Squat Monument
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documented by Kinga Michalska; Sasha Huber; Fred Marschall; Till Baumann; Irene von Götz; Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
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Squat Monument in collaboration with Anaïs Héraud Partners: District Berlin; LautArchiv Humboldt Universität Berlin; Museen Tempelhof-Schoneberg; Dahlem Ethnologiker Museen Berlin; Basler Afrika Bibliographen Switzerland Awarded by Dezentrale Kulturarbeit Rathaus Schöneberg & Senat Berlin www.squatmonument.com Squat Monument Your Ideal Country Would Be A Forest Of Yellow Marbled Monuments The project Squat Monument: Your Ideal Country Would Be A Forest Of Yellow Marble Monuments (2015-2017) attempts a postcolonial re-evaluation of Berlin’s rubble mountains. Within the framework of an archeological intervention, we want to reconnect experiential fragments, voices, and memories from different diasporas into a virtual map of unwritten history. The project hopes to soften dominant discourses about home, identity, and belonging as well as existing power relationships and to contrast them with non-linear, subcultural, and authentic stories. |
Like sediments, different fragments are imbedded within or adjacent one another, growing into a metaphorical rubble mountain. Multiple interwoven transindividual histories emerge that are able to be experienced physically and, in their processuality, oscillate between fact and myth. The project takes the form of artistic interventions in public space, workshop, guided tour, exhibition and film essays. Our artistic project develops in dialogue with Berlin and international activists' groups, other artists and institutions; among others Kuringa-Berlin, AfricAvenir, Museen Tempelhof-Schöneberg (Archiv), Soundarchive of the Humboldt University.
Squat Monument is an artistic investigation into Germany’s colonial and post-colonial history and memorial culture as it manifests in Berlin’s Tempelhof neighborhood. The project invites to read this district as an introduction to Germany’s erased histories within the complex identities of Europe. Appropriating monuments, Squat Monument reconstructs memories from the visibility and invisibility of people’s lives in relation to the trajectories of migration over many generations.
„Your Ideal Country Would Be A Forest Of Yellow Marble Monuments“
Roque Dalton in Tavern (Conversatorio), 1969
Trümmerberg Marienhöhe delivers its first mysteries: On its summit rests the monument called «Memorial stone in memory of the victims of war and oppression» («Denkmal zur Erinnerung an die Opfer von Krieg und Unterdrückung»). The monument was erected on the debris of history in 1954. Over the last decades graffiti marks have been appropriating the stone and have been removed from its surface again and again. Over the 19th and 20th century Marienhöhe becomes a site of immigrant archaeologies and of contested terrains between settling and nomadic communities. With the Universum Film AG (UFA) studios taking residence at Oberlandstrasse around 1925, the neighborhood develops into a space where the meaning of Germany is re-invented through films. As political tools, the propaganda movies – such as Die Reiter von Deutsch-Ostafrika in 1934 or Carl Peters in 1941, partly shot on Marienhöhe – use the magic of cinema as well as the bodies and labor of African populations to create the first images of German colonial Africa. Nearby in Teilestrasse, the factories of Sarotti produced chocolate under the logo of the African Black Moor until 1991: the commercial image for the exotic in food consumption caters to Germany’s fashion, nostalgic and political positions regarding its colonies. The white marble of the former Tempelhof airport, constructed between 1937 and 1941, has faded into yellow, inhabited by layers of told and untold stories from the past. Today, thousands of people seeking asylum from war and poverty are being accommodated in the monumental edifice under the challenging conditions of what is becoming one of the largest refugee camps inside the EU.
Squat Monument is an artistic investigation into Germany’s colonial and post-colonial history and memorial culture as it manifests in Berlin’s Tempelhof neighborhood. The project invites to read this district as an introduction to Germany’s erased histories within the complex identities of Europe. Appropriating monuments, Squat Monument reconstructs memories from the visibility and invisibility of people’s lives in relation to the trajectories of migration over many generations.
„Your Ideal Country Would Be A Forest Of Yellow Marble Monuments“
Roque Dalton in Tavern (Conversatorio), 1969
Trümmerberg Marienhöhe delivers its first mysteries: On its summit rests the monument called «Memorial stone in memory of the victims of war and oppression» («Denkmal zur Erinnerung an die Opfer von Krieg und Unterdrückung»). The monument was erected on the debris of history in 1954. Over the last decades graffiti marks have been appropriating the stone and have been removed from its surface again and again. Over the 19th and 20th century Marienhöhe becomes a site of immigrant archaeologies and of contested terrains between settling and nomadic communities. With the Universum Film AG (UFA) studios taking residence at Oberlandstrasse around 1925, the neighborhood develops into a space where the meaning of Germany is re-invented through films. As political tools, the propaganda movies – such as Die Reiter von Deutsch-Ostafrika in 1934 or Carl Peters in 1941, partly shot on Marienhöhe – use the magic of cinema as well as the bodies and labor of African populations to create the first images of German colonial Africa. Nearby in Teilestrasse, the factories of Sarotti produced chocolate under the logo of the African Black Moor until 1991: the commercial image for the exotic in food consumption caters to Germany’s fashion, nostalgic and political positions regarding its colonies. The white marble of the former Tempelhof airport, constructed between 1937 and 1941, has faded into yellow, inhabited by layers of told and untold stories from the past. Today, thousands of people seeking asylum from war and poverty are being accommodated in the monumental edifice under the challenging conditions of what is becoming one of the largest refugee camps inside the EU.
Decolonial Archives Interactive Tour
photo: Kinga/VelvetRush Productions; Nathalie Mba Bikoro, Irene Von Götz; Sasha Huber 2016
supported by Tempelhof-Shöneberg & District Berlin
supported by Tempelhof-Shöneberg & District Berlin
Decolonial Museum; Imagining Post-Archives
Squat Monument | Sarotti Factory from Bikoro on Vimeo.
Decolonial Atlas; We Built The Kilimanjaro!
photo: Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
Squat Monument Film-essay teaser from Bikoro on Vimeo.
Squat Monument trailor from Bikoro on Vimeo.
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