On The Ruins Of Paradise
„ Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses (On The Ruins Of Paradise) “ is a visual research proposition examining the experiences of coloniality, systems of racism and nationalism, and complexities of feminisms through the entangled biographies of six women; Unica Zürn, Maria Mandessi Bell Diop, Mia May, Emine Zehra Zinser, Frieda Von Bülow and Erika Ngambi Ul Kuo.
Through sound and image installations, the audience is welcomed into the making of a ‚ruin’ fictional film set that was never finished. Originally part of its title is inspired by a lost colonial film written by Louise Marie Droop (1920)*, the set invites audiences to create their own film script of how the story should be told in writing and in image. The voices of the ‚ghost’ women confronting their own histories guides us through different stations that respond to each of their experiences based on archives of their lives. The scripts are based on testimonies of their own, those who knew them and archives from film & music productions of their time. The film set dismantles into a cultural encyclopeadic library where the audiences are performers, cultural producers and historians in a time-traveling story. They have the ability to edit history, decolonise archives and create a better understanding of their contemporary visions. This proposition is a critique on production histories through German cultural industry and dismantles political positions on identity through the speaking women who moved between Germany and Africa. Their conversation tells on migration, the power of image and science-fiction and their survival through their connecting mythologies of place, work and family to be untied through our interactive exchange. The audience’s gestures can modify therefore the intentions of the history that remained visible and allow for new positions on identity and feminism to arrive. The film set is a legacy to resistance and anti-colonial movements lead by women and a monument to these womens’ lost biographies and the lives of those erased.
* The title of the installation is inspired by a lost silent movie "Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses" written and produced by Louise Marie Droop (1920), an adaptation of the chapter „Der Überfall“ by Karl May's adventure novel entitled „Von Bagdad Nach Stambul“ which takes place in the Old West, Orient and the Middle East.
Through sound and image installations, the audience is welcomed into the making of a ‚ruin’ fictional film set that was never finished. Originally part of its title is inspired by a lost colonial film written by Louise Marie Droop (1920)*, the set invites audiences to create their own film script of how the story should be told in writing and in image. The voices of the ‚ghost’ women confronting their own histories guides us through different stations that respond to each of their experiences based on archives of their lives. The scripts are based on testimonies of their own, those who knew them and archives from film & music productions of their time. The film set dismantles into a cultural encyclopeadic library where the audiences are performers, cultural producers and historians in a time-traveling story. They have the ability to edit history, decolonise archives and create a better understanding of their contemporary visions. This proposition is a critique on production histories through German cultural industry and dismantles political positions on identity through the speaking women who moved between Germany and Africa. Their conversation tells on migration, the power of image and science-fiction and their survival through their connecting mythologies of place, work and family to be untied through our interactive exchange. The audience’s gestures can modify therefore the intentions of the history that remained visible and allow for new positions on identity and feminism to arrive. The film set is a legacy to resistance and anti-colonial movements lead by women and a monument to these womens’ lost biographies and the lives of those erased.
* The title of the installation is inspired by a lost silent movie "Auf den Trümmern des Paradieses" written and produced by Louise Marie Droop (1920), an adaptation of the chapter „Der Überfall“ by Karl May's adventure novel entitled „Von Bagdad Nach Stambul“ which takes place in the Old West, Orient and the Middle East.
Reframing Worlds at Körnerpark Gallery Berlin
photos: Nino 2017
photos: Nino 2017
„No expense has been spared to show it as it really was. There were Blacks in it again today...coming towards the tanks putting their hands up all over again... they thoroughly enjoyed it“ Field Marscahll Erwin Rommel 1938
„They shot my brothers with real bullets“ Erika Ngambi Ul Kuo 1938
Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, Africans and African Americans During the Nazi Era, Clarence Lusane
"On The Ruins Of Paradise" is a multi-media performance installation that represents a film set of a fictional movie, that was originally produced in 1934 by the first female German director Marie Louise Droop with the same title. The audience enters the installation and is confronted with decors elements, sounds and archival documents in what seems to be the stage for the shooting of a movie and its backstage. She/he is asked: What was this movie about? Who were these people working there and what was their life? When was is shot? Where was it supposed to take place?
The work introduces the role of cinema and entertainment culture in Germany during the first half of the century towards the representation of the „exotic“ and its fantasized vision of the colonies – and its remaining traces in our contemporary culture. It also highlights the importance of the entertainment industry crucial for making people heard and visible, to reclaim their own histories and artistic language. The movie stage creates windows to other perspectives. In a parrallel universe of props and decors, it underlines the film set and magic of the movie screen as a space for women and men under racist and colonial oppression to meet, reclaim territory and form resistance against fascism and racism.
Who writes and tells history?
In 1941, the release of the film Sieg Im Western shows Hitler's military victory - the conquest of Holland, Belgium and France in the spring of 1940. Notably a scene of the "encirclement" of Germany is depicted by showing prisoners of war from “far-off countries”. These men were African Tirailleurs Sénégalais. There are no official records of what happened to them but scattered testimonies survive of workers, often Afro-German women, working on the movie sets who, according to Clarence Lusane's research in Hitler's Black Victims described the massacres of African actors in WWII film propaganda productions. Including that of Erika Ngambi Ul Kuo who reveals that they shot the prisoners „with real bullets“ and tanks and left them dead on the field with no official burials. This was war, and cinema was no longer magic.
The appearance of African men and women on screen start with the pioneers of German cinema such as the film production company May-Film GmbH with Joe May's production Die Herrin der Welt shot in Woltersdorf near Berlin around 1919. The heroin travels over the world surrounded by men and women from „far away countries“. These people are colonial Prisoners Of War sent to camps in Germany (notably from Wünsdorf’s Halfmoon Camp) and used as props for film sets; men and women exhibited in shows and circus; and mixed children living in Germany working on film sets in very controlled environments.
On the other hand, the cinema and music industry became pools of resistance movements of the time and created a space where women and men POC could appear, make a living, have their voices heard and tell a different story. It became a sanctuary from the war and spaces to create their own languages and identities. However, by the period of the WWII, Black actors, notably women, start to disappear, no longer have a voice and become exotified once more by the fantasies of race of Third Reich.
Who were these „background“ actors in the movies? Where did they come from? What testimonies did they leave behind? What happened to them after the war?
The investigation conducts a different story of history, where the voices of women who were edited out of Germany’s world cultures reclaim their space through tools of resistance and anti-colonial positions.
The incomplete film-set On The Ruins Of Paradise, a paradox between the colonial project and the de-masculinisation of male cogito's apparatus, is a fictional story of 6 female ghosts characters and their confrontation on colonial memory through the voices of 4 women; Maria Mandessi Bell Diop (1925) a key figure of the anti-colonial resistance movements and later nationalist struggle for liberation in the First and Second World War Cameroon.; Emine Zehra Zinser (1934) black actress in the NS-colonial propaganda movie „Die Reiter Von Ost-Afrika“ von Herbert Selpin; Erika Ngambi El Kuo (1940) an entertainer and prop maker in UFA film studios; Unica Zürn (1970), a major female surrealist artist, daughter of the cavalry colonial officer & body-grave snatcher Ralph Zürn stationed in Africaa dn other world colonies; Mia May (1920) a popular Jewish actress in the Weimar Cinema period and Frieda Von Bülow (1889) feminist in former Deutsch-Südwestafrika and author of „Tropical Fever“ whose science-fiction novel writing inspired the ideologies and racism in Germany and founded the Women Groups stationed in the colonies .
These women represent the disappeared narratives of former resistance movements against the colonial oppression/mission; the anti-thesis of the resistance that proclaimed the preservation of the German Empire overseas and finally the effects of the post-war colonial era on modern life. Their biographies found scattered, lost, incomplete, invented and displaced reflect on how archives move and change, remaining largely incomplete because they have been told by political choices of few men and as the way one is chosen to witness these materials is through the lens of the coloniser. This archive is that story told by the women of histories silenced or erased, meeting each other in different parts of the world (Namibia; Berlin; Cameroon;Tanzania; Paris). They describe landscapes, invent names of exotic plants and places, edit scripts together to rewrite the history of world culture invented and legitimised by an oppressive and racist system over their own truths. Through their writing and conversations to each other they reveal clear narratives on the experiences of coloniality in different places; the politics of race, class & gender; the intersections of migration and womanhood; the limit of universal sisterhood in a patriarchal system. Ironically their voices narrate episodes of everyday racism spanning over a century together.
„They shot my brothers with real bullets“ Erika Ngambi Ul Kuo 1938
Hitler's Black Victims: The Historical Experiences of European Blacks, Africans and African Americans During the Nazi Era, Clarence Lusane
"On The Ruins Of Paradise" is a multi-media performance installation that represents a film set of a fictional movie, that was originally produced in 1934 by the first female German director Marie Louise Droop with the same title. The audience enters the installation and is confronted with decors elements, sounds and archival documents in what seems to be the stage for the shooting of a movie and its backstage. She/he is asked: What was this movie about? Who were these people working there and what was their life? When was is shot? Where was it supposed to take place?
The work introduces the role of cinema and entertainment culture in Germany during the first half of the century towards the representation of the „exotic“ and its fantasized vision of the colonies – and its remaining traces in our contemporary culture. It also highlights the importance of the entertainment industry crucial for making people heard and visible, to reclaim their own histories and artistic language. The movie stage creates windows to other perspectives. In a parrallel universe of props and decors, it underlines the film set and magic of the movie screen as a space for women and men under racist and colonial oppression to meet, reclaim territory and form resistance against fascism and racism.
Who writes and tells history?
In 1941, the release of the film Sieg Im Western shows Hitler's military victory - the conquest of Holland, Belgium and France in the spring of 1940. Notably a scene of the "encirclement" of Germany is depicted by showing prisoners of war from “far-off countries”. These men were African Tirailleurs Sénégalais. There are no official records of what happened to them but scattered testimonies survive of workers, often Afro-German women, working on the movie sets who, according to Clarence Lusane's research in Hitler's Black Victims described the massacres of African actors in WWII film propaganda productions. Including that of Erika Ngambi Ul Kuo who reveals that they shot the prisoners „with real bullets“ and tanks and left them dead on the field with no official burials. This was war, and cinema was no longer magic.
The appearance of African men and women on screen start with the pioneers of German cinema such as the film production company May-Film GmbH with Joe May's production Die Herrin der Welt shot in Woltersdorf near Berlin around 1919. The heroin travels over the world surrounded by men and women from „far away countries“. These people are colonial Prisoners Of War sent to camps in Germany (notably from Wünsdorf’s Halfmoon Camp) and used as props for film sets; men and women exhibited in shows and circus; and mixed children living in Germany working on film sets in very controlled environments.
On the other hand, the cinema and music industry became pools of resistance movements of the time and created a space where women and men POC could appear, make a living, have their voices heard and tell a different story. It became a sanctuary from the war and spaces to create their own languages and identities. However, by the period of the WWII, Black actors, notably women, start to disappear, no longer have a voice and become exotified once more by the fantasies of race of Third Reich.
Who were these „background“ actors in the movies? Where did they come from? What testimonies did they leave behind? What happened to them after the war?
The investigation conducts a different story of history, where the voices of women who were edited out of Germany’s world cultures reclaim their space through tools of resistance and anti-colonial positions.
The incomplete film-set On The Ruins Of Paradise, a paradox between the colonial project and the de-masculinisation of male cogito's apparatus, is a fictional story of 6 female ghosts characters and their confrontation on colonial memory through the voices of 4 women; Maria Mandessi Bell Diop (1925) a key figure of the anti-colonial resistance movements and later nationalist struggle for liberation in the First and Second World War Cameroon.; Emine Zehra Zinser (1934) black actress in the NS-colonial propaganda movie „Die Reiter Von Ost-Afrika“ von Herbert Selpin; Erika Ngambi El Kuo (1940) an entertainer and prop maker in UFA film studios; Unica Zürn (1970), a major female surrealist artist, daughter of the cavalry colonial officer & body-grave snatcher Ralph Zürn stationed in Africaa dn other world colonies; Mia May (1920) a popular Jewish actress in the Weimar Cinema period and Frieda Von Bülow (1889) feminist in former Deutsch-Südwestafrika and author of „Tropical Fever“ whose science-fiction novel writing inspired the ideologies and racism in Germany and founded the Women Groups stationed in the colonies .
These women represent the disappeared narratives of former resistance movements against the colonial oppression/mission; the anti-thesis of the resistance that proclaimed the preservation of the German Empire overseas and finally the effects of the post-war colonial era on modern life. Their biographies found scattered, lost, incomplete, invented and displaced reflect on how archives move and change, remaining largely incomplete because they have been told by political choices of few men and as the way one is chosen to witness these materials is through the lens of the coloniser. This archive is that story told by the women of histories silenced or erased, meeting each other in different parts of the world (Namibia; Berlin; Cameroon;Tanzania; Paris). They describe landscapes, invent names of exotic plants and places, edit scripts together to rewrite the history of world culture invented and legitimised by an oppressive and racist system over their own truths. Through their writing and conversations to each other they reveal clear narratives on the experiences of coloniality in different places; the politics of race, class & gender; the intersections of migration and womanhood; the limit of universal sisterhood in a patriarchal system. Ironically their voices narrate episodes of everyday racism spanning over a century together.
Japanische Museum Dresden | Sprachlosigkeit | 2021
photos: Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
Walking through the moving fictional film set the audience is guided through a story told in german and in english by these women confronting each other for the time in over 90 years on the realities of looking or fatherland, looking for their palaces, dealing with racism and oppression, the complexities of colonial ideaologies and the fragility of feminist solidarity. In this hand-made multi-media installation where the audiences are welcome to create interactive play and direct the script of 6 missing women/ghosts. The props are symbolic decors/symbols create a critical reflection on ideological images of the German-Afrika Empire & its colonial project and many that were featured originally in existing colonial films such as Die Reiter Von Ost-Afrika (1934); Carl Peters (1942); Das Indische Grabmal (1921); Die Herrin Die Welt (1919) and Sieg Am Western (1941). The work is a satirical installation view of a former imaged film set village of UFA Film Studios (who were responsible for most of the film productions in Germany based in Tempelhof Berlin now Babelsberg) with all moveable landscapes of the of former crumbling UFA film decors, plant decors, foamboard panels of places, and costumes. It evades from repeating colonial image displays by considering the archive as a form of transmission and imagination that pushes its feminist approach.
The film therefore uses humour and satire to create a critical hommage to these missing women who re-appear through the debris of the Kilimanjaro, a moving hand-made film set. A gesture of demounting the colonial mission of creating their own Africa. The props become debris of their memories and move to create the intersections linking their biographies into one fictional story. However in every fictional story, behind every actor, behind every prop, is a clear picture of our own contemporary lives. We recognise true narratives made visible only through her voice which reflect our experiences, challenges our own knowledge and memory and affect the way we see ourselves today.
The props are principally made of paper mounted images on foamboard, acrylic painted landscapes on canvas and mixed-media found objects. In the set the audience can negotiate the script of the story so to define the identity of the 6 women. There is a sound installation consisting of 6 voices (played on a sound mixer) which are the testimonies of these 6 women. On the sound work also features former sounds and musical scores of the colonial film productions for which these women were featured or worked, there are the sounds of prisoners of war and selected scripts of former films. We hear the women as ghosts telling their own histories but we also hear them as material records whose voices were edited by men.
What is the story of this movie? Who are the women speaking? When was the period of shooting? Where is it taking place? What can we learn about the complexities of intersectional feminism? What do their confrontational conversation reveal about solidarity and experiences of coloniality in past and present?
The film therefore uses humour and satire to create a critical hommage to these missing women who re-appear through the debris of the Kilimanjaro, a moving hand-made film set. A gesture of demounting the colonial mission of creating their own Africa. The props become debris of their memories and move to create the intersections linking their biographies into one fictional story. However in every fictional story, behind every actor, behind every prop, is a clear picture of our own contemporary lives. We recognise true narratives made visible only through her voice which reflect our experiences, challenges our own knowledge and memory and affect the way we see ourselves today.
The props are principally made of paper mounted images on foamboard, acrylic painted landscapes on canvas and mixed-media found objects. In the set the audience can negotiate the script of the story so to define the identity of the 6 women. There is a sound installation consisting of 6 voices (played on a sound mixer) which are the testimonies of these 6 women. On the sound work also features former sounds and musical scores of the colonial film productions for which these women were featured or worked, there are the sounds of prisoners of war and selected scripts of former films. We hear the women as ghosts telling their own histories but we also hear them as material records whose voices were edited by men.
What is the story of this movie? Who are the women speaking? When was the period of shooting? Where is it taking place? What can we learn about the complexities of intersectional feminism? What do their confrontational conversation reveal about solidarity and experiences of coloniality in past and present?
On The Ruins Of Paradise from Bikoro on Vimeo.