BE.BOP 2018. BLACK EUROPE BODY POLITICS. COALITIONS FACING WHITE INNOCENCE
Curated by Alanna Lockward
Walter Mignolo, Advisor
BERLIN
June 4-9
June 4
2pm- 6pm / 30 min break
ifa- Galerie Berlin
Linienstr. 139/140
10119 Berlin
Free and open to the public
RSVP mandatory: hartl@ifa.de
Delinking: What do we as curators, artists and thinkers want?
Workshop with Walter Mignolo
Alanna Lockward, Bhavisha Panchia, Alya Sebti
This first workshop opening BE.BOP 2018 tackles various challenges cultural agents face in the current global landscape of art and culture. Participants will discuss their positions and specific experiences, coming from different geographical and intellectual backgrounds.
June 6
6:00 pm
SAVVY Contemporary
Free and open to the public
Collective Book Launch
A curated selection of recently published literature will be presented during this book launch at SAVVY Contemporary. This opportunity allows visitors to discuss concerns with writers and editors who also participate in this year’s BE.BOP program. Updated relevant literature and an engaged discussion at an iconic Black splendor venue.
June 7-8
STUDIO Я at Maxim Gorki Theatre
Hinter dem Gießhaus 2
10117 Berlin
Daily ticket (panel discussions only) 12 € / 6€ reduced
Into the Dark by Jeannette Ehlers
12 € / 6€ Concessions
Thursday June 7
LICHTSAAL
11:00-11:30
Introduction
11:30 – 12:30
Tropical Berlin
By Sumugan Sivanesan
Performance Lecture, Premiere
In this performance artist and activist Sumugan Sivanesan presents a speculative-fiction monologue told through a ‘recent European’, whose family arrived from the Asia-Pacific as climate refugees. This story-telling piece reflects on subcultural scenes in Berlin via the prism of Queer-Black, or rather ‘Quare’, Futurity. The work draws on embodied research into Berlin’s subcultural scenes to present a vision of a near future ‘Tropical Berlin’.
SESSION I: DECOLONIAL HEALING AND PAN-AFRICANISM IN THE PACIFIC
LICHTSAAL
12:30 -14:00
In this first session artists and scholars take up the topic of healing situated in Pan-African politics within the Pacific. Robbie Shilliam focuses on the religious following called Paimārire, a liberation theory, led by Te Ua Haumene in New Zealand. Artist and activist Sumugan Sivanesan will further elaborate on his performance “Tropical Berlin” and share more about his research experience in Germany. Tania Cañas exposes her involvement with Black re-existence in Australia as an artist and activist.
Moderation: Alanna Lockward
SESSION II: ‘INNOCENT’ MISTAKES + ‘INNOCENT’ ERASURES
LICHTSAAL
15:30 -17:00
This second session problematizes the notion of “innocence” in Western and predominantly white educational settings. Manuela Boatcă’s presentation raises awareness of the history of one of Germany’s oldest universities in Freiburg and its uncritical perpetuation of colonial thinking and epistemology. Scholar Julia Roth shows in her presentation the early entanglement of German finance and investment in colonialism within the Americas, exemplified by global economic influence of the Welser company, while Quinsy Gario speaks about his activism against anti-Black racism in the Netherlands, within the “innocent” spaces of the arts plantations of modernity.
Moderation: Eva Boesenberg
17:00-18:30 BREAK
18:30-20:00
Humboldt University Berlin Du Bois Lecture
Beyond White Innocence
Keynote by Gloria Wekker
Unter den Linden 6
Hörsaal 2097
Free and open to the public
Influential Caribbean diaspora scholar Gloria Wekker will elaborate on the key arguments of her most recent book: White Innocence. Paradoxes of Colonialism and Race (2016, Durham: Duke Univesity Press). Wekker’s approach challenges the self-perception of the Netherlands as a purely progressive, liberal and civilized country, portraying it as actively ignoring its violent and brutal colonial past.
20:30-22:00
STUDIO Я
Into the Dark
By Jeannette Ehlers
Theatre Performance
In Into the Dark Jeanette Ehlers unfolds an expansive legacy of Black anti-colonial resistance. Here we encounter, among others, incendiary Caribbean revolt leader Queen Mary, Afrofuturist pioneer Sun Ra, renowned writer James Baldwin and founders of the Black Lives Matter movement.
Friday June 8
LICHTSAAL
11:00-12:00
My (Grand) Mother Made me White
By Quinsy Gario
Lecture Performance, German Premiere
Quinsy Gario investigates the mechanisms with which white identity politics has been able to cloak itself as neutral and objective. Through the prism of the UN designated Decade of People of African Descent, everyday objects and family sayings, Gario proposes means for subverting white identity politics for social change.
SESSION III: APPROXIMATIONS TO DECOLONIALITY AND FREEDOM OF MOBILITY
LICHTSAAL
12:30-14:00
During this session activists and artists Napuli Langa and Swedish Parliament member, Malcolm Momodou Jallow, will each share their perspective and experience relating to Decolonizing freedom of mobility and how this corresponds to essential questions around Black European citizenship. Moderator: Walter Mignolo
SESSION IV: BE.BOP AND THE DECOLONIAL SUMMER SCHOOL MIDDELBURG AS PARTNER HEALING PLATFORMS
LICHTSAAL
15:30-17:30
A group of artists, scholars and activists will think and discuss through various forms of healing and un-doing. Central concerns are decolonization processes of Contemporary Art or successful interventions in epistemologies that continue to reinforce colonial modernity. Be.Bop and the Decolonial Summer School Middelburg serve as role models on de-linking from the colonial matrix of power, while reinforcing educational infrastructures that imagine and enable decoloniality in Europe.
Participants: Alanna Lockward + Walter Mignolo + Rolando Vázquez + Patricia Kaersenhout + Elena Quintarelli
Moderator: Quinsy Gario
June 9
Ifa Gallery
Free and open to the public
14:00-15:30
Guniwaya-ngigu (We Fight), 1982, 60 min.
By Madeline McGrady & Tracey Moffatt
Screening
Moderated by Sumugan Sivanesan
In April 2018, Aboriginal activists at Camp Freedom on the Gold Coast of ‘Australia’ took inspiration from earlier resistance projects against the British Empire’s Commonwealth (‘Stolenwealth’) Games. The 1982 event in Brisbane took place during peaked land rights activism, while the Australian Government maintained a totally contradictory stance against apartheid in South Africa. In Queensland, Aboriginal people were still governed under the oppressive Aborigines and Torres Strait Islanders Act (also known as The Black Acts) which managed Aboriginal life and movement, outlawed public gatherings and the flying of the Aboriginal flag. The stand taken by converging groups including Black Unity bolstered solidarities internationally, including with Maori. Forty years later, while laws have changed, many material conditions of the struggle have not improved, while calls for treaties and reparations against what has been stolen continue. Guniwaya-ngigu (‘We Fight’) directed by renowned filmmaker Madeline McGrady (Gomeroi), features the work of the Black Film Unit (Maureen Watson, Tiga Bayles, Tracey Moffatt, Johnny Bayles), and received donations also from labour, media and solidarity organisations. It holds a special place in Aboriginal-led media history not only for the power of its imagery but for archiving the voices of so many of the agitators, artists, writers, media makers and historians of this generation, including Gary Foley, Neville Bonner, Cheryl Buchanan, Mum Shirl, Denis Walker, Marcia Langton, Richard Bell, Lionel Fogharty, Ambrose Goldenbrown, and music by No Fixed Address. In 2018, Games protesters were again arrested on site, drawing international media attention. The screening will be followed by an online conversaton with the director Madeline McGrady (Gomeroi) and Ruby Wharton (Kooma/Gamilaraay) on behalf of Camp Freedom in 2018. Facilitated by the Berlin Aboriginal Solidarity Network.
15:30-16:30
Stitches of Power / Stitches of Sorrow
Patricia Kaersenhout
Performance
Free and open to the public
This performance makes a case for relationality of movements and continuity of time. It associates the Dahomey Women warriors who were active along the shores of the African West Coast in the 18th and 19th century, with the US based Black Panther Movement of the 1970s that Angela Davis was affiliated with and the here and now, Kaersenhout herself and the audience in their act of embroidering, while all of them are representing different levels of violence. Embroidering “innocent” images on white fabric was a popular pastime for white colonial women, in sharp contrast to the daily lived experiences of Black women. Kaersenhout dramatically interweaves innocence and violence.
16:30-18:30
SESSION V: FROM “ZWARTE PIET IS RACISME” TO “I AM QUEEN MARY”: STAGING EUROPE’S ‘INNOCENCE’ IN THE PUBLIC SPHERE
Quinsy Gario + Jeannette Ehlers + Mette Moestrup + Lesley-Ann Brown + Joiri Minaya
Moderated by Alanna Lockward
Free and open to the public
In this last panel participants will share different approaches from their practices intended to intervene or disturb the status quo and normalized historiographies. Jeannette Ehler’s recent accomplishment to place the monument of an incendiary Caribbean freedom fighter in Copenhagen will be discussed as well as the resonances of collaborative projects empowering artists and cultural agents engaged d in decolonizing aesthetics and knowledge. Joiri Minaya will talk about her work addressing the perpetuation of white innocence in the gendered imaginary of tourism in the Caribbean and beyond.
BE.BOP 2018. BLACK EUROPE BODY POLITICS. COALITIONS FACING WHITE INNOCENCE 