.), Stopping the Process? Contemporary
Views on Art and Exhibitions, The Nordic Institute
for Contemporary Art.
COLLECTING
LIFE’S
UNKNOWS
CLÉMENTINE DELISS
COLLECTING LIFE’S UNKNOWS – CLÉMENTINE DELISS
Bindung zwischen Museum would make people look again, institutions have become entrenched within the cor-
und Forschungsinstitut
better understand what they saw, porate culture of consumption on an increasingly
einzusetzen hat, soll
das Museum nicht durch
and take apart what they believed global scale.
das Fachpopuläre nur or assumed. Collections would Recently the Musée du Quai Branly in Paris
Schau und nicht Lehre
reflect extremes of intellec- was described to me as being similar in remit to a
gewahren.” Einstein
1926 / 2006, p. 303. For
tual exploration and exhibitions television broadcaster such as Arte, or a publish-
English translations of would speak of human experience ing house like Taschen. The role of its exhibitions is
Carl Einstein’s texts,
and knowledge. Otherwise, he to provide well-produced, colourful, attractive, and
see Einstein 2004.
claimed, museums would become topical visions of the world with a touch of popu-
2. See Léopold Sédar nothing more than “preserve jars”, lar exoticism. After all why would one battle against
Senghor’s ‘Musée
and “anesthetize and rigidify into industrial forms of populist trans-cultural entertain-
Dynamique’ which was
opened in Dakar forty
a myth of guaranteed continuity, ment? Indeed, the same museum in Paris runs one
years later, in 1966, into the drunken slumber of the of the most interesting research branches in Europe,
by André Malraux.
mechanical”. headed by French scholar Frédéric Keck who stud-
What Einstein was suggesting was that the ied under Paul Rabinow. Keck is a specialist of con-
museum’s engine room lies in the recognition of temporary animal-engendered epidemics who spent
its research collection: “In dieser vergleichen- two years engaging with the 100-year-old Claude
den Sammlung vor allem müssten Vorlesungen und Lévi-Strauss before he died. Yet at the Quai Branly,
Führungen veranstaltet werden; wie die gesamte the cohabitation of partner forms of curating knowl-
Schaustellung durch Lehrer verlebendigt werden edge—one for the purpose of public exhibiting, and
muss. Hier ist der Punkt, wo die lebendige Bindung the other ideational and charged with advanced
zwischen Museum und Forschungsinstitut einzu- developments, which remain largely backstage—is
setzen hat, soll das Museum nicht durch das taken to an extreme. Critical reception is divided—
Fachpopuläre nur Schau und nicht Lehre gewahren.” some complain about Jean Nouvel’s dark cavernous
Today, nearly one hundred years after Einstein’s coloured concrete scenography, whilst applaud-
quasi-manifesto for a dynamic museum 2, it does not ing the museum for its excellent médiathèque,
take much to recognise to what degree these public library, photographic archives, digitised collections,
Exhibition view: Foreign Exchange (or the stories you wouldn’t tell
a stranger), 2014. Photographs of the collection (1960—2013) plus
new works by Marie Angeletti, Otobong Nkanga, Benedikte Bjerre.
Photo: Wolfgang Günzel.
Exhibition view: Foreign Exchange (or the stories you wouldn’t tell a stranger),
2014. Installation by Luke Willis Thompson: Skull mask (Lorr), collected by
Carl Gerlach 1879, New Britain, human bones, plant fibres and paint. Collection
Weltkulturen Museum. Photo: Wolfgang Günzel. L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – CLÉMENTINE DELISS – 27
COLLECTING LIFE’S UNKNOWS – CLÉMENTINE DELISS
international symposia, and close collaborations contemporary assemblage such 3. Paul Rabinow,
with global academia. Rather than symbiotic, these that new visibilities and sayable “Assembling Untimeliness:
Permanently and
two strands appear lodged in a hiatus that contra- things become actual inducing Restively”, work in prog-
dicts the stored capital of this museum: its extensive motion and affect.” 3 ress, sent to Clémentine
expand the context of this knowledge by taking the stimuli for subsequent elaboration. They are unfin-
artefacts once again as the starting point and stimulus ished collections just like the ethnographica is
for contemporary innovation, aesthetic practice, lin- unfinished in its semanticity. In this sense, the new
guist translation, future product design, and triggers prototypes interpellate the various models of con-
for emergent museums. But how does one demystify cept and form embodied within the artefacts from the
them, activate a loss of aura? How does a collection museum’s collection.
“regain consciousness” or create presence anew?
As one knows, bullë matter, is first of all wood.
And since this becoming-immaterial of matter seems The Research Collection
to take no time and to operate its transmutation in the
magic of an instant, in a single glance, through the
omnipotence of a thought, we might also be tempted No research collection can be a viable commodity for
to describe it as the projection of an animism or a long. The spectral chain is broken once its decoding
spiritism. The wood comes alive and is peopled with procedure has been superseded and relegated to a
spirits: credulity, occultism, obscurantism, lack of past enquiry. Nevertheless, the objects in these col-
maturity before Enlightenment, childish or primitive lections—in particular those associated with ritual
humanity. But what would Enlightenment be without and therefore doubly fetishistic—retain something,
the market? And who will ever make progress without and that something is what people search for in
exchange-value? (Derrida 1993/ 1994) the museum. They search for transportation, for the
To remediate the ethnographic collection is steamship, the airplane, or the hologrammic virtual
to engage with that mix of discomfort, doubt, and log-on into the mystical enigma. Their use-value may
melancholia, the caput mortuum phase of alchemi- be interesting, but as Karl Marx and then Jacques
cal regeneration, transforming these objects into Derrida pointed out, that is not how the numinous
a contemporary environment and thereby building character of the material object is constituted. “The
additional interpretations onto their existing set of commodity is even very complicated; it is blurred,
references. This initial experimental phase yields tangled, paralysed, aporetic, perhaps undecidable
new ideas for works that operate as prototypes, as (ein sehr vertrachtes Ding)” (Derrida 1993/1994).
There is a kind of failure that subtends the ability of reference, brought it into a rela- 4. As stated by Rabinow,
this mass of ethnographic objects to be commodi- tionship of affinity and transported during the first
research seminar at the
tised. These objects are failures because they can through it—like a Ouija board Weltkulturen Museum, in
never be us, be an unquestioned part of our refer- séance on the table that Marx and November 2010, dissent is
entiality. As such their referentiality is not expended. Derrida refer to as the figurante in inherent within experi-
mental research: “I have
They are contested and will continue to be contested. a play—then something begins always remained loyal to
And the argument for their future restitution is unde- to happen. The commoditised a vision of anthropology
niable. Distance is what makes them what we want tribal art object suddenly shows by remaining vigilantly
disloyal to the existing
from them. We want them to be a contrast medium to up its naked, orphan-like status, state of affairs. I am
what we know. its anachronism, out of timeliness, anti-theory and pro-con-
The Weltkulturen Museum in Frankfurt which I simply out of joint. These are fugi- cept, and pro-experimen-
tation”. (Paul Rabinow,
have been directing since 2010 has a store of 70,000 tive works of art in fugitive collec- Towards an Anthropology
such objects. In this case, the resistance to com- tions. For an object is a migrant of the Contemporary,
modification becomes all the more apparent and per- too with its partial knowledge, 2001).
sistent. Why would one object dominate? If one does partial identities, and incompleteness (Sassen 2009).
dominate, it is because of a market in tribal art. The One could argue that the claims for restitution,
existing conservatism of the tribal art market with for returning the millions of objects to where they
its implicit top twenty—in which a piece from Nok or once came from is currently the most active form of
Benin was at the top of the scale and a set of woven commodification that is taking place. The relic diplo-
rattan fish traps from the Sepik at the bottom—no macy surrounding these artefacts insist that the
longer retains its ideological status. The associated material objects should be returned to the source
apparatus of display, including genres of lighting communities even if these are so radically displaced
and photographic imaging, are critically reviewed that no one can be sure that a receiver will be there—
when thinking of post-ethnographic presentations. 4 other than the market.
If one breaks that market lineage, the provenance
that fetishises who owned what when, who stroked
which sculpture, or introduced it into their frame of
in numerous cities on the African continent, in a former colonial museum of anthropology aggra-
South East Asia, India, Japan, Latin America, and vates questions of access, ownership, restitution,
probably China too. conservation, and oblivion that may also apply to
• Finally, there is the issue of collecting. The vis- other museums but to a lesser degree.
ibility and contemporaneity of collections lies The potential of a research collection is that it is
today with private initiatives and personalised contingent on experiment and dialogue yet quickly
museums. In contrast, cities in which state loses its currency. As such it remains oddly outside
museums once flourished after their respective of market forces yet characterises and punctuates
countries’ independence (e.g. Jakarta, Delhi, the exploration of the moment. This process is con-
Lagos, Dakar, to name just a few) are hindered nected to production and therefore to the emergence
when it comes to activating a renaissance of of a new collection, one that quite literally grows out
their cultural institutions, which are regarded of care and attention to historical antecedents.
today as ideologically outdated, unable to pull in The unfinished works produced in the
visitors, and generally dilapidated. The civil ser- Weltkulturen Museum’s Labor evoke what one might
vice of museum professionals compounds the define as the prelusive moment. Prelusive qualifies
difficulties that exist in engaging younger gener- the object or experience that triggers a principal
ations of museologists and curators within these event, action, or performance. Often associated with
national or municipal venues. composition and structure, the prelusive phase is the
instance of anticipatory and transformative thinking
At the Weltkulturen Museum, we have developed an that can lead to the early shaping of ideas and the
experimental methodology, which I believe is not only subsequent creation of a new body of work.
possible within the post-ethnographic museum but The Weltkulturen Museum builds up an unfin-
can be applied to other museums with varied histori- ished collection of emergent works of art or literature
cal collections. It depends on how one views the pos- created on site, in its laboratory. These works reflect
sibility of knowledge production within a museum an intimate fieldwork situation, and an acute interac-
and defines hierarchies within collections. To test tion by the guest artist or scholar with the specific
this way of working with collections by engaging with context of the museum and its artefacts, photographs,
people, situations, and exhibitions. It is about decod- adjustment. This may help us to redefine the condi-
ing the tacit knowledge of objects by using small tion of mobility that Carl Einstein referred to in rela-
in-roads rather than mainlines within existing anthro- tion to the museum’s research collection.
pological discourse. The Labor in the museum is This is the seed of a new museum-university,
“pre-operational”. It is a green room for production. It constantly working with external impulses and
provides the researcher with a framework for living, redrafting the concept of generalism and the demo-
sleeping, working, thinking, reading, producing—a cratic intellect towards a non-standardised educa-
kind of domestic inquiry that takes on night-work and tion, independent and self-organising, a subjective,
adjusts to the domestic scale of a villa. permeable, fragile institution.
At the end of each residency, the artist or scholar
gifts an example of this new emergent work to the BIBLIOGRAPHY
Museum. By entrusting the museum with these new —
Bhabha, H.K. 1994, The Location of Culture, Routledge,
lectual exploration, a conceptual and reflexive exer- — Einstein, C. 1926, (Berliner Völkerkunde Museum), quoted in
Uwe Fleckner, Carl Einstein und sein Jahrhundert. Fragmente
cise in things as yet unknown. einer intellektuellen Biographie, Akademie Verlag, Berlin,
In this way, we can view the different arte- 2006.
gogy with its “continuist, accumulative temporality” Contemporary, Princeton University Press, New Jersey.
—
Sassen, S. 2009, “Incompleteness and the Possibility of
(Bhabha 1994, Chapter 8) and performativity that Making: Towards Denationalized Citizenship?”, Cultural
engages with the recursive language of creative Dynamics, vol. 21, no. 3, pp. 1-28.
“DECOLONISING
MUSEUMS” THROUGH
THE LENS OF
THE COLLECTIONS
AND ARCHIVES
OF THE MEMBERS
OF L’INTERNATIONALE
THE COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES OF THE MEMBERS OF L’INTERNATIONALE
Clémentine Deliss’ article “Collecting Life’s discusses a work by the Austrian artist Ines Doujak,
Unknowns” was a starting point for this EPUB by Evviva il coltello! (Es lebe das Messer!), which allows
L’Internationale, reflecting upon the collections and the museum to question the processes of construc-
archives held by the members of the confedera- tion of a collective memory, as well as explore the
tion. Referring to Deliss’ remark about the research colonial and ethnographic technologies that have
potential of collections, MACBA addresses The Green made these processes and their decoding possible.
Detour, a nine-volume comic by Francesc Ruiz in
which he uses popular culture to create alternative —by Christiane Berndes
narratives around emblematic moments in Egypt’s
cultural history. M HKA writes about the Vrielynck
Collection of antique cameras, optical toys, film
posters and other cinematographic paraphernalia:
through a series of artists’ interventions, the museum
examined the potentialities of this collection for
researchers and artists. Van Abbemuseum explores
the parallels between anthropology and contempo-
rary art in an installation by Michael Rakowitz, The
Invisible Enemy Should Not Exist. Moderna galerija
presents the work Lenin—Coca-Cola by Alexander
Kosolapov and related artefacts to discuss art as
an invention by Western culture and predict the
shift from work of art back to artefact. The MNCARS
FROM THE
COLLECTION OF THE
VAN ABBEMUSEUM,
EINDHOVEN
CHRISTIANE BERNDES
FROM THE COLLECTION OF THE VAN ABBEMUSEUM, EINDHOVEN – CHRISTIANE BERNDES
German archaeologist Robert Koldewey discovered Rakowitz’s work addresses the migration of
the Ishtar Gate, one of the eight gates to the inner city goods in colonial and postcolonial times, creat-
of Babylon constructed on the north side by order of ing and destroying identity through power, law and
King Nebuchadnezzar II around 575 BC. Koldewey value systems. By recreating the missing objects
transported this Gate to Berlin, where it is still on view from worthless packaging and newspapers and with
as one of the highlights of the Pergamon Museum. the help of different modern information systems,
The gate that was photographed and posted on the Rakowitz transfers them into the discourse of con-
Internet the most by US servicemen stationed in Iraq temporary art, where they testify about the complex
is a 1950s reconstruction on a ¾ scale compared to exchange between different cultures within a glo-
the size of the original. balised world, our world.
A third element in the work is the story of Donny
George Youkhanna, who was Director of the museum —by Christiane Berndes
during the time of the invasion and the looting in Curator and Head of Collections Van Abbemuseum
2003. Dr. Youkhanna was also a member of the band
called 99%, that covered songs by the UK heavy
metal and hard rock band Deep Purple. One of their
songs, “Smoke On The Water” from 1972, is played
continuously in the installation. It is interesting to
position the popularity of Western pop music against
the near-total financial and trade embargo estab-
lished by the United Nations Security Council on the
Iraqi Republic, starting four days after Iraq’s inva-
sion of Kuwait and until May 2003. Security measures
were taken by the United States to defend govern-
ment buildings against looting in the aftermath of
the invasion, but they left cultural institutions like the
National Museum to their fate.
In response to the opposition’s criticism of gov- cuts to subsidies that critics have referred to it ever
ernment economic policy in 2006, the then Prime since as a ‘cultural slash-and-burn policy’. Although
Minister of the Netherlands, Jan-Peter Balkenende, virtually no part of the cultural sector was spared
called for a return to the “VOC mentality”. This was the effects of the cuts, certain institutions, includ-
a reference to the old Dutch trading spirit and entre- ing Rotterdam’s Wereldmuseum and Amsterdam’s
preneurialism of the United East India Company Tropenmuseum and National Maritime Museum
(Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie or VOC, 1602– (Scheepvaartmuseum), were particularly badly hit by
1798/9)—the world’s very first multinational com- the policy. It is worth noting that these museums are
pany. It unleashed a wave of criticism, since such the custodians of the country’s collections of colonial
romanticism about the Dutch Golden Age ignores history. The reasons given for the cuts were said to
the inherent historical associations with violence, be based on ‘impartial economic logic’. The ‘success’
slavery and colonialism. The Premier later stressed of museums is determined by the number of visitors
that “it had not been his intention to refer to that at they attract. Since critical reflection on the colonial
all”. However, it was precisely this selective approach past is hardly a great money-spinner, these museums
to the country’s history and his own unawareness of tend to fall by the wayside. As such, this would appear
it, that had so offended his critics. The VOC mental- to be an example of the economic crisis being used to
ity as a characteristic of the selective historical per- justify an ideological shift of strategy in the nation’s
spective on the Dutch Golden Age has been a key cultural institutions. Only the stringent cutbacks, in
feature of Dutch cultural policy for many years. The part masked by urgent calls for cultural entrepreneur-
government seized on the economic crisis that broke ship and financial independence, appear to be linked
out in 2008 as an opportunity to make far-reaching to a renewed insistence on defining Dutch identity
cutbacks in the cultural sector, involving such great and betray a wilful national loss of memory, or at the
1. Alberts, J. 2007, very least, a disquieting indiffer- the KIT was threatened with clo- 2. Hof, Sv. 2013,
“Hoogmoed en gekibbel”,
ence towards some of the darker sure with no chance of a pardon. “Is de ’redding’ van
Nrc.nl, 6 July, viewed 15 de Tropenbibliotheek
September 2015, here.
moments in the country’s history. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs, gerechtvaardigd?”, Joop.
To mark the upcoming millen- which was providing the subsidy, nl, 4 November, viewed 15
nium, the government had decided in 1999 to donate felt unable to justify development September 2015, here.
100 million Dutch guilders for a complete renovation aid money being spent on a museum. The govern-
of Amsterdam’s Rijksmuseum: a political gesture that ment declared that it would only be willing to save the
meant that the Dutch population would still have “a Tropenmuseum if it agreed to merge with two other
leading museum of international standing” 1. In 2003, ethnographic museums—the National Museum for
the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science (OCW) Ethnology (Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde) and the
was reckoning on a budget of 272.5 million euro: by Africa Museum. It was also expected immediately to
2009, it emerged that this figure would be exceeded comply with the revenue model imposed by govern-
by almost 100 million. But it was all felt to be worth ment and increase its efficiency by merging the man-
it—in 2013, the New Rijksmuseum was given a grand agement teams. The importance of preserving a huge
opening, officiated by Queen Beatrix. However, by collection of cultural heritage from colonial history
this time, the economic crisis was in full swing and did not appear to be a factor in the debate. Moreover,
the government had announced serious cutbacks the government made absolutely no reference to the
in 2010, hitting the cultural sector harder than any museum’s theatre or even the acclaimed library col-
other sector, viewed proportionally. The govern- lection: anything not taken over by third parties was
ment announced that the 20 million euro subsidy for to face destruction 2. This points to the lack of an
the Royal Tropical Institute (KIT) was to be halted by integrated government policy, since the preserva-
the end of 2012. Since Indonesian independence in tion of heritage became a concern of the museum
1950, this former colonial institute had been a pri- itself rather than that of government.As the museum
vatised institute for knowledge focusing on medi- sector responded with horror, the populist/ nation-
cine and economic development in the tropics and alist Party For Freedom (Partij voor de Vrijheid, PVV)
was also home to the Tropenmuseum, a theatre and announced its willingness to agree to the closure of
a library. Despite having a rich collection and history, the Tropenmuseum. The PVV, which itself was not part
3. Modest, W. 2013, of government, but was support- of the Cultural Council (Raad van 5. Raad van Cultuur,
“Curating Between Self
ing a minority government made Cultuur), the official government 2011, “Noodgedwongen
Hate and Self Love: keuzen. Advies bezuinig-
Ethnographic Museums
up of the conservative/ liberal advisory body on art, culture and ingen cultuur 2013-2016”,
and Ethno-nationalist People’s Party for Freedom (VVD) media, to postpone the introduc- Cultuur.nl, 29 April,
Politics”, lecture
and the Christian Democrats tion of the change to give institu- viewed 15 September 2015,
delivered at the con- here.
ference The Future of
(CDA) in a confidence-and-supply tions slightly more opportunity to
Ethnographic Museums, arrangement, had made some- find alternative ways of operating 6. Sanders, S. 2015,
19-23 July, Pitt Rivers
thing of a name for itself for its despite the severe cutbacks was “Crisis van links: wij
Museum, Oxford, viewed zijn nu allemaal een min-
15 September 2015, here.
controversial populist statements dismissed out of hand by Zijlstra. derheid”, Nrc.nl, 16 May,
from the sidelines. On this occa- It seemed the cultural slash-and- viewed 15 September 2015,
4. Bockma, H., 2011,
sion, the party’s view was that burn that the Cultural Council was here.
“Halbe Zijlstra: Er zit
pijn in de bezuinigingen,
the Tropenmuseum merely made warning about, was not actually a 7. PVV 2012, “Hún
dat klopt”, Volkskrant. its visitors feel guilty by spread- risk, but had in fact been the gov- Brussel, óns Nederland.
nl, 11 June, viewed
ing “Western self-hatred” 3. For ernment’s very intention 5. Verkiezingsprogramma
15 September 2015, here. 2012-2017”, Pvv.nl,
his part, the VVD State Secretary From an ideological per- July, p. 43, viewed
for Culture, Halbe Zijlstra, who implemented the spective, the selective approach 15 September 2015, here.
cutbacks in the cultural sector, simply confessed adopted in terms of which cul-
to a lack of understanding of the arts: “If you have tural heritage is worthy of support and which isn’t,
to make so many cuts, that is more of an advantage would appear to exemplify the ideas of the PVV. This
than a disadvantage. You need to be able to distance radical political party is selective in its view of cul-
yourself. We want to achieve a major reorganisation ture: it presents the ethnic Dutch population, whose
of the cultural sector, a culture shift within culture, “authentic roots” must be protected at all costs, as a
and that calls for an ability to look at things from an minority threatened by immigrants 6. In its 2012 mani-
impartial perspective 4.” In this case, impartiality festo, the PVV placed particular emphasis on pre-
meant that every cultural institution needed to earn serving local traditions while art and multiculturalism
at least 17.5 percent of its own revenue in order to be were dismissed as “left-wing hobbies 7”. But it was
eligible for subsidy from 2013 onwards. The advice the first government led by VVD Prime Minister Mark
8. Donner, PH. 2011, Rutte that was to declare that mul- building renovations and rap- activities have been
“Integratienota
ticulturalism had failed, through its idly falling visitor numbers. Even discontinued and serious
Integratie, bind- damage caused to leading
ing, burgerschap”,
Minister of the Interior Piet Hein before the economic crisis began works by displaying them
Rijksoverheid.nl, Donner and his 2011 policy docu- to become a factor, the then in the restaurant. There
Ministry of Social
ment entitled integration, con- Mayor of Rotterdam, Ivo Opstelten have even been claims
Affairs and Employment, that items have been
16 June, p. 1, viewed 15
nection, citizenship (“Integratie, (VVD), decided to turn the tide by sold in order to fund the
September 2015, here. binding, burgerschap”). Donner appointing cultural entrepreneur museum’s new commercial
argued that cultural diversity “had Stanley Bremer. He was given free activities.
9. Zijlstra, H. 2011, Rengers, M. and Kammer
“Meer dan kwaliteit: een
primarily led to division and at best rein to develop an entrepreneur- C. 2015, “Vernietigend
nieuwe visie op cultuur- to well-meaning mutual disre- ial policy with a view to making rapport over chaos
beleid”, Rijksoverheid.
gard 8”. In view of this consensus the museum successful again, but bij verzelfstandigd
nl, Ministry of Wereldmuseum”, Nrc.
Education, Culture &
between Rutte’s first government more importantly independent nl, 15 April, viewed
Science, 10 June, p. 32, and the PVV that held it in power, of subsidy. Alongside some seri- 15 September 2015, here.
viewed 14 September 2015,
Zijlstra’ minimalist explanation for ous commercial measures includ- Rengers, M. and
here. Kammer, C. 2015-2,
cultural cutbacks that “the new ing the introduction of a Michelin “De ondernemer en het
10. Revelations in an basic infrastructure will no longer star restaurant and the hiring out Wereldmuseum: recon-
independent research
have room for development insti- of the museum’s auditoria, it was structie Wereldmuseum”,
report published in April Nrc.nl, 16 April, viewed
of this year include the
tutions in the field of cultural diver- not long before the entire team 15 September 2015, here.
fact that the museum’s sity” was all that was needed to of curators was dismissed in the Kammer, C. 2015,
collection now plays a
pull the plug on institutions focus- wake of the falling revenues and “Wereldmuseum in grote
subordinate role only, financiële problemen”,
no scientific research is
ing on exactly that—such as the by 2011, as earnings continued to Nrc.nl, 14 April, viewed
conducted, educational ethnographic museums 9. From a suffer, the radical museum direc- 15 September 2015, here.
practical perspective however, it tor came up with the idea of selling
would appear that it was the VVD’s focus on economic off part of the collection. Although it clearly breached
profitability that informed its selective cultural policy. every museum’s ethical code, this controversial move
In 2000, Rotterdam’s ethnographic Wereldmuseum was only prevented by the municipal council after
was on the verge of bankruptcy as a result of major heated discussions in the media 10. Despite extreme
attempts to commercialise it, the Wereldmuseum is Although this dismissal attempt was prevented at
virtually bankrupt and has seriously undermined its the last moment, the situation is evidence of a lack
role as a museum in numerous ways. Yet, in spite of of political interest in the museum’s programme that
repeated signs of wrongdoing, the council (the owner was attempting to portray both the glory of overseas
of the collection) has washed its hands of the mat- trade and the inherent downside of the slave trade.
ter. Unlike the Wereldmuseum, the National Maritime By giving an academic role to only a small selec-
Museum appeared to have been successful in strik- tion of institutions, the government is undermining
ing a balance between education and entertainment the role that museums must play in education. The
and thereby becoming less dependent on subsidies. VVD in particular would appear to see the cultural
This museum also made quite a radical commitment sector primarily as a leisure industry, whose very sur-
to cultural entrepreneurship. The museum build- vival is measured by the number of visitors it attracts.
ing’s recently-covered inner courtyard was hired out This means that the principle of museums’ financial
as a means to fund the museum and its presenta- independence and economic profit is taking prece-
tion transformed from dusty displays to a multimedia dence over historical value and importance. In other
experience. Although the Cultural Council expressed words, culture needs to be able to earn something for
concern about the balance between its duties as a the Netherlands. Internationally, Halbe Zijlstra’s new
museum and its commercial ambitions, it also used cultural policy was primarily based on using art and
the very same document to dismiss any notion of an culture for foreign relations, literally insisting that it
academic role for the museum. Its research grants— contributes to a positive image of the Netherlands
which had until then actually enabled that balance by emphasising links between culture, trade and the
to be achieved—were discontinued by the Ministry. economy 11. The Dutch Masters of 11. Zijlstra, H. 2011,
This was followed by a reduction in the government’s the Golden Age are cited as exam- “Meer dan kwaliteit: een
nieuwe visie op cultuur-
general museum contribution. Despite having pre- ples of this. Equally, the reopening beleid”, Rijksoverheid.
viously received praise, the museum management of the Rijksmuseum enabled the nl, Ministry of
responded to a serious budget deficit by attempting Dutch Golden Age to put a stop to Education, Culture &
Science, 10 June, p. 5-6.
to dismiss eleven members of staff, including a cura- the negative image of Amsterdam viewed 14 September 2015,
tor and the senior curator of the academic programme. as a city of the red-light district here.
12. Röling, D., and cannabis cafés. The govern- Maxime Verhagen (CDA) proposed 13. Hope, C. 2007,
Eigenraam A. and Venema
ment prefers to showcase national the establishment of a National “A museum of Britishness
N. 2015, “Frustrerend would show all that is
dat slavernijherdenk-
culture by means of such historic Historical Museum (NHM) in order great about Blighty”,
ers telkens om subsidie figures as Rembrandt, Vincent to boost the country’s knowl- Telegraph.co.uk, 14
moeten bedelen”, Nrc.
van Gogh and even Anne Frank. edge of its history and strengthen December, viewed 15
nl, 20 March, viewed September 2015, here.
15 September 2015, here.
These are the standard-bearers national identity. In Britain, Lord Tait, S. 2009, “PM’s
for museums that have unfailingly Kenneth Baker launched a similar plan for ‘Britishness’
been attracting floods of tourists for many years. The initiative in 2007 for the establish- museum consigned to
history”, Independent.
aim of cultural tourism and the marketing of a Dutch ment of a museum of ‘Britishness’, co.uk, 30 January, viewed
identity is not only to target other countries, but also that should not only focus on the 15 September 2015, here.
to generate a collective sense of an authentic cul- narrative of British history, but
14. See, for example:
tural identity within the country itself. The subsidies above all be a paean to British Hunt, T. 2008, “A museum
awarded for national commemorations provide fur- standards and values 13. Historians of back-slapping will
ther evidence of an intent to create a selective view and museum professionals in both belittle our island
story”, TheGuardian.
of the country’s history: the memory of the victims of the Netherlands and Britain were com, 15 January, viewed
the Second World War is kept alive by some 4.5 mil- critical of the idea of an histori- 15 September 2015, here.
lion euro every year, while the organisers of the com- cal canon approach, as well as the
memoration of slavery by the National Institute for the risk of the museum being used for propaganda pur-
Study of Dutch Slavery and Its Legacy (NiNsee) must poses, since the project was the brainchild of poli-
reapply for a grant every single year, with no certainty ticians 14. Whereas the British initiative ultimately
that its application will be honoured 12. came to nothing, in the Netherlands, a manage-
It simply seems that there is no room for the ment board was appointed and a suitable location
colonial past in Dutch public discourse. However, sought. However, this ambitious project fell victim
until very recently, the world of politics was clearly to the harsh cutbacks introduced by State Secretary
interested in the country’s past and the importance Halbe Zijlstra in 2011, who felt unable to justify a new
of its citizens’ historical understanding. In 2006 museum in the wake of cutbacks at existing muse-
politicians Jan Marijnissen (Socialist party, SP) and ums that were, after all, already developing initiatives
15. Zijlstra, H. 2011, to showcase Dutch history 15. been devised as a counterbalance 17. Vervaeke, L.
“Meer dan kwaliteit: een
Although the NHM could poten- to place a clearer focus on the 2013, “Tropenzolder”,
nieuwe visie op cultuur- Volkskrant.nl, 1
beleid”, Rijksoverheid.
tially have created a more con- Dutch colonial past and historical November, viewed 15
nl, Ministry of sistent home for the colonial past, relations with the ‘Other’ along- September 2015, here.
Education, Culture &
both the British and Dutch initia- side the Rijksmuseum. Whilst
Science, 10 June, p. 22, 18. Pondaag, J. and
viewed 14 September 2015,
tives were primarily inspired by Belgium has just spent 75 million Bennema, T. 2015,
here. the notion that multiculturalism euro on a thorough renovation “Nederland moet voorbeeld
had failed and by ongoing dis- of its colonial Royal Museum for nemen aan Duitsland”,
16. Bloembergen, M., Joop.nl, 30 July, viewed
Schulte Nordholt H.
cussions about the integration Central Africa in Tervuren, in order, 15 September 2015, here.
and Eickhoff, M. 2013, of immigrants, globalisation and according to its director Guido Schlömer, F. 2015,
“Opinie: Koloniale nos-
increasing public Islamophobia in Gryseels, “to reconcile itself with “Duitsland noemt Herero-
talgie in Rijksmuseum”, bloedbad voor het eerst
Niod.knaw.nl (NIOD
the wake of 9/11. Rather than sug- the past 17”, no similar ideas would ‘genocide’ ”, Mo.be,
Instituut voor oorlogs-, gesting an opportunity for society appear to motivate the world of 11 August, viewed 15
holocaust- en geno-
to engage in some self-reflection, Dutch politics: the sole prior- September 2015, here.
cidestudies), 21 June,
viewed 15 September 2015,
the desire to define a national ity was to combine these ethnographic institutions
here. identity would therefore seem in an attempt to cut spending. On top of suggesting
to be rooted in nostalgia.The a strong focus on economic profitability, this would
Rijksmuseum was opposed to the establishment of appear to be a sign of a collective failure to acknowl-
the NHM, as it felt that it itself could, after reopening, edge the political deeds of the Dutch past. Whereas
again fulfil the role of a national historical museum Germany has this year officially acknowledged as
by means of a mixed collection of art and historical genocide the massacre that took place in its former
artefacts that would offer a chronological narrative colony of Namibia between 1904 and 1908 18, the
of Dutch history. However, this turned out to be heav- Netherlands continues to describe the violence it
ily based on the more glorious aspects of the coun- applied during what is known as the Police Actions
try’s history 16. The merger of the Tropenmuseum with in the Netherlands East Indies (modern Indonesia)
the Rijksmuseum voor Volkenkunde and the Africa merely as “excesses” 19. The PhD thesis by Swiss-
Museum demanded by the government might have Dutch historian Rémy Limpach recently revealed
RELEVANT LINK
photoCLEC: Photographs, Colonial Legacy and Museums
in Contemporary European Culture
http://photoclec.dmu.ac.uk
CATCH ME
IF YOU CAN!
NANA ADUSEI-POKU
CATCH ME IF YOU CAN! – NANA ADUSEI-POKU
“It has always been much easier (because given throughout this short essay 1. For the past two
it has always seemed much safer) to give a decades, the same institutions have tried to change
name to the evil without than to locate the this condition, but have not really known how to do
terror within. And yet, the terror within is far so, except by initiating diversity policies aimed at
truer and far more powerful than any of our “inclusion” and “equal opportunities” that constantly
labels: the labels change, the terror is con- problematise (prospective) students of colour whilst
stant. And this terror has something to do forgetting the multiplicity of other
with that irreducible gap between the self intersecting identity categories. 1. By taking this argu-
ment as a fact, I con-
one invents—the self one takes oneself as In order to complicate the ques- sider this text already
being, which is, however and by definition, tion of “how”, my primary aim is disobedient to academic
a provisional self—and the undiscoverable to point out the role of time as a rules of citation, par-
ticularly as a Black
self which always has the power to blow the political tool to reproduce a hege- academic I had to “back
provisional self to bits.” monic education system and the up” every experience-
James Baldwin in Avedon and Baldwin 1964 connected argument is that there based argument that I
try to present, because
is no “catching up”, which calls these experiences would
That contemporary universities and art schools the decolonisation of state insti- challenge the normative
are criticised for the reproduction of a Western tutions and their education sys- system, which was imposed
on me. Thus the presented
(art) canon is nothing new and that those higher tem into question. arguments and observa-
(art) education institutions consist of a predomi- The argument derives from tions derive from being
nantly privileged white student body is not a novelty my observation that we are facing in the university system
as a student as well as
either. It is therefore not my aim to reproduce these a form of strategic temporal dis- a professional for over
debates and claims but they should be considered a juncture, which can be seen as the 10 years.
2. There are of course aftermath of century-long white to change because of static outdated knowledge
many other scholars who
and hetero-sexist hegemony. The production and thus ideologically reproduces long-
have looked at chronop-
olitics. With regards to
notion of strategic temporal dis- established power hierarchies. In other words this
colonialism and moder- juncture derives from the historian disjuncture produces historical and cultural amnesia
nity: see references to
Michael Hanchard (1999, p. 252) and is a driving force in order to nourish an exclusive
Fabian 1983, Bhabha 2006.
With regards to labour:
who describes the way in which progress narrative. Working against this amnesia can
Bloch 1961. With regards time has been used as a political not solely work through action plans and equal oppor-
to sexuality and gender:
tool in order to deprive Black peo- tunities, because that does not change the dominant
Halberstam 2005, Dinshaw
et al. 2007, Lorenz 2012.
ple from knowledge, goods as well content, which sustains and reproduces itself. On
as subjecthood 2. During segrega- the content level however, teaching Visual Culture,
tion, apartheid and colonialism for instance, white Critical Race, Gender, Queer and Post-colonial Theory
schools would receive with the latest versions of constantly challenges lecturers to fill these knowl-
school books which years later would be handed over edge-gaps in the classrooms that the dominant
to black schools and thus create unfair conditions for Western and Eurocentric canon has (re)produced for
Black individuals. He also points out that time man- more than a century. We are always facing the long-
agement was imposed on enslaved human beings by term problems which the education system produces,
the people who owned them. Hence temporal defer- by not privileging expansive and holistic learning but
rals, time management or even the determination of exclusive self-congratulatory learning environments.
our biographies into a (hetero-) normative narrative So the state of our museums can not be a surprise
are all connected to the ways in which politics—or in because they are fuelled by the very same system.
other words policing, disciplining and controlling— Curating exhibitions in the European context with
has been used in order to create the uneven power a Black radical approach is thus a very difficult act,
structures, access and exclusion that most institu- because of the absence of these discourses in main-
tions are confronted with, which is a common theme stream cultures. One option is to fall into the trap of
in the discussion around decolonisation. anthropological framing or to be disobedient and not
I want to point out that today’s strategic temporal translate the discourse at all.
disjuncture systematically hinders society’s abilities
3. I don’t want to and summer schools or in self- Feminist and Queer Activists over 4. McRobbie, A. 2015,
undermine the historical
organised reading groups. Whilst the past century, they all claim the unpublished text.
and contemporary impor-
tance of these institutes
many institutions desire diversity same form of inclusion and acknowledgement, which
and departments, quite (Saner & Seefranz 2012) and con- seems to be a humanism, which is always in the mak-
the opposite, my inten-
fuse the term with race and see ing but never hits the production line.
tion is rather to point
out that the scholar-
it as the reformative basis—the
ship and knowledge from closing of the knowledge time- The problem is of course more complex, because
these fields should be
gap, which includes a self-reflec- although content seems to be set in stone in most
more acknowledged and
implemented.
tive mode—this seems to be one university curricula, and here in particular the con-
of the greatest challenges. servative disciplines such as art history, philosophy
Because it is not only the students who need to make or economics etc., the education system has equally
time-warp jumps—they are the least problem when changed and turned into a neoliberal labour machine.
it comes to an eagerness to learn; what appears as Art schools and universities have to constantly
a much greater problem is the body of teachers and reinvent themselves. Today we look at the entre-
directors, who do not have the expertise to teach preneurial university which, according to Angela
the required content because they have equally not McRobbie “entails relentless and hubristic forms of
been exposed to it during their education. However self-promotion” 4.
a groundbreaking decolonising of our education In the European context—with EU research
system needs this expertise as well as a student grants such as Horizon 2020 which is all about devel-
body that starts to understand that they are part of oping neoliberal futures, entrepreneurial and busi-
the problem and thus the solution (Harney & Moten ness-oriented research—it is questionable how and
2013, p. 29). Sylvia Wynter already argued for such a for whom this future is designed and whether this
transformative mode when she wrote a letter to her future is rather just a reproduction of the status quo.
colleagues in which she highlighted the intrinsic Thus it is no surprise that it is more important today
role and responsibility of educators in the reproduc- in contemporary art schools to give the students les-
tion of ideological, epistemological, symbolic and sons in entrepreneurship than in non-Western and
physical violence (Wynter 1994). If you re-read Black, diasporic art.
Research that tries to dismantle and change such is not in interaction or dialogue with the system, that
institutional power-structures is systematically pro- forces us into the refuge. A place where one can ask
longed or circumvented through minimal funding what do I want because of myself? (Harney & Moten
and non supportive infrastructures, not to mention 2013, p. 120) It is a heterotopic place which allows
the emotional blisters and exhaustion, that individ- to think possibilities in a system, which sustains
uals in this field experience. One jeopardises one’s itself unless it is completely destroyed and replaced
livelihood—if the critique one poses is not formed by something still unthinkably different. If we start
through negligence. But is it really David against with that question, we come to very different results
Goliath? What happens through this continual fight compared to policies, business-oriented research
for inclusion and representation is a desire to remove or inclusive action plans, because we also negotiate
oneself, one’s knowledge and intellectual production and ask ourselves on a day-to-day basis about our
altogether from this space, which turns into a radi- own practices within this closed economy of thought.
cal escapism and refuge into—what Fred Moten and The latter question to me is only the beginning point
Stefano Harney call the Undercommons of the univer- of a holistic transgressive temporal performative
sity. They write: “To enter this space is to inhabit the approach, which goes beyond the institutions that
ruptural and enraptured disclosure of the commons we are working in.
that fugitive enlightenment enacts, the criminal,
matricidal, queer, in the cistern, on the stroll of the REFERENCES
—
Halberstam, J. 2005, In a Queer Time and Place. Transgender
Bodies, Subcultural Lives, Sexual Cultures, New York
University Press, New York.
—
Hanchard, M. 1999, “Afro-Modernity: Temporality, Politics,
and the African Diaspora”, Public Culture, vol. 11, no. 1,
pp. 245-68.
—
Dinshaw, C., Edelman, L., Ferguson, RA., Freccero, C.
Freeman, E., Halberstam, J., Jagose, A., Nealon, CS.
and Nguyen, TH. 2007, “Theorizing Queer Temporalities:
A Roundtable Discussion”, GLQ: A Journal of Lesbian
and Gay Studies, vol. 13, no. 2, pp. 177-95.
—
Harney. S. and Moten, F. 2013, The Undercommons:
Fugitive Planning & Black Study, Minor Compositions.
—
Lorenz, R. 2012, “II. Transtemporal Drag”, Queer Art:
A Freak Theory, Transcript Bielefeld, pp. 93-118.
—
Saner P. and Seefranz, C. 2012, Making Differences:
Swiss art schools, Exploratory Study, Institute
for Art Education-Zurich University of Arts, Zurich.
—
White, EJ. 2012, Modernity, Freedom, and the African
Diaspora: Dublin, New Orleans, Paris, Indiana University
Press.
—
Wynter, S. 1994,” No Humans Involved: A Letter to my
Colleagues”, Forum N.H.I.: Knowledge for the 21st Century,
vol. 1, no. 1, Fall, pp. 42-73.
FROM THE
COLLECTION
OF M HKA,
ANTWERPEN
JAN DE VREE
FROM THE COLLECTION OF M HKA, ANTWERPEN – JAN DE VREE
did a private collection become public property, but that now definitively belong to the past. However, the
a fanciful, idiosyncratic amalgam of cinematographic museum prefers to regard the collection not simply
equipment now entered the realm of contempo- as something to be stored but as a reserve, an area of
rary art. According to Carels, “The camera, which study for both researchers and artists. Indeed, elic-
freed painting from its obligatory realism and at the iting new interpretations is precisely the underlying
same time immensely increased the impact of the strategy that regularly recurs in M HKA programmes:
artistic image because it enabled such rapid repro- artists are invited to use the collection to produce an
duction, now has become a museum object itself— ‘intervention’. Consequently, and in association with
or at least it shares the same waiting room, the the curator Edwin Carels, the museum set up a series
museum reserves”. of three exhibitions in which contemporary artists
It would be an admission of weakness to treat were invited to shed their own light on the Vrielynck
the media-archaeological objects in the Vrielynck Collection.
Collection as a separate category, as an outsider
within the whole discourse of the museum. The rela- VRIELYNCK COLLECTION #1
tionship between art and visual culture is as obvi- Julien Maire, Mixed Memory
ous as it is problematic, particularly now that not only 09.02-05.06.2011
filmmakers and video artists make prominent use
of the camera as a medium, but all manner of other The first in the series was an exhibition by Julien
artists too. In 1935, in his classic essay “The Work of Maire, Mixed Memory, in which Maire incorporated
Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction”, Walter elements of the Vrielynck Collection into three of his
Benjamin published a critical ode to both the pho- installations. Maire works at the crossroads between
tographic and film cameras—and especially their installation art, performance and media art. For many
impact on our perception on historical, social and years he has focused on reviving early projection
sensory levels. techniques with the aid of modern technology. The
The antique equipment and artefacts deserve extinction of analogue images—in favour of digital
better than to simply be put into storage as examples images—endows the cinema apparatus such as it
of instruments from various episodes in visual culture has found in the Vrielynck Collection a new status:
David Blair was the third artist that M HKA invited to A Million Pictures:
interact with the Vrielynck Collection. The basis was Magic Lantern Slide Heritage and the Common
provided by The Telepathic Motion Picture of The Lost European History of Learning
Tribes, an expansive research project that is like in
a flashback to the reconstruction of a lost film pro- Currently M HKA is participating as “associated part-
duction in Manchuria, the doomed epic entitled The ner” in the project A Million Pictures: Magic Lantern
Lost Tribes. The media artist David Blair juggled with Slide Heritage and the Common European History of
archive images, animation and live action to create Learning. This project brings together researchers,
a pseudo-scientific film in which he explored the curators, archivists and artists to develop new ways
boundaries between fact and fiction, truth and inven-
tion. His intention was to show that history is always
a construction that is never definite but always
changing and which requires new interpretations. In
addition, the project was an allusion to the effect of
nostalgia on our consumption of information.
For this exhibition Blair incorporated a large
number of objects from the Vrielynck Collection dis-
played in five rooms and combined this with a series
of paintings, assemblages and short video anima-
tions from his own archives; they all add to the evo-
cation of the history of The Lost Tribes. A hypnotic David Blair, Manchurian Camera, viewed September 24, 2015.
soundtrack transported the viewer into the delirious https://youtu.be/Qb3SUivhRNE
1. Two good documents economy), the more evident it Back To The Future
on the Portuguese revo-
becomes that the roots of this
lutionary process are
the films Scenes From
process go back to the 1980s, at
the Class Struggle in least, and to the backlash of the In Back to the Future I, after Marty McFly finishes a
Portugal by Robert Kramer
revolutionary process 1. wild guitar performance, at the party where his par-
and Que Farei Eu Com Esta
Espada? by João César
From today’s point of view, ents dance for the first time, he notices everyone
Monteiro, both available the ‘OPENING’ moment identi- staring blankly at him and says: “I guess you guys
on youtube. For a cri-
fied in all three works could be aren’t ready for that yet… But your kids are gonna love
tique of Robert Kramer’s
film, see “Never Has a
seen to correspond with the ‘Long it.” He had just prefigured rock ‘n’ roll music 2.
Winter Been so Long” by 1960s’, its emancipatory impulse In Robert Zemeckis plot, McFly, the hero, travels
Ricardo Noronha, written
and set of practices, and the back and forth in the chronology, going back to the
for a projection of the
film at The Brecht Forum
‘REMOVAL’ moment could be read past, so that the future can be unwrapped. In a less
in New York in 2011. For as a result of the decline of pos- epic tone and with a dispersed multiplicity of agents
a critique of the ways
sibilities usually related to neolib- rather than one single hero, such was (if you can
the revolutionary process
has (not) been discussed,
eral politicies of the 1980s. But in allow me to be a little daring) one of our desires when
see also “Os excessos de all three works, the periodization opening up this reflection. What if we were to think
Abril”, by Luís Trindade.
seems to exceed linear chronol- back to thirty years ago?
2. The Back To The
ogy. It is therefore our intention But the plot thickened rather quickly.
Future I rock’n’roll to bring this very periodization Not only from a chronological perspective, the
scene is available
under scrutiny, in order to disclose 1980s seemed inextricable from the period coming
online. I would like to
acknowledge Rui Lopes,
potentialities for the present, in a immediately before, the 1960s—or the ‘Long 1960s’
who drew my attention critical, non-nostalgic approach. –, but also, from a geographical perspective they
to this scene, and to
would entangle different meanings. And what about
thank Isabel Brison, Luís
Trindade, André Silveira
the specific Portuguese case, where a long-lasting
Miguel Cardoso and Maria dictatorship and more than a decade of colonial wars
João Afonso for their
were overthrown by the coup of 25 April 1974, giv-
careful reading.
ing rise to the eighteen month-long revolutionary
3. “Cavaquismo” refers process in 1974-75, soon inter- well-being, colour television, youth, postmodern-
to the rule of Prime
rupted by the counter-coup of 25 ism, audio-visual, sexual freedom, multicultural-
Minister Cavaco Silva,
who was in power from
November 1975, with European ism, Europe; and at the same time depoliticization,
1985 until 1995 (with two Economic Community and NATO in cavaquismo 3, depression in the rural world, uncon-
absolute parliamentary
the horizon? trolled growth of the outskirts, racism, corruption,
majorities, since 1987),
being the longest in
Unlike Marty McFly for whom social discrimination, pollution, anti-intellectualism,
power since Salazar and the perplexity of the audience consumerism… On the one hand, the logic of abun-
describing himself not as
staring at him could be answered dance that can be found at work in the 1980s (and
a politician, but as an
academic, precisely like
with a simple “I guess you guys in the Portuguese 1980s, in particular) seems like
his predecessor. From aren’t ready for that yet” (that an opening—disclosing potentials for the creation
2006 he became President
being rock music), the challenge of emancipated desiring subjectivities. On the other
of the country, until
today.
was precisely not to tell one single hand, it definitively also appears like a closure—sub-
story through a narrative of back- suming the possibilities of reality to a neoliberal
wardness and behind-ness—a story with central order; an order interested as much in the atomisation
points emanating from unwavering developed cen- of collective desire for consumption purposes, as in
tres—but to try, instead, to understand the past as a the removal of the traces of the recent revolutionary
territory built from a multiplicity of negotiations and years marked by collective agency.
struggles, a time span traversed by tensions. OPENING and REMOVAL can be considered
But let’s go back to Back the Future. as central operations to think about the time span
The second part of Marty McFly’s injunction— addressed here. But again, which time span are we
“I guess you guys aren’t ready for that yet… But your talking about? When were the 1980s?
kids are gonna love it”—alludes to rock ‘n’ roll and I would like to illustrate this question by focus-
suggests, by contagion, the rhythmic resonance ing on three works where an effort to deal with these
between de-ordered people dancing, paving the way two operations is at stake, in order to end up with a
for a place where the collective desiring body plays a brief description of the reasons that lead us to pro-
central role: TO LOVE. pose this cycle—a public collective reflection on the
Rock and pop, advertising, fashion, market, 1980s understood as an interrogation.
6. Festa do Avante! is she found a reproduction of the of playgrounds for children and street furniture, all
a cultural and politi-
Águas Livres Square Monument on made in metal, as the recently born neighbourhood
cal festival organised by
the Portuguese Communist
the Damaia Roundabout in a book. lacked urban planning.
Party. It started in The monument, dating from 1985,
1976 and it was one of
was acknowledged as “unknown
the biggest festivals
in Portugal, until the
collective authorship”.
mid.1990s. A highly industrial metallur-
gical area in the 1970s and 1980s,
Amadora is one of the biggest cities on the outskirts
of Lisbon, and one of the most densely populated
municipalities in the country, with 175,136 people in
an area of 23.78 km2. Damaia is a suburb of the city
of Amadora, which at the time had only been a city
for six years. In 1985, Amadora had been, for almost
a decade by then, a communist municipality with
a solid trade-unionist tradition in metallurgy, due,
among others factories, to SOREFAME, a now extinct
company specialised in building train carriages
Isabel Brison and Nuno Rodrigues de Sousa O Monumento da Rotunda
and heavy machinery. SOREFAME workers made das Águas Livres. Image found online by the artists
the Águas Livres Square Monument in their spare
time, for the communist party’s annual festival in Alongside the constructivist aesthetic of the mon-
September, Festa do Avante! 6, and they then brought uments themselves, uncannily peculiar in the
it to Damaia’s Águas Livres roundabout in December Portuguese statuary landscape, it is worth highlight-
of the same year. ing that these artworks were made collectively by
In the same period, as she also came to know, the absolutely unknown artists animated by ‘revolution-
same group of unknown workers also built another ary spirit’, with the will to improve the newly born city
monument, an Homage to the Fireman, and a series of Amadora.
‘Curadoria da Falta’:
The Gulbenkian Foundation’s
ACARTE Department Calouste Gulbenkian CAM, courtesy: Calouste Gulbenkian
Foundation archive.
bol of democracy and freedom of speech, Salazar’s 1984 and 1989. Courtesy:
Calouste Gulbenkian
rule and Portugal’s economic conditions (drained Foundation archive
by thirteen years of colonial wars on several fronts),
meant that the construction of a modern art museum
was only possible in the 1980s, due to the private ini-
tiative of the Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation, shortly
before the country joined EEC. The Gulbenkian’s
Centro de Arte Moderna [CAM], opened in 1983,
was the first modern art museum in Portugal, with a
ments in pedagogy.
But not exclusively. ACARTE’s activities can also be This has led me to describe 11. Ana Bigotte Vieira,
interview with João
looked at from the point of view of curatorial prac- ACARTE as an Aleph, a compari- Pinharanda, Lisbon,
tices, or, more accurately, as being at the crossroads son that came up in an interview September 2011.
between emergent curatorial and programming with art critic João Pinharanda 11.
practices, conjoining both. Perdigão proposed what An Aleph, according to Jorge Luís Borges, is “the only
I would call ‘Curadoria da Falta’, for ACARTE’s often place on earth where all places are—seen from every
based its activity on the need to attend to what is angle, each standing clear, without any confusion
missing (faz falta)—thus developing a particu- or blending” (Borges 1945). There is both a hetero-
larly attentive way of moving through aesthetic and topic sense of the museum space (Foucault 1967),
political-philosophical proposals usually attrib- and an acute perception of ACARTE as belonging to
uted to different time spans. ‘Curadoria da Falta’ the exhibitionary complex (Bennett 1995), a set of
means something like ‘curating what is lacking’. institutions where a particular kind of subjectivity
Literally, falta stands for ‘lack’, but it can be under- would take shape through repeated practices and
stood as ‘missing’—as in my interpretation of the widespread discourses. In fact, in the Portuguese
‘School of Missing Studies’ project, by the collec- 1980s narrative, ACARTE could be placed alongside
tive BikVanderPol and friends, concerning inter- emergent phenomena such as the Lisbon nightclub
disciplinary studies that still have to be located and scene at Bairro Alto (with places like the cosmo-
undertaken. In fact, ‘Curadoria da falta’ takes lack as politan disco Frágil), or urban consumption materi-
something constituent for the community, as open- alised, for instance, in the Amoreiras Shopping Mall,
ness to the other, in the sense Roberto Esposito which opened one year after CAM. Contradictorily
describes it, and not as something derogatory, proof enough, ACARTE’s activity could also be understood
of scarcity and backwardness. By ‘Curadoria da Falta’, in direct relation to the Carnation Revolution of April
this Department’s activity opens up to the different 1974—as a modern art museum was one of the late
perceptions its contemporaries had of their own time. fulfilled ‘April promises’. Thus, if on the one hand the
As such, ACARTE is a superb case study with regards ACARTE Department proposed a series of dispa-
what concerns chronological folding, eccentric chro- rate events such as Contemporary European Dance,
nologies and decentred modernities. Spoken Newspaper of Literary Actuality or Quinzena
This series of collages, made in Lisbon one can find fragments of words, 12. In CASTELO BRANCO,
throughout the year of 1977, was made out of images and pieces of a certain Edwar de Alencar. PO-EX:
a poética como acontec-
authentic posters, arranged so as to repro- kind of aesthetics we would imento sob a noite que
duce the way they looked when they were immediately relate to the 1974 rev- o fascismo salazarista
wrenched from the city walls with this pur- olutionary period. But at stake it is impôs a Portugal. Rev.
Bras. Hist. [online].
pose. If the political poster, typical of the not so much the 1975 period itself, 2014, vol.34, n.67
time, seems to be dominant, one can also as its abrupt ending—and what is [viewed 5 September
find, at times, either overlapping, or sepa- left for us to sense. 2015], pp. 131-155 (my
italics). It is curi-
rately, the circus poster, one of the most This kind of analysis can be ous to notice that
frequent in the country. This assemblage extended to a series of other art- this series of paint-
kind of work, other than its aesthetic objec- works from this period, which, typ- ings in 1978 were titled
Descolagens da cidade.
tive, takes over and aims at assuming a facet ically understood as synthesising Escrita mural de Ana
which differentiates it from other collages an utopian impulse, are actually Hatherly. Exposição
and décollages that were made all around commenting on its abrupt ending. Portuguese Art Since
1910. Londres, Royal
the world, for here we have an authentic What lead us to think of a series Academy of Arts, 1978.
historical recollection: it is a matter of fixat- of misunderstandings and para- When and why has the
ing, through a certain form of mural writing, doxes of the Long 1960s and the series changed name still
needs to be studied.
an entire period of the life of the city and the ways in which the memory of this
life of the country that is already beginning to period has been transmitted.
look remote: the 25th of April.
To Extinguish
ACARTE 1985 Jazz em Agosto 1985, Sun Ra Arkestra. Foto: © ACARTE, Jazz em Agosto 1985, Sun Ra Arkestra. Foto: © Eduardo
Eduardo Gageiro. Courtesy: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation Gageiro. Courtesy: Calouste Gulbenkian Foundation archive.
archive.
The Department had not only hosted foundational particular) as something that is practiced… to see in
artists from all over the world (with a focus on Europe, them emancipatory potentials that often go beyond
since the country was joining the EEC), but it had pro- their institutional discursive frame, allowing us to
duced and presented hundreds of events in fields think of its common uses and how they (in)form the
as different as dance, performance art, theatre, car- construction of subjectivities.
toon, literature, jazz, experimental and world music. It Though extinct, ACARTE was an absent presence.
was one of the first institutions in the country to deal Soon this also happened to the Ballet Gulbenkian
with multicultural issues. All this was occuring in the after forty years of existence, as it was extinct in 2005.
1980s, at a time when Portuguese society faced major And who knows, it might even end up happening to
changes—such as the gradual ‘inclusion’ of half a state funding for the culture as the Ministry of Culture
million people coming from Angola, Mozambique, was also extinguished in 2011, now replaced by a
Cape Verde and Guinea-Bissau (after 1975); or the Secretary of State, directly dependent on the Prime
European Community membership (in 1986). A close Minister’s office.
look at the almost untouched archives disclosed a As what it is aims at standing for what it was and
scenario in which the ACARTE Department, espe- for what could therefore be—archival and repertoire
cially in the first years when brand new and working work seem the all more urgent.
through ‘curadoria da falta’, was the place for activi-
ties that could not be hosted anywhere else, among
them a series of radical experiments in performance
and performing arts, but also a series of initiatives
concerning African countries for which a new kind of
approach was needed. If often the discursive terms
in which this approach was set were anything but
radical, the ways in which the audience enthusiasti-
cally and polemically reacted to the Sun Ra Arkestra
(USA), Sossabe and Os Tubarões (Cape Verde) points
to the need to look at institutions (and to ACARTE in
Animation series. Isabel Brison and Nuno Rodrigues de Sousa O Monumento da Rotunda
das Águas Livres. Animation studies (work in progress). Isabel Brison and Nuno
Rodrigues de Sousa. Courtesy the artist. L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – ANA BIGOTTE VIEIRA – 88
“I GUESS YOU GUYS AREN’T READY FOR THAT YET…” – ANA BIGOTTE VIEIRA
an approach involves both the opening of cultural Right before the film ends, Doc states: “ROADS?
phenomena to its relations with politics, society and Where we’re going we don’t need ROADS”, opening
economy, and the inclusion of historical phenomena the plot to the next episode, where McFly travels to
transcending the 1980s, either with their origins in 2015.
the post-revolutionary period, or beyond into the Well, here we are, in 2015.
1990s. With the backdrop of a non-linear chronology,
When Were the 1980s? proposed, thus, a meeting
structured in open call, along with a set of activities
where a critical and sensory revisiting of a series of
spaces, practices, images and products ‘of the time’
took place: music sessions with live comment, TV
marathon, walks around pivotal 80s places, cinema
and debate. In the ways this cycle went about there POST SCRIPTUM
was an effort to both map out critical non-nostalgic
researches being currently done, and to collectively I am editing this essay at the beginning of September
investigate the foundations of our current moment. 2015, five months after I first wrote it. Europe is said to
By watching 1980s TV together or listening to 1980s be currently facing the biggest refugee crisis since
music collectively there was an the Second World War. In the media, images of people
14. In this sense, a
urge to enact the powerful social escaping from their home countries devastated by
proposal such at the TV
Marathon organized dur-
experience these kinds of media war and misery and arriving to Europe are recurrent.
ing the cycle When Were endorse and to collaboratively As these pictures spread and instigate different reac-
the 1980s? has a paral-
investigate their sound, images, tions—some of them highly racist and xenophobic—
lel in events such as
Collective Listening,
historical context and emotional another picture came to my mind: a picture of Lisbon
Collective Liberation at resonance, while at the same in 1975 by Alfredo Cunha, shortly after the arrival of
Interference Archive in
time having fun 14. 6000 people from the Portuguese ex-colonies of
NYC, even though there
is no direct relation
But to conclude, let us return Angola, Mozambique, Guinea-Bissau, São Tomé and
between the two events. to Back to the Future I. Príncipe and Cape Verde.
in 1986, or the Expo 98, in 1998, there was never a crucial to deal with the centuries of violence implied
moment to address the massive arrival of these peo- by colonialism.
ple, nor to discuss the traumatic experience of the Kia Henda invites a group of young black men
wars, all barely visible for my generation. from the Lisbon outskirts to the monument, affec-
tively bringing into presence the very effects of the
‘Discoveries’ and humorously compelling people
to address them, rather than commemorating vio-
lent colonial pasts. Isabel Brison attempts to remove
this statue, which remains until now a symbol of the
country, regardless of its correspondence with the
imperial colonial image forged by the dictatorship. In
a succession of Photoshop coups, Brison enacts an
operation that is said to have been part of the revo-
lutionary process agenda in 1975. There is an urge to
deal with the perception of the colonial legacy, start-
ing by the removal of its ‘imperial’ presence by con-
cretely thinking what to do with its symbols.
In the first work, she removes the statue from its posi-
tion by the water, transferring it to a hill where these
figures, looking anything but glamorous, get literally
stuck; in the second one, Brison goes further and dis-
mantles the heroic composition depositing them in a
storage.
With no pedestal and taken individually as pure
materiality—stuff to store—these figures look semi-
lost. All crowded and cluttered, lacking decent con-
ditions, their image made me think of them not as
heroes but as ordinary people (migrants who went
overseas? refugees? prisoners?)—or better, as stat-
ues of people, representation.
Thinking about what is going on now and the
images that have been circulating in the media, I long
for actions similar to Brison’s and Henda’s: some-
thing powerful enough to dismantle the hydraulic
rhetoric of ‘flux’ and ‘floods’, allowing us to address
people arriving as people, whether they are refugees
or migrants.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
—
Bennett, T. 1995. The Birth of the Museum, London,
Routledge, London.
—
Bennett, T. 1996. “The Exhibitionary Complex” in R.
Greenberg, B.W. Ferguson, S. Nairne (eds.), Thinking about
Exhibitions, Routledge, London, pp. 81-112.
—
Benjamin, W. 1940, On The Concept of History, Translated
into English by Dennis Redmond, viewed 17 September 2015,
https://www.marxists.org/reference/archive/benjamin/1940/
history.htm.
—
Borges, J. 1945, The Aleph. Translation by Norman Thomas
Di Giovanni in collaboration with the author, viewed 17
September 2015, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/borgesa-
leph.pdf.
—
Foucault, M. 1967, “Of Other Spaces: Utopias and
Heterotopias” in Architecture/ Mouvement/ Continuité,
October, 1984. Translated from the French by Jay Miskowiec,
viewed 17 September 2015, http://web.mit.edu/allanmc/www/
foucault1.pdf.
—
Jameson, F. 1984, “Periodizing the Sixties”, Social Text,
No. 9/10, Spring-Summer.
THE CULTURE
OF COLONIALITY
DANIELA ORTIZ
THE CULTURE OF COLONIALITY – DANIELA ORTIZ
On Saturday 13 October 2012, the day after the cel- financial and labour issues, which applicants must
ebration of the National Day of Spain and its insult- accomplish in order to obtain a residence permit or
ing commemoration of the start of the colonial family reunification. In addition, the law states that
process, the Department of State Records pub- they are required to prove their integration by partici-
lished a document stating the conditions that the pating in courses, an interview, and above all show-
migrant populations would be required to meet if they ing a basic knowledge of both Spanish and Catalan.
wished to obtain equal rights as citizens through Imposing integration on the migrant populations
the only possible channel available: by obtaining is actually just a tool to strengthen the process of col-
Spanish nationality. onisation of individuals, like myself, who come from
The first page of the document decrees that “the subjugated countries. Several politicians in Catalonia
appropriate level of integration into Spanish society defended the prerequisite knowledge of Catalan—a
is not limited to an acceptable knowledge of the lan- condition that only applies to the migrant popula-
guage, but also requires knowledge of the institu- tions—based on the argument of maintaining social
tions and traditions, and the adoption of the Spanish cohesion through the use of a common language,
way of life”. The document encourages the author- even though this common language is obviously not
ity in charge of this process of bureaucratic abuse to a prerequisite for people from Germany or Madrid.
specify whether or not migrant applicants are suffi- As I mentioned in another article on this mat-
ciently integrated. ter, if the Spanish state demands that people from
Similarly, in Catalonia a new law—ironically countries like Peru, Bolivia, and Ecuador become
known as the ‘welcome law’—was introduced as integrated into a society that celebrates its National
part of the process of construction of sovereignty. Day on 12 October each year, and where there are
This law basically consists of a series of requests on fourteen monuments commemorating Christopher
Columbus, many of us end up believing that we are In 2015, the Spanish government granted the
actually being asked to take the same position in Instituto Cervantes, which describes itself as “an
regard to Spanish society as the indigenous person institution for the promotion, teaching, and dissemi-
kneeling before the priest Bernardo Boyl represented nation of Spanish and Hispanic culture”, the author-
on the pedestal of the monument to Columbus in ity to draft the questions for the citizenship tests.
Barcelona. The requirement to integrate begins with The perspective on national identity, and the knowl-
an aggressive questioning, in the negative sense, edge that a Spanish citizen would be expected to
of the knowledge, traditions and cultures of the know do not differ much from the parameters used
ones that come from the former colonies, and ends by the authorities in previous years. Questions such
by determining, through the bureaucratic system, as “what is celebrated on 12 October?”, “what are
whether or not you are granted the right to not be Spain’s borders?” and “what were the Spanish
deported and to remain in this territory. viceroyalties in colonised territories?” show how
the coloniality of knowledge is established in all its
strength, given that the correct answers required to
pass the test are those that defend the colonial and
imperial nature of Spanish identity. This means that a
person from a context in which the Day of Indigenous
Resistance is celebrated on 12 October, for example,
has to answer that the significance of this date is the
fact that it is Spain’s National Day. Similarly, a person
from Morocco has to state that the colonial territo-
ries of Ceuta and Melilla are Spanish, and so on. The
migrant subject who attempts to obtain citizenship
rights must accept and repeat as legitimate the nar-
ratives that place him or her in an inferior position.
Daniela Ortiz, Réplica, 12 October 2014, action carried out
during the Spanish National Day celebrations.
You may be wondering what all of this abusive
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9bQz4pPGg9k bureaucratic red tape established by the migratory
control system has to do with decolonising a museum. migrant person is expelled or permitted to stay.
Apart from the fact that coloniality is precisely one of The fact that cultural institutions do not express
the main elements that the museum—as one of the any resistance to culture being used to reinforce
key spaces for the construction of Eurocentrism— xenophobic and racial segregation practices by
shares with the migratory control system as the back- means of the discourse of integration makes it impos-
bone of coloniality in Europe, there is also the issue sible to imagine how a process of decolonisation
that what migrants are asked to learn and accept is could take place simply through exhibitions, debates
culture, and at the same time museums supposedly and talks that regularly appear in their programmes of
establish the legitimation frameworks that define activities. Unless there is a connection with the ter-
what culture is or is not, and how that culture is ritories in which coloniality currently operates in all
understood and disseminated. its violence in the European context, migrants may
When I was asked to participate in the semi- end up having to learn the name of the Spanish art-
nar “Decolonising the Museum” organised by the ists who exhibit in these museums in order to answer
Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA), questions in the citizenship test.
and again now that I have been invited to write about I realise that the silence of cultural institutions
the subject, I do so based on the conviction that it is may stem from their supposed political neutrality, that
essential to note that in all the bureaucratic red tape complex neutrality that leads, for example, to pro-
described above, there is a striking absence of any gramme an exhibition financed by the embassy of the
responsibility given or taken by spaces and agents colonial state of Israel, publish an exhibition informa-
that are supposedly specialised in cultural construc- tion sheet where the word Palestine, following Golda
tion and dissemination. While the Instituto Cervantes Meir’s style, is not mentioned but 1. Firas Shehadeh,
has already stepped into its role as inquisitor, insti- the words Jordan and Israel are, Palestinian sand dance,
2014, single channel
tutions such as the Museo Reina Sofía, MACBA, and throw out a Palestinian refu- video/sound installa-
MUSAC, and particularly an institution such as La gee artist who was carrying out an tion and digital print.
Virreina, have been deafeningly silent in regard to artistic action 1 at the opening in Courtesy the artist
http://firassheha-
how representatives of the migratory control system protest against the direct involve- deh.com/project/
use notions such as culture to determine whether a ment of the Israeli Embassy in palestinian-sand-dance/
THE BORDER OF
THE ‘FOURTH WORLD’
FRANCISCO GODOY VEGA
OPINIONS – FRANCISCO GODOY VEGA
The year 1848 can be seen as the time of a paradigm proposed a ‘South’ within the North: a ‘fourth world’
shift brought about by the revolutionary and labour founded on ‘pigmentocracy’. After the abolition of
movements in Europe. Along with 1989, it is one of explicit slavery, blacks and native Americans were
the two time markers that the L’Internationale proj- presented to nineteenth century European civil soci-
ect The Uses of Art reframes as moments of dense ety in the guise of exotic entertainment. This was the
connections between art and politics. In the mid- case in Madrid and Barcelona, for example, with the
nineteenth century, the idea of socialism was emerg- exhibition of Ashanti, Inuit and Filipino people, never
ing, Marx published The Communist Manifesto, and included in the key European readings of the issue 1.
the concept of ‘Latin America’ was taking shape as The human zoos displayed the racialised subjects as
an impulse for a second independence of the conti- intellectually inferior and sexually animal, in line with
nent. Meanwhile, on both sides of the Atlantic, New Gobineau’s ideas but also with those of Hegel in The
Imperialism was developing a scientific image of the Philosophy of History.
inferiority of the otherness that lay outside of white The postcolonial differentiation of the modern/
society. The scientific positivism and biological rac- colonial system set up a geographical divide between
ism promoted by intellectuals such as the Comte de the metropolitan territories that sustained power/
Gobineau in his essay The Inequality of Human Races knowledge, and the colonial territories in which eco-
(1853) had disastrous effects. nomic, environmental and human exploitation took
Universal Exhibitions, the human zoos that put place. Here we suggest that the visibilisation of the
Native Americans, Asians and Africans on display, ‘fourth world’—in a sense similar to 1. Blanchard, Pascal
and the so-called ‘Scramble for Africa’, were the Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s notion et al, Human zoos.
The invention of the
most explicit expressions of this system that did not of internal colonialism—makes it savage, Paris, Musée
just set up a North-South divide, but even back then possible to distort that geopolitical du Quai Branly, 2011.
2. Juan Latino, distinction 2. As the human exhi- correspond to Marc Augé’s ‘non-places’, while the
the first black professor
bitions clearly illustrate, since sea and the boats that tried to cross it were delimited
in XVI century Europe,
was a fissure
at least the nineteenth century by border fences in north Africa. A necropolitical ide-
to this racialised model Europe has been going through a ology is at work in these border zones: a politics of life
through his integration
process in which the colonial has for the European, a politics of death for the foreigner.
to an academic system
that did not allow this
become an internal dimension of The right to the power of life and death over oth-
difference. the metropolitan sphere, affect- ers is conditioned by two interconnected fictions:
ing the management of life and racism and xenophobia. I recently curated the exhibi-
death. By displacing the centre-periphery dividing tion Critique of migrant reason at La Casa Encendida
line in accordance with this point of view, we activate in Madrid with Carolina Bustamante. In it, we showed
a critical awareness of the long historical memory of the persistence of these systems of death embedded
this racial division of the world, which was created and in Spain’s long colonial memory, avoiding locating
concealed by and for Europe, and which continues to the problem in the sphere of abstract reflection, and
operate in the contemporary to varying degrees. focusing instead on the policies, laws and cultural
Through the media, twenty-first century constructions that come into play in a specific cul-
European necrocapitalist society has been founded tural system. Through a range of different strategies,
on the overexposure of this difference between itself the works by the artists Miguel Benlloch, Rogelio
and outside that it attempts to expel. The creation of López Cuenca and Magdalena Correa drew attention
the European Economic Community in the eighties to the deaths that take place on the Andalusian coast
perpetuated the European geopolitical myth based and in the colonies that the Spanish state still has in
on the fence that marks the physical boundaries of Africa: the Canary Islands and the cities of Ceuta and
the European bunker. Using multicultural policies to Melilla. López Cuenca, for example, has been working
tone down the conflict in regard to that ‘fourth world’ on the persistence of these systems since the late
that was already living in Europe, the community pro- seventies through the reappropriation of images and
tected itself from the ‘new’ racialised other who tries texts from the media.
to enter by means of death. The new European border Other artists included in the exhibition also
created prison zones concealed in airports that don’t reveal some of the devices of control and recruitment
that operate within this necropower. Lucía Egaña has termed ‘everyday racism’. The 3. See also the web
uses parody to do so in her social interaction perfor- deaths of Osamuyi Akpitaye from http://carcelesracistas.
org/, a platform created
mance Miss Espanya, in which she physically wears Nigeria, Mohamed Abagui from by some organizations to
the clichés of Spanish culture and confronts the Morocco, Samba Martine from denounce the racist jails
Migrant Detention Centre (CIE) in Barcelona with this Congo and Alik Manukyan from in the Spanish state.
imaginary. Meanwhile, Daniela Ortiz and Xose Quiroga Armenia in the last few years and, 4. De Sousa Santos,
speak out against specific cases of migrant deaths more recently, of Jeaneth Beltrán Boaventura, Para descolo-
during the deportation process, at the CIEs, and in from Nicaragua, are real and unde- nizar Occidente. Más allá
del pensamiento abismal,
racist raids in the streets of major Spanish cities. This niable proof of the existence of Buenos Aires, CLACSO,
pressing issue in a Europeanised Spain that saw its this race-based border that we 2010.
centralist dream emerge and die in a short period of inhabit every day, and of its per-
time has also been broached by civil initiatives such petuation as a way of controlling those who, by blood
as the State campaign to close the CIEs, Asociación right, do not belong on ‘this side’ of the abyssal line 4.
Sin Papeles, Yo Sí. Universal Healthcare, and Territorio As such, there is a pressing need for those who
Doméstico, which have tried to oppose these strate- seek to defend the notion of Europe as a democratic
gies of racialised necropolitical terror 3. We consider and non-pigmentocratic zone to denounce and rein-
this opposition to be a continuation and intensifica- vent this internal border that constitutes the fourth
tion of forms that have historically operated in Europe world. In its brimming over the boundaries of these
based on its invention of itself as a centre that is spaces, artistic and curatorial research practice is
superior to its former colonies. one of the tools that can be used to shift borders as
The racists police raids that take place on the murderous fictions: not just the physical, material
streets are a clear sign that the border does not site of the border, but also its historical dimension,
only operate at the visual level of the fences and the which is what fuels the everyday cultural validation of
coastlines that have been presented as spectacle by the divide that enshrines the right to life for some and
the media. The border also operates in day-to-day life. routinely legally eliminates it for others.
It does so by means of institutional dispositives of
repression, but also through what Philomena Essed Posted on September 17, 2014.
1989—1992:
MYTH AND MAGIC
FRANCISCO GODOY VEGA
OPINIONS – FRANCISCO GODOY VEGA
as ‘internal colonialism’ within the very territory that during the conquest and colony. This became patent
is the object of these projections. Similarly, we would in Magiciens de la terre through the physical pres-
like to testify to the critical capacity that emerged ence of the third world ‘magicians’ who were pre-
from Europe and the United States. Also in 1991, for sented to Parisian society in a gesture reminiscent of
example, a group of New York-based artists, includ- human zoos of the nineteenth century.
ing Caterina Borelli, Ana Busto, Steve Schiff and A biopolitical critique of the apparatus of colonial
Cris Bratton, created a fanzine entitled 1492-1992 domination must necessarily include a critique of the
Re-View, which critically confronted the commemo- patriarchal system. In parallel to the implementation
ration of the event and invited other artists such a of these exhibition projects there was a symptom-
Nicanor Parra, Juan Downey, Rogelio López Cuenca atic rise of early ‘cuir’ (queer) theories and practices,
and Antoni Muntadas to participate. The latter two based on a cross between feminist critique and other
were also included in one of the few critical proj- resistant subjectivities. In the arts, the work of Cecilia
ects that were carried out in relation to 1992 in the Vicuña, Adrian Piper, Carlos Motta, Coco Fusco, Ines
Spanish state, Plus Ultra, curated by Mar Villaespesa Doujak, Daniela Ortiz and Guiseppe Campuzano’s
and organised by BNV as part of the Seville Expo. Museo Travesti del Perú, among others, drew atten-
tion to this inevitable intertwining of sex and race.
And along similar lines, there is also the particularly
noteworthy activist collective Mujeres Creando—
Exoticising through that also but not exclusively worked within the art
the body system–, which sprang up in Bolivia in 1992 and used
direct action and graffiti, among other strategies, to
work on the idea that ‘you can’t decolonise without
The desire to recover and display the ‘marvellous depatriarchalizing’.
possessions’ was also influenced by a conceptual
discourse that developed around the body, which
designated ‘Indians’ and ‘women’ as objects of
possession and desire, as had had been the case
Exoticising through myth this context, as we’ve set out to do for example in
the research by the group Peninsula. Colonial pro-
cesses and art and curatorial practices, presented
The rekindled interest in the abovementioned exhi- in part early this year at Bulego z/b in Bilbao at the
bitions, particularly Magiciens de la terre, reminds us seminar ‘1992. Capital Status, Exhibitions and Critical
of the need to stay alert to the drives of the global art Strategies’.
system. We should obviously avoid reductionism: the It is not sufficient, however, to fight the racist and
analytical exercises on the exhibitions carried out by xenophobic imaginaries projected in some of these
Afterall cannot be equated to the ZKM exhibition The exhibitions, and their recovery, through a critique of
Global Contemporary. Art Worlds After 1989. The open- representation. Rather, the resistance must be based
ing of the interactive museum World of Discoveries on a process of deactivation of the ‘colonial uncon-
in Porto this year is significant in this debate, given scious’ that Suely Rolnik talks about, which sug-
that it reclaims Portugal’s imperial past from a per- gests filtering the experience of colonial processes
spective that doesn’t just aim to recover this reading through bodies and desires in order to activate the
of the past, but encourages the Portuguese people long memory that resides in them. In the current situ-
to relive this past in an experiential, relational way: ation of the financial crisis of capitalism and its poli-
through magic, the imperial myth is repeated. cies of repression of the racialised other, this memory
Given this scenario, all that can be done is reaffirms the need to recognise the structural faults
respond by proposing dislocated ways of recover- of the modern patriarchal colonial system, and, from
ing those ‘marvellous possessions’ and those mythi- there, to imagine productive forms in which Third and
cized colonial pasts. Orthodox colonial history and Fourth world thoughts and practices come to life.
this recent past of events in the 1989-1992 arc of
time require a critical analysis that does not magi- Translated by Nuria Rodríguez.
Posted on October 07, 2014.
cally fetishise their status as a supposed ‘universal’
paradigm change. Rather, it is necessary to identify
their devices of imperialist commemoration, and
the critical cracks that may have been generated in
COLUMBUS,
HOW DO I GET RID
OF MY HANGOVER?
FRANCISCO GODOY VEGA
OPINIONS – FRANCISCO GODOY VEGA
In Spain, Columbus celebration—as an explicit acti- exhibition that formed part of the parade organised
vation of a colonial unconscious–, began to take in conjunction with the shows, in which some actors
public shape in 1888. The first public sculpture of the dressed as Native American Indians gravely thanked
navigator, who according to Jesús Carrillo had been the solemn Catholic Monarchs and Columbus. This
a figure of “structural neglect” 1 in Spain’s past, was episode gave rise to the popular Spanish expression
unveiled as part of the Barcelona Universal Exposition hacer el indio, to ‘play the Indian’, meaning to ‘play the
that year. Columbus was not part of the Spanish colo- fool’. We shouldn’t forget that not far away from this
nial discourse, which saw him as a foreigner and not avenue, live human exhibitions of Filipino, Ashanti
particularly loyal to the Catholic Monarchs. Restoring and Inuit people were being staged at the Parque del
Columbus was an ‘importation’ aimed at integrating Retiro at around the same time.
into the new European and North American hege- The alcohol poisoning of the Spanish colo-
mony. The Columbus statue by Gaietà Buïgas then nial unconscious came with the Ibero-American
literally pointed its finger at the African destination Exposition of 1929 in Seville, younger sister of the
of the Imperial enterprise of the time, showing the International Exposition held in Barcelona’s Montjuïc
consolidation of a system of North-South inequality. that same year. No colony or former colony partici-
The staging of the colonial drunkenness continued pated in this ‘international’ World Fair, even though
in Madrid in 1892, not only with a second sculp- the main thoroughfare that ran through the exhibition
ture in honour of Columbus as well as a Historical- from Plaça d’Espanya was named Avenida de América
European and Historical-American to mark the occasion. The Ibero-American Exposition
1. Jesús Carrillo, “La
Exhibitions, inaugurated by the in Seville, on the other hand, included pavilions
imposibilidad del héroe”,
Revista de Libros,
Monarchs of Spain and Portugal. from Latin American countries, built in syncretic and
no. 131, 2007, p.7. This mainly involved a human indigenous styles that perpetuated the distinction
between them and Iberian visual culture, which was ‘national day’; the Día de la Raza or Day of the Race; on
crowned with the Plaza de los Conquistadores. The October 12. Years later, an institutional system for the
Ibero-American Exhibition also included a Macau promotion of cultural relations with former colonies
Pavilion—a remnant of Portuguese colonialism in was set up during Franco’s dictatorship, with clearly
Asia–, a Morocco Pavilion, a Moorish Quarter, and a political goals, in the form of five government entities:
Colonial Pavilion representing Spain’s possessions the Hispanic Council (1940), the Museum of America
in Equatorial Guinea, this latter one with its own live (1941), the Museum of Africa (1945), and the Institute
human exhibition. of Hispanic Culture (1946), as well as the Hispanic-
All of this was taking place against a political American Biennials (1951-1956).
backdrop led by the dictator Primo de Rivera, who was
promoting a new economic imperialism in the former
colonies backed by a conservative, catholic ideology,
Columbus, how can
which had led him to go as far as creating a Spanish we cut off your heads?
and radical sexualities, to mention just a few. With hangover. In the first sense, the show Painting from
no predefined objectives and no budget of its own, the Viceroyalties. Shared Identities in the Hispanic
Península works on the basis of the drives, affects, World at Museo del Prado and the Royal Palace
and pressing issues that turn the need for reflection/ in Madrid was clearly a colonising liquor. On the
action into an engine for questioning the systems in other hand, in spite of their hits and misses, exhibi-
which agents operate in today, and the history of art tions such as The Potosí Principle at Museo Reina
and culture in the long historical memory of Spanish Sofía, The Baroque D_Effect. Politics of the Hispanic
and Portuguese colonisation, as was clearly shown Image at the CCCB in Barcelona, and Ultrópics at the
at a recent seminar at Museo Reina Sofia entitled Pontevendra Biennial were like a stomach pumping of
Internal Colonialism and Citizenship in the South. Also the colonial alcoholism, organised against the back-
this year, the group Declinación Magnética was born drop of commemorations of the supposed 200 years
out of the project Decolonial Aesthetics, organised of the independence of Latin American countries in
by Matadero Madrid with the theoretical support of 2010. More recently, exhibitions such as Critique of
Goldsmiths University. Other like-minded research- Migrant Reason at La Casa Encendida in Madrid and
action groups have also recently formed in Barcelona, Apocryphal Colony. Images of Coloniality in Spain at
including Diásporas Críticas and Ira Sudaka, joining MUSAC in León used different strategies to act upon
the artistic practices of individual artists who are this pressing need.
dealing with the same issues, as discussed in pre- Meanwhile, people working through activ-
vious posts on this blog. Also in 2012, Maria Iñigo ist practices have also been taking action to
and Yayo Aznar organised the congress History With denounce the violence of contemporary colonial life.
No Past: Counterimages of the Spain/Latin America Organisation-action groups such as CalÁfrica, which
Coloniality at Centro de Arte 2 de Mayo in Móstoles, works with African migrants, and Territorio Doméstico,
Madrid, and Olga Fernández with Clare Carolin organ- which focuses on migrant domestic workers, and
ised Coloniality, Curating and Contemporary Art at La associations such as Espacio del Inmigrante Raval,
Rábida in Huelva. Asociación de Sin Papeles, Ferrocarril Clandestino
In exhibition terms, the effects of all of this and Migrantes Transgresorxs have struggled the
action have been both alcohol poisoning and increasingly acute processes of discrimination and
Museums are institutes of knowledge production, museums placed the non-Western and non-modern
conservation and distribution. Their decolonisation subjects between the natural and the civilised
involves their liberation from principles which are worlds supplanting the Orientalist interpretation of
deeply-rooted in modernity/ coloniality. Perceptive the other with a supposedly more open progressive
and epistemic operations which control the appre- one. Countless contemporary public museums, with
ciation of, and interaction with, artworks and other their heavy load of mythic national ontologies, con-
museum artefacts are problematised. Decolonisation tinue to reproduce the prevailing modern episteme
also questions the museum as such, as embodying which appropriates or annihilates the other.
the “hubris of the zero point” (Castro-Gómez 1995), The first steps in museum decolonisation were
or the sensing and thinking subject, European by made in the context of the emergent non-Western
default, occupying a delocalised and disembodied feminist and queer activism and postcolonial dis-
vantage point which eliminates any other possible courses which were immediately applied in art and
ways to produce, transmit and represent knowledge, curating practices glocally to question the institu-
allowing for a world view to be built on a rigid essen- tional framing of art and the linear historical narra-
tialist progressivist model. tive that museums continued to promote. Among the
Museums in a specific modern/colonial (post- major epistemic and optical shifts that occurred were
Wunderkammer) understanding were roughly a deliberate reversal or blurring of the roles of subject
divided early on into two groups: history of fine arts and object, and the destabilising of the bound and
and natural history museums. In the former, Western coherent, mostly national and often imperial identi-
memory was constructed, preserved and transmitted ties that museums helped to forge 1. Examples include
to future generations. In the latter, the non-European both decolonial indigenous people’s projects such
world was represented at large. Later, ethnographic as the U’Mista Cultural Society in British Columbia
1. For more details (Canada) 2, where “the objects in appropriating other people’s material for their own
see the Periscope
appear to be observing the spec- study and interpretation” (McMaster 2012, p. 377).
“Decolonial AestheSis
Dossier”, Social Text,
tators who become objectified Thus decolonial issues have lately been appropriated
15 July 2013, by the masks whose eyes seem by mainstream art institutions and theories so that
viewed 15 August 2015,
to be following their movements” they have lost an element of contestation and turned
http://socialtextjour-
nal.org/periscope_topic/
(Lionnet 2012, p. 192) and the into a nicely packaged and easily digestible postcolo-
decolonial_aesthesis/. internal Western critique of muse- nial good, treated through familiar Orientalism, exoti-
ums, such as the famous exhi- cisation, demonisation, turning space into time, and
2. U’Mista Cultural
Society was established
bition A Museum Looks at Itself, other Eurocentric knowledge frames (McClintock
in 1974, and the cultural Past Imperfect at the Parrish Art 1992, pp. 84-5). There are numerous examples from
center with the permanent
Museum in Southampton, New the early Magiciens de la terre (Centre Pompidou
collection on display was
opened in 1980.
York (1992). Paris, 1989) to the more recent Altermodern (Tate
This has led to a collapse of Britain, London, 2009).
the previously sanctified belief in a single Truth and The decolonisation of the museum often hap-
the museum’s mission to convey and preach it. In pens through a merging of curatorial and artis-
Neil Curtis’s accurate view, the core of this shift was tic practices when artists-cum-curators critically
questioning the essentialist way of looking at the engage with permanent collections and the spatial
world when “the established beliefs and institutions and temporal structures of existing museums, ques-
of our modern heritage” were regarded “as not only tioning the mechanisms of acquisition, selection,
real but true, and not only true but good” (Curtis 2012, representation, interpretation, and appreciation. The
p. 74). Museum institutional architecture has been most famous instances include Fred Wilson’s Mining
reconstructed to formulate questions rather than the Museum (Maryland Historical Society, Baltimore,
feed the audience with answers, and forget about the 1992) and Pedro Lasch’s Black Mirror / Espejo Negro
excessive spectator disciplining techniques which (Nasher Museum of Art in Durham, North Carolina,
prescribed what to do, where to go, which way to look 2008-10). In exhibition architectonics, this often
and what impression to form. Yet even the most tol- takes the form of semi-hidden interventions,
erant museums remain by their nature “cannibalistic for example when artefacts of a non-modern culture
are presented alongside video art by contempo- the Caucasus as a set of Russian/ Soviet stereotypes.
rary authors connected with this particular culture, The “words” in this dictionary never came from the
or when a whole exhibition becomes an assemblage indigenous Caucasus peoples who remained silent
in which objects from ethnographic collections are objects of her study. The significance of the loca-
mixed with ironic fictitious artistic creations. This tion of this exhibition—Tsaritsyno Palace, where
allows for the infiltration and dismantling of the the future of the Caucasus as a Russian colony
museum system from within, the dialogical educa- and the Circassian genocide were decided—was
tion of a transient decolonial “community of sense”, also downplayed.
to paraphrase Jacques Rancière (2009). However there are sporadic attempts to make
In the post-Soviet space, the decolonisation museums the focus of critical decolonial artistic
of the museum has not yet received all the attention agency and curatorial practices: Dagestani artist
it deserves due to a lack of post- and decolonial dis- Taus Makhacheva problematises the museum as an
courses and for obvious political reasons. Most cura- imperial institution of aesthetic and epistemic con-
tors who accentuate the self-reflexive decentring trol by letting muted objects speak. Her recent work,
museum tactics do so in postmodernist ways, ignor- The Way of an Object (2013), grew out of the collection
ing or distorting the darker colonial side of the mat- of the Dagestan Museum of Fine Arts—an institution
ter. Such borrowed postmodernist gestures often that similarly to other Soviet museums in the national
become delocalised, hand-me-down deconstruc- republics was originally designed as a combination
tions, whereas the actual body- and geopolitics of indigenous ethnographic collections, convention-
of knowledge and perception of the artists, cura- ally-appreciated Russian art sent from Moscow to
tors, and institutions, are ignored or suppressed. For aesthetically “educate” the local people, and a sec-
example the exhibition Dictionary of the Caucasus. tion of home-grown art created as a pale mimicking
The Land and the People, curated by Olga Sosnina of the Russian canon. Makhacheva took her museum
(Tsaritsyno, Moscow, 2012), in spite of its claims to intervention out of the exhibition environment into
adopt conceptualist tools to deal with ethnographic the street. Several delocalised objects were removed
categories in refreshing ways (Sosnina 2013), in the from the museum’s aesthetic hierarchy and linear
end reiterated a colonialist vantage point in viewing chronology. They were thus symbolically equalised
in their value and importance, which allowed them to alien contexts, the possibilities and traps of relational
converse and argue. The artist switched to a mode of aesthetics and interactive historical museum exhibi-
representation blending visual art with theatre. tions, as well as the interaction between entertain-
One of the effective gestures for museum decol- ment and critical learning and thinking in museums
onising is shifting the focus from the material collec- in contemporary society. Both the bracelet and the
tion to a narrative which a curator builds around a set saltbox are artefacts of Dagestani culture taken out
of objects, or in spite of them, or even in the mode of their living contexts and depraved of their socio-
of “object-less storytelling” traditionally including cultural, utilitarian and cosmological functions when
“reconstructed tableaux, models, moving light shows, placed in a museum of fine arts. Vasnetsov’s paint-
life-size replicas, film sequences, audio-booths, ing depicting an ominous bird from Slavic folklore
commissions from artists, even cartoons” (Spalding was also taken out of its original context—a particular
2002, p. 54). In The Way of an Object, Makhacheva stylising of Russian folklore in a pre-Art Nouveau ver-
merges the verbal and the visual in her adaptation of sion of exoticisation of national past—and became a
street marionette theatre. A significant performance dead representation of someone else’s impenetrable
site is linked to a traditional ethnic art form whose canon, brought to Dagestan in the 1920s to “educate”
dramatic medium becomes the site for a conversa- the local people according to Western / Russian aes-
tion between three museum artefacts which have thetic norms and therefore carrying a culturally impe-
been made into marionettes. In her performance, rialist agenda.
an Avarian saltbox, a Kubachi wedding bracelet and The first performance of this work in Dagestan
Victor Vasnetsov’s 1897 painting, The Bird Gamayun, took place on a rainy and windy October day in 2013.
discuss the splendours and miseries of being The drenched audience was trembling in front of
museum objects and dispute the issues of authen- a puppet theatre in the centre of Makhachkala, the
ticity and stylisation, the fragile boundaries between capital of Dagestan, and our physical inconvenience
fine art and decorative and applied crafts, the loot- added to the intended affect. This spontaneous itin-
ing and subsequent mortification of indigenous art in erant impromptu sketch can be set up quickly in any
museums, as well as the impermeability and mean- conditions and at any point. The quarrelling objects
inglessness of artificially-imposed canonical works in seemed particularly miserable and homeless as if
REFERENCE LIST
—
Castro-Gomez, S. 1995, La hybris del punto cero: ciencia, —
McClintock, A. 1992, “The Angel of Progress: Pitfalls
raza e ilustración en la Nueva Granada (1750-1816) of the term ‘post-Colonialism’ ”, Social Text, no. 31 / 32.
(The Hubris of the Zero Point: Science, Race and —
Mignolo W. 1992 / 2011, “Museums in the Colonial Horizon
Illustration in New Granada [1750-1816]), Editorial of Modernity. Fred Wilson’s Mining the Museum”,
Pontificia Universidad Javeriana, Bogotá. in D. Globus (ed.), Fred Wilson: A Critical Reader,
—
Curtis, NGW. 2012, “Universal Museums, Museum Objects Ridinghouse, London, pp. 71-85.
and Repatriation. The tangled stories of things”, —
Rabinow, P. 2012, “A Contemporary Museum”, in Object Atlas.
in BM. Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies. An Anthology Fieldwork in the Museum, Weltkulturen Museum, Kerber,
of Contexts, Wiley-Blackwell, London. Frankfurt am Main.
—
Foucault, M. 1986, “Of other spaces”, Diacritics, —
Rancière, J. 2009, “Contemporary Art and the Politics
16.1 (Spring), pp. 22-77. of Aesthetics”, in B. Hinderliter, W. Kaizen et al. (eds.),
—
Gonzalez, JA. 2008, Subject to Display: Reframing Race Communities of Sense. Rethinking Aesthetics and Politics,
in Contemporary Installation Art, MIT Press, Cambridge. Duke University Press, Durham & London.
—
Lionnet, F. 2012, “The Mirror and the Tomb. Africa, —
Sosnina, O. 2013, “Project Dictionary of the Caucasus:
Museums, and Memory”, in BM. Carbonell (ed.), Museum from ethnography to conceptualist exhibition”,
Studies. An Anthology of Contexts, Wiley-Blackwell, London. Laboratorium. Russian Review of Social Research,
—
McMaster, G. 2012, “The Museums and the Native Voice”, no. 2, pp. 240-3.
in BM. Carbonell (ed.), Museum Studies. An Anthology —
Spalding, J. 2002, The Poetic Museum: Reviewing Historic
of Contexts, Wiley-Blackwell, London. Collections, Prestel, Munich, London, New York.
—
Makhacheva, T. 2013, Story Demands to be Continued,
Peri Foundation, Moscow.
FROM THE
COLLECTION
OF MG+MSUM,
LJUBLJANA
WALTER BENJAMIN
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MG+MSUM, LJUBLJANA – WALTER BENJAMIN
transform into anthropological museums about art. today. First introduced in 1886 in the United States, it
These would represent a new kind of museum that is now sold in more than 200 countries and its white
would enable the de-artisation of existing works of letters on a red background have become a central
art into non-art artefacts, the way the desacralisa- symbol of globalism and consumerism, as one of the
tion of religious paintings and objects changed their ultimate achievements of liberal capitalism.Exhibited
meaning when they were moved from churches into here primarily as an artefact, the painting is displayed
art museums. Until this (de-artisation) happens, it with various randomly selected objects and film foot-
might still be possible to apply this approach to indi- age from mass culture, related either to “Lenin” or to
vidual works of art within art museum exhibitions and “Coca-Cola”, which are also exhibited as artefacts.
displays, as in the case we discuss in this instance. They should provide some information on the broader
Here is a work of art in the form of a painting by political and cultural context necessary for a better
Alexander Kosolapov entitled Lenin—Coca‑Cola, understanding of the iconography behind the paint-
dated 1980, in the collection of the Museum of ing, the respective symbolisms and the contradiction
Contemporary Art Metelkova in Ljubljana. Its ico- and irony of merging them into a single image. There
nography would be recognisable to most of the pub- is no way of predicting how far into the future Lenin
lic since it is a combination of two well-known and and the meanings of his image will be remembered,
contrasting icons of twentieth century mass-culture. nor Coca-Cola as a drink and its logo for that mat-
One is a portrait of Lenin (Vladimir Ilich), leader of the ter; but we could be almost certain that on their slow
first socialist revolution out of which emerged, in 1917, journey into oblivion the meaning of these two sym-
the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), one bols will definitely be transformed in a way we could
of the countries that most shaped the history of the not anticipate today. When that happens, the original
twentieth century until its demise in 1991. In spite of meaning of this painting will disappear, and if it phys-
an early death in 1923, his image, often carried on red ically survives and finds a new purpose, the painting
banners, has become one of the most recognisable will acquire an entirely new interpretation. By exhibit-
symbols of the international communist movement. ing the painting together with other related artefacts,
Another globally recognised symbol is the Coca-Cola we might, up to a point, prolong the preservation of
logo, perhaps the most popular soft drink in the world its original meaning. But in the long run, there is a
AROUND
THE POSTCOLONY
AND THE MUSEUM:
CURATORIAL PRACTICE
AND DECOLONISING
EXHIBITION HISTORIES
RASHA SALTI
AROUND THE POSTCOLONY AND THE MUSEUM – RASHA SALTI
“So it can be said that it [the book, On the Earlier this year, Kristine Khouri and I curated an exhibi-
Postcolony. Studies on the History of Society tion entitled Past Disquiet: Narratives and Ghosts from
and Culture] is concerned with memory The International Art Exhibition for Palestine, 1978 at the
only insofar as the latter is a question, first Museum of Contemporary Art (MACBA) in Barcelona
of all, of responsibility towards oneself and (20 February—1 June 2015). It is a documentary and
towards an inheritance. I’d say that memory archival exhibition centred on and around the history
is, above all else, a question of responsibility of the International Art Exhibition for Palestine that was
with respect to something of which one is inaugurated in the spring of 1978 at the Beirut Arab
often not the author. Moreover I believe that University in Lebanon. Organised by the Palestinian
one only truly becomes a human being to Liberation Organization (PLO), it comprised approxi-
the degree that one is capable of answering mately 200 artworks donated from nearly thirty coun-
to what one is not the direct author of, and tries. It included work by very well-known artists such
to the person with whom one has, seemingly, as: Joan Miró (Spain), Antoni Tàpies (Spain), Joan
nothing in common. There is, truly, no mem- Rabascall (Spain), Julio Le Parc (Argentina), Renato
ory except in the body of commands and Guttuso (Italy), Carlos Cruz-Diez (Venezuela), Roberto
demands that the past not only transmits to Matta (Chile), Aref al-Rayess (Lebanon), Dia al-Azzawi
us but also requires us to contemplate. I sup- (Iraq), George al-Bahgoury (Egypt),
1. “What is Postcolonial
pose the past obliges us to reply in a respon- Ziad Dalloul (Syria), Mohamed Thinking?”, Achille
sible manner. So there is no memory except Melehi (Morocco), Ernest Pignon- Mbembe interviewed by
in the assignment of such a responsibility.” Ernest (France), Gérard Fromanger Olivier Mongin, Nathalie
Lempereur, Jean-Louis
(France), the Collectif Malassis Schlegel, Esprit,
1
Achille Mbembe, 2006 (France). December 2006.
The International Art Exhibition for Palestine was to prevent armed confrontations between the Israeli
intended as the seed collection of a museum in army and Palestinian factions and their Lebanese
exile for Palestine. Until it could be repatriated to a allies. Eventually, the exhibition’s reconstructed his-
free and just Palestine, it would take the form of an tory revealed an unwritten or scarcely documented,
itinerant exhibition touring the world. After Beirut, it shared history of politically-engaged artists and ini-
travelled to Norway, Japan and Iran from 1979 to 1982. tiatives, that links grassroots artist collectives in
The building where the artworks and the exhibi- Paris, Rome and Tokyo, artist unions in Damascus,
tion’s archives and documentation were stored was Baghdad, and Casablanca, seminal biennials in
shelled by the Israeli army during the Israeli siege of Venice, Baghdad and Rabat and museums in Santiago
Beirut in 1982. Everything relating to this exhibition de Chile and Cape Town.
seemed to be lost. But little by little, scattered dupli- We were commissioned by Bartomeu Marí to
cates and copies were found in the personal archives present our research as a documentary and archival
of those who contributed to its realisation. For five exhibition at the MACBA. Indeed, it intersected with
years, Kristine Khouri and I tried to reconstitute the two of the museum’s programmatic leitmotivs under
story of the making of this exhibition. his mandate, namely staging exhibition histories are
It all started by coincidence when we discov- a means to interrogate the historiography of art and
ered a copy of the catalogue in the reference library production of Eurocentric, or Western-centric can-
of an art gallery in Beirut. Needless to say, we were ons and foregrounding ‘decolonising the museum’
highly intrigued. The International Art Exhibition for is an overarching creed that informed the museum’s
Palestine embodies a unique initiative in the Arab various departments.
world, in scale and scope. It surpasses all the exhibi- To revisit the conceits that guided our research
tions that took place in the region during that period and curatorial approach, I will draw on Achille
and even a couple of decades after. Astonishingly, it Mbembe’s notion of ‘postcolony’. He does not pro-
took place amidst Lebanon’s Civil War, and opened pose this term to undermine the interpretive frame-
only a week after a UN-brokered truce was imple- work of postcolonial theory but because it suits his
mented between Israel and Lebanon, and a UN interrogations best:
peace-keeping force was deployed in South Lebanon
Exhibition installation.
Courtesy: Claude Lazar.
Exhibition installation.
Courtesy: Claude Lazar.
L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – RASHA SALTI – 135
AROUND THE POSTCOLONY AND THE MUSEUM – RASHA SALTI
“In many respects my book adopts a differ- collectors (local, regional and international) were not
ent approach from that of most postcolonial only interested in contemporary art, but increasingly
thinking, if only over the privileged posi- in the art of generations that preceded it (vaguely
tion accorded by the latter to questions of referred to as ‘modern’ art). In the production of
identity and difference, and over the central value, the market came before scholarship, or in
role that the theme of resistance plays in it. other words, the market-driven production of value
There is a difference, to my mind, between superseded and outpaced expert or scholarly pro-
thinking about the ‘postcolony’ and ‘post- duction of knowledge. Consequently, the historical
colonial’ thought. The question running narrative that suited consumption, stitched together
through my book is this: ‘What is ‘today’, from the (whimsical) harvests of auction catalogues,
and what are we, today?’ What are the lines art fair sensation and art dealer merchandising con-
of fragility, the lines of precariousness, the tent, came to prevail. Not only is it unimaginable to
fissures in contemporary African life? And, emulate or reproduce the International Art Exhibition
possibly, how could what is, be no more, how for Palestine today with contemporary artists, but it
could it give birth to something else? And so, is also unimaginable that it did actually take place
if you like, it’s a way of reflecting on the frac- some thirty years ago. As our research progressed,
tures, on what remains of the promise of life we came to realise that we were bringing a counter-
when the enemy is no longer the colonist in history to the surface. And that became one of our
a strict sense, but the ‘brother’?” prime motivations, we were impelled to foreground
the questions that challenge wide perceptions of
When we launched our research, we had no inten- modern art in the Arab world.
tion of presenting its variegated findings in the for- We recognised in the story of the International
mat of an exhibition, and certainly not in a museum Art Exhibition for Palestine that ‘fissure’, or ‘line of
of contemporary art. We were acutely aware that precariousness’ described by Mbembe. To echo his
we were conducting this inquiry as the globalised words, it beckoned the question: “how could what
art market reached the Arab world and Arab artists is, be no more, how could it give birth to something
and was prolific. Museums, institutional and private else?” As the research and its transformation into
the Past Disquiet exhibition revisited a chapter in the We struggled to craft the exhibition title because
history of artistic practice entrenched in the politi- we wanted to acknowledge the research process as
cal engagement of the international anti-imperialist much as its outcome. It was minted by Paul Beatriz
solidarity movement of the 1970s, it did not produce Preciado who oversaw our project at the museum
a linear and continuous narrative, but rather show- and was an incredibly generous, sharp and engaged
cased speculative histories of a turbulent recent past, interlocutor. During the intense exchanges between
while overtly engaging with the issues of oral his- us about the wordsmithing of the title, he proposed
tory, the trappings of memory and writing history in Past Disquiet, in Spanish. ‘Disquiet’ (and the Arabic
the absence of cogent archives. Past Disquiet did not qaleq) refers to an unsettled recent past—one that
include a single original artwork or display original lacks closure. In Arabic, instead of the word ‘past’,
archival documents. Instead, it reproduced facsimile we use dhikr, precisely because of its ambiguity that
of yellowed newspaper clippings, magazines and implies both remembering and resurrecting from
publications—most of which are no longer in circula- death, or forgetting.
tion—pamphlets from revolutions that have lost their We translated it liberally rather than literally, and
fervour, and photographs from boxes that had not in retrospect, I find the Arabic title to be the closest
been opened in decades. It exhibited stories culled representation of what the exhibition incarnates,
from memories. The ‘raw material’ we collected was, because dhikr is active in contrast with ‘past’. We
to a large extent, a first-person oral history, replete were very conscious of our responsibility. The intro-
with subjective affect, the trappings of remembering ductory wall text read partly as follows:
and forgetting, recorded by individuals across coun-
tries, cultures and languages (in Egypt, France, Italy, “Research that involves recording personal
Japan, Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, and Palestine…). recollections and using private archives
In the absence of access to an officially-sanctioned implies a high degree of responsibility
narrative and paper-trail, the information sourced because people have entrusted us with
from interviews could not be fact-checked. A num- fragments of their own lives, their subjective
ber of individuals who played a key role in making the account of lived experiences of which they
International Art Exhibition for Palestine are deceased. might not otherwise have produced a public
Poster for the International Art Exhibition for Poster for the International Art Exhibition for
Palestine, Beirut, 1978. Designed by Mohammed Palestine, Beirut, 1978. Designed by Dia al-Azzawi
Melehi (Morocco). Courtesy: Samir Salameh. (Iraq). Courtesy: Samir Salameh.
record. Our research has yielded an eclectic also Paris, Rome, Tokyo and Cape Town. The research
repository of stories and anecdotes, as well surfaced a cartography of artist and exhibition prac-
as digital copies of documents, images and tices across the world, within the realm of the inter-
film footage. Our methodology was closer national, anti-imperialist, radical leftist solidarity,
to detective work, replete with entirely connected through a network of politically-engaged
unexpected fortuitous coincidences, even artists and militants who mobilised their creative
encounters with ghosts, allegorical and oth- energies around the defence of various causes. From
erwise. As we were transforming our find- the outset, our inquiry was closer to detective work
ings into the exhibition, we used our own than to conventional scholarly research, and we trav-
voices to retell some of the anecdotes, and elled to several countries to interview artists and
so underline that we are proposing a sub- other personalities, but even at that scale, the geo-
jective and speculative history, or histories, cultural paradigms that regiment our contemporary
about events that have either not yet been perception of art history were irrelevant. In France,
written into the history of art per se or have we interviewed Brazilian, Argentinian, Palestinian
been forgotten entirely.” and Syrian artists as well as French artists, who were
involved in the museum in exile in solidarity with
This sense of responsibility led us to use our own Salvador Allende, or the Jeune Peinture, or Art Against
voices in order to piece together the many versions Apartheid, as well as in the International Art Exhibition
of intersecting histories, to transgress the binary for Palestine.
of ‘objective’ and ‘subjective’, but also to move The MACBA was the first epistemic space
past the morbid grip of lingering vicissitudes, unre- where Past Disquiet was made manifest, and we are
solved enmities that mire narratives of that period eager to present the exhibition elsewhere around
and undermine the ground of prevailing narratives the world. Some cities, like Paris, Beirut, Tokyo and
today. In other words, we wanted to activate a mem- Ramallah would have a particular resonance because
ory as well as interrogations that might contribute of their place in the ‘original story’. In many ways,
significantly to the discourse and practices of sub- Past Disquiet is a prism from which we can refract, or
version in the present, in Beirut, the Arab world, but foreground, complicated questions about a recent,
yet blotted out and thus complicated, past respon- South? What did these instances of international
sibly. In fact, in our private short-hand, we refer to solidarities translate to for the artists’ subjectivities?
the MACBA exhibition as “version 1.0”. At pres- Certainly the brotherhood between French artists
ent, we are thinking through forthcoming iterations on the left (in its myriad manifestations) and artists
that will address questions that we did not have the seeking political asylum created a solidarity that
space, or resources, to address in the first version. gave ‘refugees’ asylum. Today that is unimaginable in
For instance, the question of the artistic languages the art circles of Paris or Rome.
or genres, schools or styles included in the exhibi- I see the International Art Exhibition for Palestine
tion is an important one. A visitor to the exhibition as an eloquent crystallisation of a postcolonial occur-
staged in Beirut in 1978 saw paintings, lithographs, rence. As Achille Mbembe explains:
etchings, drawings and sculptures in almost all styles,
or genres: primitive or naïve, abstract art, figurative, “In showing how the colonial and imperial
optical art, neo-realism, social realism, critical figura- experience has been codified in represen-
tion… At that time, the radical left in Italy and France tations, divisions between disciplines, their
regarded abstraction as bourgeois art, while the methodologies and their objects, it invites
subversive, counter-cultural vanguard in Morocco us to undertake an alternative reading of
defended abstraction because the post-colonial our common modernity. It calls upon Europe
elite deemed naïve and landscape painting as the to live what it declares to be its origins, its
only ‘authentically’ Moroccan art. None of the artists future and its promise, and to live all that
from the Soviet Union or former East were anti-con- responsibly. If, as Europe has always claimed,
formist, rather, they were for the most part ‘official this promise has truly as its object the future
artists’. In other words, the International Art Exhibition of humanity as whole, then postcolonial
for Palestine is an incarnation of the coexistence of thought calls upon Europe to open and con-
the multiplicity or plurality of modern art in the 1970s. tinually relaunch that future in a singular
What do we make of this ‘Babel’ of art languages and fashion, responsible for itself, for the Other,
styles? What was the marrow welding the solidarity and before the Other.”
networks across the so-called North and so-called
Photographic documentation of the public action that took place in Mestre during
the Venice Biennial in solidarity with Palestinian refugees in Tel al-Zaatar, the
refugee camp under siege in Beirut, 1976. Courtesy: Sergio Traquandi. L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – RASHA SALTI – 143
THE COLLECTIONS AND ARCHIVES OF THE MEMBERS OF L’INTERNATIONALE
FROM
THE COLLECTION
OF MACBA,
BARCELONA
FROM THE COLLECTION OF MACBA, BARCELONA
providing the coordinates for the following point of culture. In this way, the artist liberates the comic from
distribution. The protagonists—Donald Duck, Tintin, its traditional popular context and converts it into a
Samir, and ‘the Crushed Citizen’—explain emblem- critical apparatus. Given its inherent contra-culture
atic moments in Egypt’s cultural history (with ref- nature and capacity for unconventional distribution,
erences to imperialism, orientalism, government the comic becomes a platform for alternative narra-
propaganda, and censorship, respectively). As the tives and generator of new debates and emancipa-
story progresses the characters move through sce- tory practices.
narios with strong political symbolism, question Museums today are no longer temples for relics
their own status as fictional characters, and wonder but are flexible entities in a permanent state of transi-
whether it is possible to break free from their authors tion. The work of Ruiz allows us to explore the inter-
and publishers. This work was produced during a res- sections between diverse disciplines, recuperate a
idency at the Contemporary Image Collective in Cairo, part of oral history, understand the context of the Arab
where it was exhibited a few months before the mass Spring a few months before the uprisings, discover
demonstrations in Tahrir Square. Cairo through the gaze of another, and other readings
Using the genre of the comic, Ruiz elaborates that may be generated with time and the constant
works that can be considered site specific because dialogue with other works in collection. As such, The
they are always related to the historical and cultural Green Detour allows for a break with old hierarchies
contexts in which they are commissioned. Aware that and establishes new ways to define our collections.
popular culture is not found in libraries, his fieldwork Deliss described this as “building additional inter-
takes place outside the conventional academic cir- pretations onto their existing set of references.”
cuits. Contact with informants, visits to flea markets
and specialised bookstores, are a few of the research
methods that the artist used to understand the his- “Who can speak about anything in every moment? I
tory of comics in the Arab world and generate a coun- am interested in the fact that certain events take
ter-narrative that resulted in The Green Detour. place and that whoever speaks about this is not nec-
In this work, Ruiz relates an untold history with essarily the person who should speak about this.”
a critical perspective employing the tools of popular Francesc Ruiz
ONLINE REFERENCES
Work currently on display in the exhibition in Desires and
Necessities. New Incorporations to the MACBA Collection.
INSTITUTIONAL
FEVER
IN CHINA
COLIN SIYUAN CHINNERY
INSTITUTIONAL FEVER IN CHINA – COLIN SIYUAN CHINNERY
The Chinese contemporary art system was non- who in turn invited renowned writer Wang Meng to
existent before 2000; there were only two or three become Minister of Culture. This ushered in the most
commercial art galleries in the whole country and no prolific period of cultural production in China since
institutions dedicated to contemporary art 1. It is dif- the 1930s. Film director Zhang Yimou, musician Tan
ficult to comprehend how China went from practically Dun, literature Nobel laureate Mo Yan, and artist Huang
nothing to being arguably one of the most lively art Yong Ping are just some of the creative minds forged
scenes in the world in just fifteen years. Taiwan and in that era. Moreover, the 85 New Wave art movement
Hong Kong went through transformative colonial his- produced hundreds of impromptu exhibitions all over
tories. Mainland China did not; its recent history had China, culminating in the China/ Avant-Garde show at
other predominant forces that fed into its contempo- the China Art Gallery in Beijing 2 in February 1989 with
rary art institution development. over 300 artists. However, the intensely idealistic mood
After decades of Mao Zedong’s failed and often of those times was part and parcel of idealistic politi-
destructive political movements, Deng Xiaoping initi- cal attitudes that led to the Tiananmen demonstrations,
ated the Open Door Policy in 1978, tentatively allow- resulting in the tragic crackdown on 4 June 1989.
ing foreign business investment in China. This started The government consequently set China on a
a process that exposed the country to outside ideas. very different ideological path into the 1990s, mov-
Decades worth of culture came gushing in all at once, ing policy away from politics and almost exclusively
1. Before 2000, only
bombarding people who had been towards the economy. This was a major watershed
ShanghART in Shanghai, starved of cultural stimulus. At the in recent Chinese history: indeed the fundamental
Courtyard Gallery and Red
same time, Deng promoted Hu paradigm shifted from political to
Gate Gallery in Beijing 2. This museum is now
were dealing in contempo-
Yaobang to the position of General economic reform for the first time called the National Art
rary art. Secretary of the Communist Party, in 100 years. Museum of China
curators, and institutions were the only gatekeepers By the time the Ullens Center for 3. Caffrey, K. 2013,
to exposure or success. However, by the early 2000s, Contemporary Art (UCCA) opened The Beijing Olympics:
Promoting China: Soft
things started to change in China. Encouraged by a in November 2007, the 798 Art and Hard Power in Global
handful of domestic curators and galleries, a genera- District was almost entirely gentri- Politics, Routledge, p.
tion of Chinese collectors began, very gradually, to fied, with dozens of galleries, and 16.
emerge. In 2002, the first galleries opened in a factory a whole range of cafés, restaurants and boutiques,
complex called 798, and by 2005 this had expanded resulting in official government recognition, and even
substantially, starting a gentrification process. its designation as one of the top-ten tourist desti-
nations alongside the Forbidden City and the Great
Wall in 2008 3. When Chinese entrepreneurs realised
that art could be an investment vehicle just like real
estate but with quicker and larger returns, they swiftly
created a market. Chinese artists’ world was trans-
formed by the emergence of this domestic market.
Despite the fact that much of it was an illusion, part of
it was real. Chinese artists got a taste of self-reliance,
and foreign curators were no longer at the top of
the food chain. This bubble popped in sync with the
global financial crisis in autumn 2008. Nevertheless,
something unusual happened. Instead of collectors
abandoning contemporary art, a whole new situ-
ation opened up. As the excessive prices had been
slashed, and the bubble-building investors had been
flushed out, more serious minded collectors became
involved. Corporations were interested in a new
Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA) facade unveiled in
October 2012 as part of the fifth year anniversary celebrations.
form of brand building and sophisticated collectors
Courtesy:Ullens Center for Contemporary Art (UCCA). were moving from more traditional art forms to the
contemporary market. A generation of young people Unlike the state-sponsored 1,000 museum project
known as fuerdai (rich second generation) had also which is likely to result in hundreds of empty archi-
come of age. Some of these who had studied abroad tectural shells 4, most of these institutions seem to be
and developed a passion for contemporary art came genuinely dedicated to building audiences through
back to China armed with knowledge of the gallery mounting quality exhibitions 5.
4. Mei Fong, “Why and museum system. Unlike the What is behind this institution building activ-
China Is Letting A
crass investors who dominated ity? Of all art forms, visual art is the most marketable
Thousand Museums Take
Root and Bloom”, Wall
the pre-financial crisis market, while being censored the least. That means contem-
Street Journal, 24 these new collectors understood porary art enjoys the most creative freedom while
November 2006, viewed 17
the value of building collections providing the biggest financial reward for support-
September 2015, http://
www.wsj.com/articles/
of quality, and the importance of ers. In contrast, cinema is censored heavily by the
SB116433900468931817. institutions in bringing stability to government, music has no copyright protection, and
the value of their collections. It is experimental theatre and dance have no way to pay
5. For example, the
Rockbund is currently
evident that institutional devel- back supporters. It is not a coincidence that visual
showing a Chen Zhen ret- opment started almost immedi- art is the only contemporary art form that is boom-
rospective, Chen Zhen:
ately after the initial shock of the ing. However, if marketing interests and commercial
Without going to New York
and Paris, life could
financial crisis had subsided. In incentives fuel the development of institutions, what
be internationalized; Shanghai alone, the following will this mean for the relationship between the art-
the Power Station of Art
institutions opened since 2010: ist, the institution, and the public? Such questions
has the major exhibi-
tion Ilya and Emilia
Rockbund Art Museum in 2010; can only become clearer once the situation has set-
Kabakov: The Dream City; Power Station of Art, Shanghai tled down and there are no signs of that happening
YUZ Museum just opened
Himalayas Museum, and OCAT in the near future. Although centres such as Beijing
Twin Tracks: Yang Fudong
Solo Exhibition and Rain
Shanghai in 2012; Shanghai 21st and Shanghai may be close to institutional saturation
Room; and the Long Museum Century Minsheng Art Museum, point, development has only just started in second
West Bund started their
Long Museum West Bund, and tier cities such as Xi’An, Nanjing, and Wuhan. The OCT
programme with major
solo shows by Xu Zhen and
YUZ Museum Shanghai in 2014. Contemporary Art Museum Group (OCAT) has opened
Ding Yi. Others are under construction. museum branches in Shenzhen, Shanghai, Beijing,
FRONTIER
IMAGINARIES
VIVIAN ZIHERL
OPINIONS – VIVIAN ZIHERL
The ‘frontier’ as a horizon did not disappear with re-produce the conditions of their own subjugation.
the passing of the cart and wagon. Indeed when lib- Through the 19th and 20th Centuries the impe-
eral ideologues are called upon to defend the ever rial frontier gradually collapsed into global enclo-
greater exceptions needed to enforce an increas- sure, overwritten by data grids as exploratory routes
ingly tenuous ‘rule of law’ at both international and of conquest were exhausted and replaced with the
state levels, the Wild West is often hailed as the ulti- channels of commerce and commutership. How, then,
mate disciplining threat—a fantasized primitive con- may the global frontier be charted as a reterritorial-
dition of so-called ‘natural law’, We must submit, we ising imperative within industrial and post-Ford-
are told, to the excesses of corporate-state monop- ist schema? How may these forces be known, and
olies, or else we’re in cowboy-land. But what in-fact how may resilience be figured, as capital continues
is this illibearl terrain of unrule, and what if it is not with ever more intensity to exile its incomensurabil-
‘natural’ but produced? ites onto outer locations, now marked doubly by the
Frontier Imaginaries seeks modes and protago- extraction of value and by what Paula Chakravartty
nists by which to narrate the frontier as a socio-ter- and Denise Ferreira da Silva call “the dispossession
restrial form through imperial histories and within of the dispossessed”.
the global era. From the 1500s the frontier expanded
across the Mercator projection as a line marking Posted on April 27, 2015.
INTERVIEW:
FORCED CLOSURES
VIVIAN ZIHERL
OPINIONS – VIVIAN ZIHERL
Richard Bell, Larry, 2015, film still. Courtesy Milani Gallery. L’INTERNATIONALE ONLINE – VIVIAN ZIHERL – 159
OPINIONS – VIVIAN ZIHERL
What’s in a closure? seekers has escalated, most recently with the revela-
tion of payments made to people smugglers to “stop
the boats”. Numerous contemporary art institutions
What are the narrative and material forces that main- may also face closure following an unprecedented
tain the opening of certain possibilities and the clo- appropriation of over one third of the budget of the
sure of others? Many of the European institutions of Australia Council for the Arts — redirected towards a
L’Internationale confederation have faced the threat discretionary fund under the oversight of the Attorney
of closures—of exhibitions, research departments, General, Senator George Brandis.
discursive programmes etc. These destablisations Most dramatically, tens of thousands of people
act through the winding back of essential support in have mobilized in the streets of capital cities and
terms of finance, at the level of professional indepen- regional centres opposing the proposed forced clo-
dence and in the disciplining of social narratives. sure of 150 remote aboriginal communities by the
The neoliberal politics of closure echoes the Western Australian government. The neoliberal
modern biopolitical regime of enclosure. Here, for- dramaturgy of closure and opening is underscored
merly productive parts of civil society become by the recently announced plan of a $5billion fund
rezoned as waste to be shed from the social body. towards infrastructure in far northern Australia to, in
Regionally and globally what patterns do the pres- Treasurer Joe Hockey’s words: “open our northern
sure lines of closure form, and what picture do they frontier for business”.
offer of ongoing frontier processes? This entry to L’Internationale Online arrives mark-
Throughout 2015 the motif of closure has been ing the third global call to action against the forced
writ large over the Australian political landscape closures in Western Australia taking place 26-28
in particular. The closure of its borders to asylum June, 2015. The contribution takes the form of a short
questionnaire to an activist, a historian and a critic on Whispering In Our Hearts (2001). Further information
possible readings across these occurrences, as well on the #SOSBlakAustralia campaign is available in
as an artist contribution by Richard Bell from his lat- an interview with Torres by Solidarity Online, 20 June
est film which charts the exploits of a fictional entre- 2016: online here.
preneur gallerist “Larry”.
1—What do the proposed Forced Closures indicate
about Australia’s liberal democratic state and is this
significant at a global level?
culture on them by a foreign occupation. We as indig- having to fit into a paradigm of making safe stories for
enous people have never left our sovereign domiciles visual consumption by the wider community because
but we are being pushed off them by capitalist greed our stories may offend in their truth. So in a sense
for natural resources and total domination. we are being vetoed for wanting to tell stories of our
struggles, history and the solutions to what we see as
2—The proposed Forced Closures are occurring at a concerns.
time when the Australian Government is also expand- Museums have a big role to play in giving back
ing its programme of offshoring asylum seekers our stolen artifacts. This cannot be underestimated
through increasingly controversial measures, to say about the empowerment it can give to our people. To
the least. It happens that this also occurs at the time hold our history in our hands without being told why
of an extraordinary withdrawal of support for inde- we cannot access it must stop now. It is our history
pendent and small practitioners in the arts by the that will empower our people to rebuild our story of
Federal Government. Do you think that there can be our identity, which for the past close-to-227 years
meaningful alliances across these fields, and could or has been systematically dismantled with the intent to
should this be meaningful to museum institutions in destroy.
particular?
3—The title of this blog thread is Decolonising
We have in Australia a heartless Government to put Practices. Is that a term that is significant regard-
it in simple terms. As a ‘white’ culture that has it’s ing the proposed Forced Closures, and what would
roots in being boat people, many of us cannot under- it mean for cultural institutions to undertake decolo-
stand this push not to be open to helping people who nizing practices in particular?
are seeking asylum—many of us are also concerned
about our neighbors in West Papua New Guinea— For decolonising to happen the colonisers must first
and the deafening silence from Australia and indeed decolonise their own processes and ideologies.
the UN. We must also understand that there is no post-
As a practitioner in the arts in film I have certainly colonial period—we are still being colonised right
felt the cuts to our industry and the restructuring of now. The threat of closures to remote communities
is still a part of the colonising process. The Northern apprentice draughtsperson. Since then he has been
Territory is also moving people off country and in forc- at the centre of major political activities including the
ing them to follow what the dominant ideology wants Springbok tour demonstrations (1971), Tent Embassy
them to be is colonising in the now. I see all these in Canberra (1972), Commonwealth Games protest
processes as part of the assimilation process of a for- (1982) and protests during the bicentennial celebra-
eign power on sovereigns, which is resulting in the tions (1988). Between 2001 and April 2005 he was
linguicide, ecocide and genocide of my people. also the Senior Curator for Southeastern Australia at
Museum Victoria. Between 2005 and 2008 he was a
lecturer/tutor in the Education Faculty of University
of Melbourne, and in 2008 took up a position as Senior
Lecturer in History and Politics at Moondani Balluk
centre at Victoria University in western Melbourne.
the least. It happens that this also occurs at the time have and will continue to be developed but with
of an extraordinary withdrawal of support for inde- museums and other cultural institutions being apa-
pendent and small practitioners in the arts by the thetic and disinterested bystanders. It is my opinion
Federal Government. Do you think that there can be that there is little chance that this will change in the
meaningful alliances across these fields, and could or foreseeable future.
should this be meaningful to museum institutions in
particular? 3—The title of this blog thread is Decolonising
Practices. Is that a term that is significant regard-
I personally don’t see the forced closures as being ing the proposed Forced Closures, and what would
one of the major issues in Australia at the moment. To it mean for cultural institutions to undertake decolo-
me it’s a regional thing that will, up to some point, sort nizing practices in particular?
itself out in a relatively short time. Whereas issues
such as the incarceration rate of Aboriginal peoples They only way one can decolonise institutions
and imposed historical poverty and ongoing appall- is not to merely pretend to listen to our voices in a
ing health statistics are more important as major condescending and meaningless way, but rather
national issues. Furthermore, the underlying funda- to empower our voices by enabling us to curate
mental injustice created by theft of Aboriginal lands their own exhibitions. To allow Aboriginal peoples
and wealth and the refusal of all Australian govern- to decide and control the manner and content of
ments since Federation to address these problems Museum representation of ourselves. Simple as that.
are the major issues of today, yesterday and tomorrow. The Melbourne Museum attempted to do some-
And the most significant thing is that all of the thing like that fifteen years ago, and with some suc-
problems come back to an issue that is the subject cess, momentarily. Then when the practices and
of constant denial in Australia, which is the deeply demands of the Aboriginal curators became a threat
embedded white racism that is evident daily in the to the British Museum it came to an end instantly.
farce that passes for political debate in Australia today. I’m not sure that museums as cultural institu-
On the question of whether “there can be mean- tions are genuinely capable of decolonizing. The idea
ingful alliances” develop, I believe such alliances of “decolonizing practices” should be to relinquish
tenets of their faith. Wherever two or more are gath- wind and dryness to defeat those things of water that
ered constantly and regularly, now there is a sacred created it.
site, and thus banished from legislative protection is A few years ago, I thought of writing an essay for
a core Indigenous ontological analytics—that it is the the Australian magazine, The Monthly, titled, “The
place that contains and concentrates the energies of Australian Taliban.” The context would have been
the land and that constitutes the world whether or not the then recent destruction of the Bamayan Buddhas
humans are there one moment to the next. and the international outrage that accompanied their
These changes to sacred site registration and destruction and the lodgement by the Aboriginal
forced closures are occurring at the tail end of the Areas Protection Authority of a desecration law-
mining boom, the moment the intensive labor input suit against OM Manganese Ltd, a subsidiary of OM
necessary for the construction of mining infrastruc- Holding, for deliberately damaging an Indigenous
ture gives way to the increasingly automated nature sacred site, Two Women Sitting Down, at its Bootu
of modern mining. A vast evacuation of Indigenous Creek Manganese mine. The case pivoted on whether
lands is underway that is being made to give way to OM Manganese intentionally wrecked features of the
the machinery of national and multinational mining site when it undermined its foundations. Given that
and the material fuels that drive our immaterial infor- both the anthropological report and the legal judg-
mation economy. A new form of terra nullius is under- ment consider Two Women Sitting Down a geological
way—the forced emptied landscape of power and formation represented by a human narrative, it per-
meaning and people such that the material scars of haps goes without saying that the lawsuit was not
pure profit never appear to be perceived or conceived. prosecuted as manslaughter, attempted murder, or
These are not deserted lands; these are desecrated murder but as a “desecration” under criminal liability
lands being made into deserts. They are expressions law. But Two Women Sitting Down is not inert even if
of geontopower—the management of life and nonlife, it refuses to be alive under the conditions late liber-
what must be made into inert in order to continue to alism demands. It will spread its fractured existence
fuel capital. The deserted terrains of late liberalism’s paying humans back in the form of toxic pollutants.
governance of markets and of difference is eventu- Nor are those men and women and children
ally an actual desert filled with the power of sand and first fenced in these same deserts and now on boats
overcrowded and dangerously teetering at sea inert. to create zones of abandonment where alternative
The federal government can build a saltwater to the social projects must ingest and digest small and
moon but the walls themselves will construct the large scale forms of toxicity to endure, understanding
forms of their own crumbling. that to endure is not remain the same but to remain
This, it seems to me, is the condition not merely with the energy to express an otherwise. Of course,
of Australian late liberalism but late liberalism more the arts would need to undergo the same effort to
generally, namely, the increasingly unavoidable con- create abandonment. Nothing can remain as wit-
ception and subsequent hysteria of the double binds ness or writer of what is going on all around us but
of governing markets and difference. Thus, I don’t sequestered from most of us. Small and independent
think a grand unified and coherent rationality sits are what the government actually fears—not the big
behind these policies. Instead, as my colleague, Tess army, the big terrorist group, but the lone wolf and
Lea put it, these are the wild policy fields that late lib- lone artist critically crying out in the desert that late
eralism sprouts. liberalism has made.
Monday, ABC Radio broadcast a show about
2—The proposed Forced Closures are occurring at a the art alliance between Antony and the Johnsons
time when the Australian Government is also expand- and Martu artist Curtis Taylor to bring attention to
ing its programme of offshoring asylum seekers the plans of Cameco Australia to build the Kintyre
through increasingly controversial measures, to say open-cut uranium mine north-east in the Pilbara.
the least. It happens that this also occurs at the time The program used a fairly simple rhetorical frame-
of an extraordinary withdrawal of support for indepen- work to mobilize and canalize attention — how did
dent and small practitioners in the arts by the Federal a Manhattan based experimental musician such as
Government. Do you think that there can be meaningful Antony and the Johnson wind up in the Pilbara? But
alliances across these fields, and could or should this the trick worked — a radio program was authorized,
be meaningful to museum institutions in particular? produced and broadcast. And at least a bit of critical
thought cut through mainstream media.
In all three instances—forcible closures, deregistra- Of course, the mainstream media is only a part
tion, and off-shore processing—late liberalism needs of the ecosystem system authored. Decades of
analogue and then digital infrastructure allowed should call “x.” We know that these calls are not pri-
small, local and independent critical Indigenous arts, marily intended to create and then chose the best of
film, television and radio a kind of authoritative lever- all possible proper names, but mobilize and channel
age that it didn’t have. We are here. We see what is attention such that a public for the event is in place to
happening. We can image and reimage these hap- consume the event no matter what its name or image
penings and we can circulate them through our com- end up being. Indeed, a widely acknowledged badly
munities and into broader circuits of attention. chosen brand can serve to channel attention just as
Arts defunding, site deregistration, and com- well as a widely acknowledge good brand.
munity closures are overlapping gale winds directed And thus the end of my contests isn’t really con-
at the source of this leverage. Eliminate the mate- cerned with the name per se as much as the prag-
rial condition of the capacitation of other thoughts. matic effect they would produce. My public call
Eliminate the embodied nature of perception, of eyes would be for the best name for what this period of
and ears and noses and skins that can experience liberal governance and the best name for its other-
and thus conceive the gutting of landscapes that wise. I don’t really have to issue such a call. We are
create the factories of overseas capital that hemor- in a swell of conceptual tests—decolonization, set-
rhage refugees. tler colonialism, geontology, biopower, pragmatology,
relational ontologies… I myself would probably not
3—The title of this blog thread is Decolonising use decolonizing practices simply because the “de”
Practices. Is that a term that is significant regard- would likely conjure a return to some state prior to
ing the proposed Forced Closures, and what would colonialism rather than to the radical experiments of
it mean for cultural institutions to undertake decolo- endurance and maneuvering that are the real object
nizing practices in particular? of the conservative government’s concern.
I would love to have a contest, well, perhaps sev- Posted on June 26, 2015.
WHAT DO WE TALK
ABOUT WHEN
WE TALK ABOUT
DECOLONISATION?
VIVIAN ZIHERL
OPINIONS – VIVIAN ZIHERL
9. Miri Davidson, “The VIVIAN ZIHERL—Within my early design proposition follows quite 10. Ibid.
Union Jack and the
drafting of the curatorial prop- directly from Key’s 2008 election
Southern Cross”, in The
New Inquiry, March 25,
osition Frontier Imaginaries, I campaign promise to achieve “full and final” settle-
2015. attempted to align the notion of ments between the Crown and all iwi tribe, on all
‘decolonisation’ with a possible land theft matters that have breached the Treaty
agenda of ‘de-neoliberalisation’- in the effort of fore- of Waitangi 10.
grounding a subjective and domestic register to the So I was again raising questions about the rela-
political, organisational and economic processes tionship of (neoliberal) policy to processes of sub-
you mention. We recently discussed an article by Miri sumption. Changing the flag and ending restitution
Davidson in The New Inquiry 9 that addressed New ‘finally’ legislates white wishfulness for the end
Zealand Prime Minister John Key’s agenda to remove of Bad History, as also a kind of ‘de’. Less extreme
the Union Jack from the national flag. You commented forms of such investments in moral-but-not-material
that for you, this gesture showed up certain limita- ‘clean-up’ tend to (purposefully) confuse difficult,
tions in the proliferation of the term ‘decolonisation’. untended historical work with policy, such that politi-
Could you expand upon that in this connection? cal practices or tactics can be nominalised at the
level of capital’s own modes of production. In Key we
RACHEL O’REILLY—We talked about how different see how a propositional politics of speech inherited
forms of such statements are observable in much from a period of ‘more’ representational democracy
settler colonial state management of the last two but not of it, veers immediately towards subsump-
decades. Davidson’s great article gives a political tion in this sense, showing up also the rearrangement
coherence to the interests of the New Zealand Prime of desire in right populist politics. The individuated
Minister in changing the national flag and remov- desire to formally ‘decolonise’ reveals in (ficto-)
ing the coloniser’s insignia. “It’s my belief,” said Key, liberal citizenship a demolition of the stakes of/
“and I think one increasingly shared by many New for anything resembling the concept. Important to
Zealanders, that the design of the New Zealand flag emphasize, Miri Davidson is articulating a non-indig-
symbolises a colonial and postcolonial era whose enous occupied/occupier reflexivity around this.
time has passed.” As Davidson traces it, the flag
11. See here. More main- neoconservative Australian gov- ‘unconventional extraction’, including in Queensland
stream media coverage
ernment’s Recognise campaign, where the industry is being rolled out upon a mass
here and here.
to write Indigenous peoples into scale. Where does that project, and its unfamiliar or
the Constitution 11.How can a liberal be against this ‘unconventional’ topographies fit into the conversa-
word or ‘recognition’ etcetera, it sounds very basic tion we are having here? It seems that an important
good manners. Apart from pointing out the obvi- question subtending this exchange is how to grasp
ous fact that this kind of neo/liberal ‘emotional’ ‘decolonisation’ as a discourse that can be most
investment in (limits of) indigeneity is possible only meaningfully responsive to particular neo/imperial
because of being built directly on the partial mate- processes that are ongoing over particular territories
rial successes (and non-crediting) of autonomous and bodies. I find this tendency present in your focus
indigenous political work, survivance, thriving, the upon a possible poetics that run counter to the capi-
larger point I was making about the concepting of talist-realist poiesis of contracting, for example. Can
‘only-administrative decolonisation’ (as de-histor- you say something about this?
icisation) here is that discourses are situated and
ever re-authored—also along cognitive capitalist RACHEL O’REILLY—I talk about The Gas Imaginary
lines—and so constantly being transformed by prac- as a research project in poetics, tracking the forms
tices and regimes. Recognise appears in the wake of and norms of ‘unconventional’ extraction, but more
the NT intervention, co-occurs with masses of evic- specifically of fracking, and its continuity with and
tions from traditional lands and private property (into differencing from modernist mining, as it rolls out
jails), and with material derigistrations of sacred sites internally to the indebted settler colonial states of
opening to mining etc, so in a dialectical continuity the West (from its Halliburton centre). The first series
with a history of non-recognition (terra nullius) in of drawings, produced with P.a.L.a.C.e. architects
this sense. Valle Medina and Ben Reynolds, and artist Rodrigo
Hernandez, exhibit Mine and Mine work concepts
VIVIAN ZIHERL—Your own poetry, drawings and between the Modern and Postmodern (fracking).
research within Gas Imaginaries explores the aes- As a narrative series it kind of dramatises the ‘situ-
thetic and political imagination of fracking or ation’ of unconventional gas extraction to be both
13. “Not all people everyday fisherman, religious con- industries, we must understand, because the scale
exist in the same Now.
servatives and liberal environmen- and impact of the new forms are so clearly unprec-
They do so only exter-
nally, by virtue of the
talists understanding—because edented 14, while the level of regulation has become
fact that they may all be being overexposed to—accumula- manifestly pre-modern.
seen today. But that does
tion processes and the injustices In parallel to the semi-autobiographical aspect
not mean that they are
living at the same time
of neocolonial land transfers ‘as if’ of the work, the artistic research of The Gas Imaginary
with others. Rather, they for the first time. Affected groups’ actually came together most clearly for me when I was
carry earlier things with
emergent collective relating to travelling to and from Gladstone, post-Global Financial
them, thinks which are
intricately involved…”
the negatively commoned state of Crisis, at the height of the (unaffected) construc-
See here. things often (though not majori- tion boom for the new gas port, while the harbour was
tively or consistently) moves— being ruinously dredged 15. It was my abreactions to the
14. See here. And for
the global stats here.
when it does—beyond defense extreme ossifications of language and vocabulary at
of the property form in styles of the greenwashed public meetings that I was attend-
15. See here.
speech that are uncannily simi- ing about the harbour’s situation—as we shuffled
16. Here I’m channeling
lar to that of the lyric poet. That’s around variously sacrificable nature-items on maps
Rachel Blau DuPlessis, not my work, but that is the kind within boom and growth norms, in a fascinating anti-
Blue Studios: Poetry
of relationship between language scientific and deeply aesthetic outsourcing of conces-
and Its Cultural Work,
University of Alabama
and installation that I’m talking sions about ‘liveability’ to ‘the people’—which initially
Press, 312 pp. 2006. about. In the settler colony, and (dis)organised my own responsiveness at the level of
also in the Blochian sense 13,we language (I started writing the poems right then). The
17. Particularly suc-
cessful in Australia has
do not (ever) share the same time project since takes up different media formats (poetry,
been the independent Lock on the mine, which is (also) why installation, drawing, also theory) and different analyti-
the Gate movement against
divestment is perceived by some cal distances from the initial site, depending on which
coal seam gas licensing
and installation.
as a floppy ‘one-hit’ liberal cogni- aspect of the research I’m grappling with. Of course,
tion when prioritised on its own; speaking back to engineered expertise and corporate
but people are also being ‘turned’ away from older science inherently manifests as quite dark and impo-
naturalised classed and raced attachments to energy tent, also a coping comedy, for a supposed ‘woman’
BIOGRAPHIES
DECOLONISING MUSEUMS
Nana Adusei-Poku (PhD) is Research Professor in Ana Bigotte Vieira is completing her PhD thesis in
Cultural Diversity at Rotterdam University and Guest Contemporary Culture for which she has received
Lecturer in Media Arts and Master Fine Arts at the a grant from FCT. Her research centers on the 'cul-
University of the Arts, Zürich. She was a scholarship tural transformation' that occurred in Portugal after
doctoral student at Humboldt University, Berlin, work- it joined the European Union in the 1980s, focusing
ing on the curatorial concept post-black in relation on the performative role played by the opening of the
to contemporary Black artists called “Rooted in but Modern Art Museum. Vieira was a Visiting Scholar
not limited by—Re-iterations of Post Black Art”, fol- at Tisch/NYU Performance Studies from 2009 to
lowing degrees in African studies and gender studies 2012. She graduated in Modern and Contemporary
at Humboldt University, and in media and communi- History at ISCTE, and undertook post-graduate stud-
cations at Goldsmiths College, University of London. ies in Contemporary Culture at Universidade NOVA
She has been a visiting scholar at the University of de Lisboa and in Theatre Studies at Universidade de
Ghana, Legon; the London School of Economics; and Lisboa. She works as a theatre and dance dramaturge.
Columbia University, New York. She published “A Time Founding member of baldio—performance stud-
without before and after” in Not now! Now! edited by ies, research collective, and member of Jeux Sans
Renate Lorenz, Sternberg Press, 2014. Frontières platform she has been curating small-
As Witte de With’s Center for Contemporary scale discursive and performative events around
Arts Curatorial Fellow 2015, she has co-curated Arts and Politics together with Sandra Lang. Vieira
next to her Professorship the exhibition No Humans has translated, among others, Agamben, Lazzarato,
Involved by the interdisciplinary artist Collective Pirandello, Ravenhill, Ruccello and Scimone.
HOWDOYOUSAYYAMINAFRICAN? and the symposium
Between Nothingness and Infinity.
Francisco Godoy Vega such as Hassan Khan, Cosima von Bonin, Imogen
Stidworthy, Kerry James Marshall and Shilpa Gupta.
Francisco Godoy Vega is a Chilean researcher, Group exhibitions have included Superpower: Africa
writer and curator based in Madrid. PhD candidate in Science Fiction (2012, here); Museum Show; a
of the Department of Art History and Theory at the major historical survey of (semi-fictional) muse-
Universidad Autónoma de Madrid and research fel- ums created by artists (2011); and Lapdogs of the
low at the Exhibition department of the Museo Bourgeoisie: Class Hegemony in Contemporary Art,
Reina Sofía. He has collaborated in publications as co-curated with Tirdad Zolghadr (2006-09, here). In
Discourses and Practices in the Visual Arts of the ‘70s 2014 he co-curated the group exhibition Don’t You
and ‘80s in Chile II (Santiago: LOM editores, 2012, Know Who I Am? Art After Identity Politics at MuHKA,
here), Making Art Global (Part 2): ‘Magiciens de la and is preparing exhibitions of works by Hüseyin
Terre’ 1989 (London: Afterall, 2013, here) and Paris/ Bahri Alptekin and Otobong Nkanga for autumn 2015.
México. Capitals of Exile (México: Fondo de Cultura In 2012 he was co-recipient of the Independent
Económica, 2014, here). He has also published the Vision Award for Curatorial Achievement, awarded by
poetry book The Revolution of the Rats (Madrid: Esto Independent Curators International, New York. Haq is
No es Berlín, 2013, here). He recently has curated the on the editorial board of L’Internationale Online.
exhibitions Critique of Migrant Reason (Madrid: La
Casa Encendida, 2014, with Carolina Bustamante) Mirjam Kooiman
and Chile Vive. Activated Memory (Santiago: CCE,
2013). He is a founder member of the independent Mirjam Kooiman (Netherlands, 1990) is an art his-
research platform Península. Colonial Processes, Art torian and recently started working as a curator at
and Curatorial Practices. Foam Photography Museum Amsterdam. She holds a
B.A. in Art History from the University of Amsterdam,
Nav Haq with a special interest in postcolonial approaches
in the arts and museum studies. She pursued her
Nav Haq is curator at M HKA, Antwerpen. Haq has interest in photography in Paris during a semes-
organsed numerous solo exhibitions with artists ter at the Université Paris VIII. Before that, she
recreating the history of Beijing from the Republican contemporary art. She was a DAAD visiting professor
era to the present day using only sound; and con- in the University of Bremen (Germany, 2006, 2011),
tributing editor for Frieze magazine. He was Director an international researcher at Duke University (USA,
in 2009 and 2010 of SH Contemporary Art Fair in 2007), a visiting scholar at TEMA GENUS, Linkoping
Shanghai, and before that, Chinnery was a found- University (2013, Sweden).
ing director of the Ullens Center for Contemporary Tlostanova has authored eight scholarly books
Art (UCCA) in Beijing, playing a central role in setting and 250 articles published in Europe and the
up China’s first major contemporary art institution. Americas, including Gender Epistemologies and
Between 2003 and 2006, as Arts Manager for the Eurasian Borderlands (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010) and
British Council in Beijing, he initiated major projects Learning to Unlearn: Decolonial Reflection from Eurasia
in experimental theatre, live art, sound art, and visual and the Americas (co-authored with Walter Mignolo,
arts, bringing a wider public into contact with experi- Ohio State University Press, 2012, here). Currently she
mental practice. is finishing a book on decolonial aesthesis, contem-
porary art and the post-Socialist imaginary.
Madina Tlostanova
Vivian Ziherl
Madina Tlostanova (Moscow, 1970) is a decolonial
theorist and writer. She is a professor of philosophy Vivian Ziherl is an Associate Curator at If I Can’t
at RANEPA (Moscow, since 2012). From 2004 to 2012 Dance, I Don’t Want to Be Part Of Your Revolution
she held a professorship in the history of philosophy (Amsterdam) and Curatorial Fellow at the Institute
at Peoples’ Friendship University and was a senior of Modern Art (Brisbane) where she initiated the
researcher of the 20th century American literature at multi-platform research project Frontier Imaginaries.
Gorky Institute of World Literature in Moscow (1997- Other recent projects include the Landings (ongo-
2003). Trained in Moscow State University as an ing, here) curated with Natasha Ginwala and initi-
American Studies major, she drifted to transcultural ated in partnership with the Witte de With Center for
aesthetics to finally shift to post/decolonial interpre- Contemporary Art, and well as the performance series
tations of the post-Soviet subjectivities, fiction and Stage It! Parts 1 (here) and 2 (here) commissioned for
eBook publication
PUBLISHED BY CONTACT
L'Internationale Online natasa.petresin@
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MANAGING EDITOR
Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez