Kiosk Cultures | Trajectories for a Decolonial Atlas
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photo: Till Baumann & Emma Haugh, courtesy of District Berlin 2016
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As part of their project Squat Monument, Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s Kiosk Culture Decolonial Archives Tour in collaboration with Anaïs Héraud investigates the traces of the German colonial history that nurtured the economic and political identity of Berlin throughout the earlier 20th century. Reconsidering specific spaces in the Tempelhof neighborhood as monuments of colonial memory, the project engages with the experiences of people whose bodies and voices have been made invisible overtime. The trajectory of the mobile archive through public interventions, film displays and performances, re-assembles stories of colonial debris to give a decolonial landscape on the trade culture and cinema production in the first half of the 20th century. Kiosk Culture Decolonial Archives Tour takes its departure from the Museum Tempelhof collection. Based on their research on the Tempelhof mount Marienhöhe and its connection to the making of colonial propaganda movies such as Die Reiter von Ostafrika (1939) or Carl Peters (1941) by the local UFA cinema studios, the artists have re-inserted erased narratives in the permanent historical exhibition. On the evening of the 30th September, at the occasion of the finissage of their exhibition-intervention Squat Monument: Introduction to a Decolonial Atlas at Museum Tempelhof, a procession of objects and artworks displayed in the exhibition will be placed in the kiosk van during a live performance by the artists. The following day (Saturday 1st of October from 1pm), the movable archival museum tours the neighborhood inviting audiences and passersby to enter in dialogue with the artists and participate in collective actions at 3 stops. |
Kiosk Culture is inspired by the ‘Système of Débrouillardise’ adapted by journalist Robert Neuwirth, a term pirated from Francophone Africa and the Caribbean that translates as ingenuity economy or the economy of improvisation and self-reliance. Neuwirth’s term is re-adapted by the artists to correspond with the histories of resistance movements in cinema in the 60’s and 70’s in East and West Africa that transformed the 1950’s practice of transmitting colonial propaganda cinema through rural villages into a decolonial strategy by communities producing their own films and displaying them through the means of moveable vans. By turning the van into a performative archive that gathers knowledge, memories and peoples of local communities, the Kiosk attempts to project the anti-thesis of a museum display and to transform our relationship to local space.
The first stop is at Sarrotti Höfe. The Sarotti factories produced chocolate in Mehringdamm (Kreuzberg) from 1883 until 1921 when it is completely removed to Tempelhof until 1998. From 1918 until today, the chocolate is advertised under the « Sarotti Moor » logo as one can see on the wall advertising in the Sarotti Höfe. The historical origins of the « Sarotti Moor » and its relation to the Berlin differents socio-political contexts over the century are discussed in the Sarotti-café, films and objects are shown in the van in the Sarotti backyard. From Sarotti the Kiosk moves to Tempelhof airport which was re-organised between 1937 and 1941 under the direction of Albert Speer, nominated as the site for aircraft and weapon manufacturing and production based on forced labor during National Socialism. In the fields, in front of the former airport, the artists draw a parallel between the German colonial period at the beginning of the 20th century and its attempt of “revival” through films and propaganda under the Nazi Regime. They offer a kite workshop as a monument titled Landing Space. The workshop is based on their exploration of decolonial feminists in the anti-colonial resistance movements organized between Berlin, Cameroon and Namibia throughout the two world wars. The tour ends at Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s and Anaïs Héraud-Louisadat’s exhibition Trümmerberg Kilimanjaro within the framework of Undisciplinary Learning. Remapping The Aesthetics of Resistance.
The first stop is at Sarrotti Höfe. The Sarotti factories produced chocolate in Mehringdamm (Kreuzberg) from 1883 until 1921 when it is completely removed to Tempelhof until 1998. From 1918 until today, the chocolate is advertised under the « Sarotti Moor » logo as one can see on the wall advertising in the Sarotti Höfe. The historical origins of the « Sarotti Moor » and its relation to the Berlin differents socio-political contexts over the century are discussed in the Sarotti-café, films and objects are shown in the van in the Sarotti backyard. From Sarotti the Kiosk moves to Tempelhof airport which was re-organised between 1937 and 1941 under the direction of Albert Speer, nominated as the site for aircraft and weapon manufacturing and production based on forced labor during National Socialism. In the fields, in front of the former airport, the artists draw a parallel between the German colonial period at the beginning of the 20th century and its attempt of “revival” through films and propaganda under the Nazi Regime. They offer a kite workshop as a monument titled Landing Space. The workshop is based on their exploration of decolonial feminists in the anti-colonial resistance movements organized between Berlin, Cameroon and Namibia throughout the two world wars. The tour ends at Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro’s and Anaïs Héraud-Louisadat’s exhibition Trümmerberg Kilimanjaro within the framework of Undisciplinary Learning. Remapping The Aesthetics of Resistance.