Curating

as Anti-Racist
Practice
Curating as Anti-Racist Practice

Editors
Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Nora Sternfeld

Aalto ARTS Books as a cooperation between Aalto University

and the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Published in German
in the series curating. ausstellungstheorie & praxis, Band 2
[curating. exhibition theory & practice, volume 2], in the series
Edition Angewandte, DE GRUYTER
13 Greeting Kevin Tavin
15 Greeting Gerald Bast
17 Where’s the Contact Zone Here?! A Conversation
Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński and
Nora Sternfeld

Don’t Get Over It, If You Are Not

Over It: Action Over Representation
47 Beyond Repair. An Anti-Racist Praxeology of Curating
Natalie Bayer and Mark Terkessidis
65 Unearthing. In Conversation Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
83 We Do Encourage Promiscuity, But This is Not a Motel.
Anti-Racist Curatorial Strategies From the Margins to the
Centre Christopher Wessels, Marianne Niemelä and
Ahmed Al-Nawas
91 The Whole World in Zurich. Collaborative and
Transformative Strategies of Negotiating “Urban
Citizenship“ Katharina Morawek

Strategies of Intervention:
Uninvited Speaking Back
111 Notes On Bafflement: The Universal Right To Baffle
Jelena Vesić
125 Curating Resistance. Political Interventions into an Elitist,
Hegemonic Cultural Landscape
Sandrine Micossé-Aikins and Bahareh Sharifi
141 Valkeat Minna Henriksson
 Appeals: Sustained
Resistance
169 Unfinished Conversation Nuray Demir and Nanna
Heidenreich in Conversation About Possible Strategies
Against Exoticism in (Visual) Art, the Ordering of Things, and
a Post-Identity That is Aware of the Workings of Power
185 Anti*Colonial Fantasies/Decolonial Strategies.
A Conversation Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita
and Sophie Utikal
195 Catharsis, Healing and Struggle: The Language of the
Anti-Racist Body Kemi Bassene
211 A(r)mando Vo(i)ces Verena Melgarejo Weinandt

Appropriations: Carrying On
Despite it All
229 How Do Black Lives Matter in MoMA's Collection?
Thomas J. Lax
241 Silvina Der-Meguerditchian
Made in Turkey II and Fluchtteppich, 2000–2005
Notes by Natalie Bayer
255 ‘On est ensemble’ and ‘Ça va waka’. A Few Reflections on
Navigating the Xenopolis Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung
269 Why Exhibit At All? An Answer From the Year 2030
Nora Sternfeld
287 Welcome to The Formaldehyde Trip Naomi Rincón Gallardo

315 Biographies
324 Imprint
Kevin Tavin
Greeting

I am delighted to write a short forward for Curating as Anti-Racist

Practice, as the head of the Department of Art at Aalto University
in Finland, but perhaps more importantly as an art educator who
is deeply committed to critical citizenship and anti-racist pedagogy.
Like so many educators, artists, curators, public intellectuals, and
cultural workers, the authors who share their stories and insights
in this book are working within, through, and with-out institutions
to make change—sometimes failing, but often succeeding. They
stand up directly to a matrix of oppressive forces, consisting in part
of colonial legacies, prohibitive discourses, nationalist politics, and
curatorial and artistic practices that grant permission to those in
power to name and own forms of representation. For me, the im-
perative of this book is a set of interventional tactics, informed by
global critical perspectives, but developed and employed locally.
This imperative includes the refusal to turn away or appropriate a
set of critical theories or tools from elsewhere that offers a certain
guarantee—especially for the field of contemporary curating.
When you read this book you will sense the passion of all
the contributors to develop a more active politicisation of the
curatorial field; it embraces social resistance and antagonism, and
subjugated and situational knowledge. This passion, however, is
not simply critique. It is also action plus hope, towards a radical
futurity. As Freire understood, radical hope “is an indispensable sea-
soning in our human, historical experience. Without it, instead of history
we would have pure determinism... A future that is inexorable is a denial

13
Paulo Freire. Pedagogy of
Freedom: Ethics, Democracy,
and Civic Courage. London:
Rowman & Littlefield, 1998.
p. 69.
of history1”. I am pleased that the Department of Art at Aalto
University is a collaborator in this project—as a book, a
set of tactics, and as a growing community of those that
believe in radical futurity without apologies. Together we
can make, reconstruct, and leave the world in a better place
for the future.
14
Gerald Bast
Greeting
Art as an Instrument of
Open-Mindedness

At present there are about 1 700 students at the University of

Applied Arts Vienna. Many of them come from places outside
of Austria, from other European and non-European countries—
and this is precisely what gives the university its special character.
The University of Applied Arts Vienna sees itself as a site of inde-
pendent artistic and scientific articulation; as a space for open
debate; and as a lab for developing artistic visions that will positively
impact the society of the future. Our aspiration to remain one of
the best art schools in the world is inextricably tied to our dedi-
cation to working hard on the ongoing development of our quality
standards, to our belief in constant regeneration of creative poten-
tial, as well as to our uncompromising commitment to the freedom
of art and science.
Historically, universities—education, science and art in
general—have been the forerunners of Enlightenment, and that is
still their role today. The Enlightenment produced values such as
freedom of expression, separation of church and state, as well as
tolerance—but it also crystallised the economic and discursive
context that produced colonisation, slavery and violence. It is crucial
to critically discuss and demystify the Enlightenment. This is what

15
the present anthology is doing, from various well-grounded per-
spectives. Democratic values such as ‘tolerance’ and ‘freedom of
expression’ may keep on being invoked, but more and more people
drop out of the education system in frustration, as it seems to still
be too abstract, and apparently also opens up space for overt and
symbolic racism.
I believe that we need new frameworks that allow for stim-
ulating artistic and scholarly contributions to the discussion about
social conditions. Not that art and culture can save the world, but
it is high time to see art and the humanities (despite all this talk of
a supposed crisis of the humanities) as instruments and methods
towards an openness of minds, and to act accordingly. To under-
stand and treat the Enlightenment as a more or less complete
historical phenomenon would not only be a symptom of scholarly
self-referentiality, but, even worse, a fundamental misunderstand-
ing about its significance in university education, which can only
be understood as an ongoing process that each generation must
engage in, redefine, and struggle for through critical reflection about
its own history. Even if the achievements of previous generations
(that in some cases have since been accepted into collective con-
sciousness) constitute a solid ground to build on, active cultura
animi (the care of mind and soul) as self-reflective and self-critical
confrontation remains crucially important. And we all know that
this has a great deal, if not all, to do with a corresponding educa-
tional culture as a strong backbone. Anti-racist curating and the
publication of a book about this topic—the importance of which
may appear even more obvious to us today than previously—is
indeed active enlightening cultural work.
In view of the above, I would like to express my gratitude to
the authors of the present publication, as it represents an important
contribution to an open, pluralistic and enlightened society, which
the University of Applied Arts Vienna indefatigably advocates for,
not least with its publishing series Edition Angewandte.

16
Natalie Bayer,
Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
and Nora Sternfeld
Where’s the
Contact Zone Here?!
A Conversation

Critical examination of representation in the museum is nothing

new. Two decades have passed since Henrietta Lidchi’s article
“The Poetics and the Politics of Exhibiting Other Cultures” was
published in the volume Representation. In it, she discussed forms
of grappling with the poetics, politics and effects of a powerful
production of meaning, and showed just how entangled they are
within racist structures.1 1 Henrietta Lidchi. The
Poetics and the Politics of Exhibit-
Since then, the ‘crisis of representation’ has also
ing Other Cultures, in: Stuart Hall
reached museum practice. But in which form? While cri- (ed), Representation. Cultural
Representation and Significant
tical debates may be finally taking place today, and there
Practices. Milton Keynes: Sage
may be talk of ‘post-colonial’ and ‘post-migrant’ museum Publications & Open University,
1997. pp. 151–222.
approaches, they often replicate exoticising, hierarchical,
and binary narrative patterns. We would like to trace this pheno-
menon in conversation with one another, in order to discuss what
possible counter-narratives and alternative forms of action might
exist.

17
 Don’t get over it, if you are not over it2

2 Sara Ahmed. Diversity Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński September 2014, Frankfurt, Muse-

Work as Emotional Work. Lecture
um of World Cultures. I am visiting the exhibition Ware &
at the University of Vienna within
the framework of Gender Talks on Wissen [Foreign Exchange (or the stories you wouldn’t tell
22 November 2013.
a stranger)], curated by Yvette Mutumba and Clémentine
3 The photograph is Deliss. I am interested in the way in which ethnological
attributed to Paul Schebesta
objects and contemporary art are exhibited together, whether
(1887–1967), Austro-Czech
missionary, ethnologist and this disrupts dominant narratives, and how. After all, ethno-
author. There is a similar photo-
logical museums are very fond of this approach these days:
graph with the same motif that
shows Paul Schebesta with to open up their archives for artists to work with the objects
another unnamed Black man.
they contain, that are often loaded with meaning.
In the second room I see a video projected on the wall. When
I enter the room, the video is showing a photograph3 of a white
man, a colonial officer. His right arm is stretched away from his
body in a gesture highlighting something that is obvious to the
viewer: the Black man standing next to him is shorter than he is. A
dichotomous visual logic posits the two men as visual opposites:
Black vs white, short vs tall, almost naked vs fully clothed... They
are fragments of a remembered colonial everyday that come back
to haunt me.
Faced with Schebesta's photographs, in a situation best
described as a colonial flashback, I begin to wonder about the evident
dilemma that curators and artists find themselves in: the challenge
of discussing colonialism and the entanglement of ethnology
in this European project of expansion and oppression, in a way
that does not constantly have to refer back to these images. An
underlying issue of using colonial photography in an exhibition
context is running the risk of unintentionally reiterating and
reactivating colonial hierarchies of looking. These hierarchies of
looking in turn face the expectations of the visitors—in the case
of ethnological museums, this would be the obvious thirst for
otherness, the desire for exoticism, topped with a sprinkle of

18
voyeurism. In the exhibition catalogue, Yvette Mutumba 4 Clémentine Deliss, Yvette
Mutumba et. al (eds), Foreign
also speaks of the risk of catering to voyeuristic desires.4
Exchange (or the Stories you
I wonder (also from the point of view of artistic Wouldn’t Tell a Stranger). Zurich/
Berlin: Diaphanes, 2014.
practice) whether the point might not precisely be just this:
p. 129.
to refuse to cater to these voyeuristic desires, to curb them
curatorially/artistically, to reject them. More so, to engage with the
gaze and its underlying desires, and to confront the visitor, in their
becoming, with it. I am aware of the complexity of my proposition,
for how can one possibly expect to block the visitors’ desire for
the exotic, given how heterogeneous they are as a group, and how
each visitor has different points of reference in how they relate to
the exhibits, while at the same time also trying to avoid othering
individual people? How and where might we produce fractures
through our practice that do not ultimately end in an either/or,
but insist on a complex simultaneity, and divert desire away from
othered people in order to transform it into a shared experiential
learning process?

Natalie Bayer The points you are raising are indeed central
problems of representation, which are still very topical and may
seem unwieldy at first, because of the ambivalence that lies at the
heart of these questions. Something I noticed over and over again
in my research on museum exhibition practice is that cultural
institutions (like museums, for example) seek reflexive approaches
to their work. More and more frequently, a critique of represen-
tation is translated into mere guidelines for strategic and method-
ical planning, as well as wording and attitude instructions for exis-
ting staff members, but very few changes occur in regards to the
organisational structures themselves. Paradoxically, however, even
cultural projects with anti-discriminatory goals that are folded into
institutions very rarely manage to overcome hegemonic regimes
of looking and showing. It is precisely this ambivalence that I con-
sider to be characteristic of present practices in cultural policy,

19
since all these activities come into play in institutions whose control
over access to ‘knowledge’ reflects structural societal inequality.
This is why I would like to add a few more points to your
list of questions: what visual representations can we find or invent
within the framework of cultural institutions that pick up on long-
standing critique, in order to disrupt not only the representation
logic of communities that define themselves in terms of ethno-
nationalism and social privilege, but also the attendant rationality
of ‘us vs them’?
I think this requires a multi-directional approach, with a
combination of strategies—bold big ones, but also complex strate-
gies with microscopic ramifications. But at this point I would like
to come back to the term ‘colonial flashback’ that you were talking
about: what does it mean that exhibition and museum practices,
even today, still always refer to the western European ‘Enlighten-
ment’ project as the central context?
Museum theorists such as Tony Bennett have shown how
the institutionalisation of the modern museum coincides with
bourgeois disciplining and the intensification of nation-build-
ing, as well as with capitalist liberalism. On the level of ideology,
content, structure, and practical matters, cultural institutions such
as museums were given a governmental mandate to create and
present evidence and interpretations, in order to encourage people
to identify as citizens of a given nation. This public mandate was
based on ideals of the so-called ‘Enlightenment’—equality, freedom
and commonality—combined with the principle of belonging
as defined through the lens of racial theory that, by definition,
excluded with national terms any ‘others’ as ‘non-citizens’. And
all of this was organised by an institutional administrative and
knowledge management system that was integrated into state
procedures.
The genesis and developmental history of many muse-
ums, especially in North-Western Europe, is directly linked to the

20
emergence of modern nationalism. Geopolitical and social trans-
formations have also caused some areas in the museum to shift,
however only very few museums engaged in critical self-examina-
tion have proceeded to a reorganisation of their own pillars, axes
and foundations.
The colonial gaze is still at play when museums deal with
the topic of imperialism. When examining museum discourses
about migration, it also becomes apparent that dynamics of repre-
sentation are presently no longer only configured in regards to
colonialism and civic nationality, but both altered and updated.
Since the first decade of the 2000s, when the awareness of being
a ‘migration society’ began to take hold, the discussions and pro-
grammes of museums and other cultural institutions in the German-
speaking cultural field shifted noticeably. Again and again, the main
reference point remains the problematic paradigm of ‘integration’.
Recent critical migration research has shown how the implications
of the concept of ‘integration’ buttress an exclusionary logic, given
that the concept itself is based on the idea of insurmountable
cultural differences, and how therefore the onus will be placed
on those who are declared to be ethno-nationally ‘other’—an
obligation that cannot possibly ever be met, since integration is
discursively and practically per se impossible to accomplish.

Nora Sternfeld Your examples and approaches show how

important it remains to critically analyse exhibitions. This is why,
after so many years of similar criticisms of the same types of
displays in countless ethnological and historical museums, I would
like to go a step further. Reading Peggy Phelan's legitimate scep-
ticism about the limitations of the struggles for visibility in her
book Unmarked5 made me want to be able to visit a museum 5 Peggy Phelan. Unmarked:
The Politics of Performance.
(or at least to be able to imagine it) that is not constantly
London/New York: Routledge,
“marked” and that doesn’t perpetuate categorisations in 1993.

regards to power. However, despite repeated criticisms,

21
 institutions continue to stage gazes and truths within the existing
matrix of power. It seems that the creators of the exoticising
images that keep on being reproduced are still not bored of them,
nor are those who apparently like to see them. Yet the anti-racist
struggle is now often dismissed as old hat, as if it were both old
news and a killjoy at the same time. This is why we can’t stop and
6 Cf. Peggy Phelan speaking why we must continue to insist on our critique.6 I am often
of the indisputable consequences
reminded of Sara Ahmed's simple sentence that expresses
of critique: “Precisely because of
representation’s supplemental both the necessity and burden of sustained criticism: “Don’t
excess and its failure to be total-
get over it, if you are not over it.”7
ising, close readings of the logic
of representation can produce Curators often invoke the wishes of visitors as an argument
psychic resistance and, possibly,
in favour of ‘exotic atmospheres’. At best, postcolonial
political change. (Although rarely
in the linear cause-effect way critique seems to be regarded as an important perspective
cultural critics on the Left and
but certainly not the only factor to take into account in
Right often assume.)“. p. 2.
exhibitions today. Another important factor that I’ve heard
7 Cf. footnote 2.
again and again over the past few years, are the visitors, who
the institutions aim to serve, and who, well, want to see exoticism.
Belinda, you rightly said that you wondered “whether the point
might not precisely be [...] to refuse to cater to these voyeuristic
desires”; I think that yes, it is! That is precisely the point. Taking
criticism seriously should not actually mean to capture it, to use it,
without drawing the obvious conclusions and facing the conse-
quences. It should be about making a radical clean break and com-
pletely rejecting colonial and othering narrative patterns. This
would create conditions that would finally make other things
possible, not just criticism. But of course we don’t want to wait; we
can’t wait. So it seems like we’ll have to continue to resist this kind
of representation, while at the same time insisting that our critique
does not obey its principles, nor does it subscribe to its logic of
visibility. And we must reiterate that we want to see other kinds of
exhibitions now already, that we want to create them. This is where
I want to start. I’m sick of museum debates that try to find a com-
promise between critique and exoticism. The criticism is justified.

22
It calls everything radically into question. This criticism is only the
start; it will open up the path for further demands and negotia-
tions. And I want to finally reach that starting point.

Natalie As I said before, I have been hearing a lot of voices

from the cultural world that want to ‘go a step further’. Paradoxi-
cally, however, the overwhelming majority of the staff in cultural
institutions, as well as those who receive funding, are still the
ones who have explicitly and/or implicitly stabilised the racist
conditions of their own position. When developing new projects
they are reluctant to let anyone meddle with their usual working
methods. Furthermore, there are barely any changes with regard to
structural frameworks and institutional constellations of those
members of staff who have and are given decision-making power
and the freedom to act—realities that the voices of the oppressed,
who nonetheless manage to act, still call attention to.
But the critique of institutions also impacts the cultural
world; there is engagement with various forms of racism, for sure,
as well as attempts to reject and overcome them. However these
approaches are, generally speaking, quite vague, and are often
not much more than ineffective short-term quick fixes with little
long-term impact on common museum practices. In these de-
bates, racism is merely understood as a ‘bad attitude’ and is mainly
interpreted as rightwing extremism and right-wing terror—some-
thing only others do, and that cannot possibly be implicated in
oneself. This is the line of reasoning that informs the constant
rejection I repeatedly observed in the cultural world, when it is
asked to recognise racism as an institutional reality, and to over-
come it.
We cannot give a general answer about how to create and
elaborate anti-racist conditions without at the same time challeng-
ing the respective social situations and constellations of all parties
involved. And we must consider central questions of postcolonial

23
theory: Who is speaking for and about whom? Who and what can
be canonised under what conditions? I would also like to raise the
question of ‘how’, and whether a new canon is a desirable goal
at all. I also urge cultural organisations to effectively change the
foundations they are built on, namely their intellectual references,
goals, strategies and methods, in order to abolish racist binary
thinking, exclusionary dynamics, marginalisation and the common
structures of privilege.
I would also like to firmly re-centre existing interventions,
crossings and disruptions in and around zones of representation,
even if they are usually ignored and erased, because in the long
run they have also allowed for shifts or varying degrees of efficacy
to occur. This is why, for our further discussion, I would like to
drop the usual contrast between a supposedly sealed ‘inside’ and a
critical ‘outside’—even if the museum constantly tries to institu-
tionalise its own parallel universe with explicit and subtle practices
of self-stabilisation. If we are to develop an anti-racist curatorial
practice, we should first understand how and under which condi-
tions social activism and anti-racism have become socially accept-
able in the cultural-political field, and how old and new modes of
racist exclusion nonetheless keep on being reproduced and up-
dated in institutional dynamics. After all, when we strive to estab-
lish an anti-racist practice in the cultural fields, we are working
with these contradictions ourselves.

Appeals—Being Invited, Disagreeing

Nora So we see: something has changed, and yet racist
structures and logics persist. The museum has become a contested
terrain. What role does anti-racist curating play in a racist world?
What can we do? When do we say yes, what do we say yes to? What
new worlds and affirmations do we create? What processes of
unlearning can we initiate? And when must we say no?

24
 Natalie I think that one great misunderstanding lies in the
fact that in cultural/political debates, anti-racist critique is often
only understood as just an appeal, and therefore as only one of
many incidental additional tasks to tend to in everyday institu-
tional life. I understand these kinds of approaches primarily as
being about avoiding conflicts—clearly the museum is more inter-
ested in a calm state of harmony than in pursuing the self-critical
task of seeking solutions with meaningful plans and ideas. Espe-
cially in larger institutions, new programmes and projects then
usually operate mostly on a symbolic level, as a ‘quick ethical fix’,
while the people working on these projects get caught up in their
own contradictions, and in new ones.
The analysis of migration debates in the museum field
show that the cultural-political discourse about migration is often
directly linked to national agendas, programmes and slogans, even
if individual museum practitioners ‘want to open their houses’
and consider themselves to be autonomous institutions. In those
cases, the changes usually only consist in a slight broadening of the
common canon of topics and of the definition of the target audi-
ence in favour of predetermined roles, in order to pacify a few
critical voices. Furthermore, these changes occur more and more
under a new paradigm of participation that is coupled with state
agendas on ‘integration’. The boundaries between speaking, look-
ing, and being exhibited might sometimes be blurred, but paradox-
ically it is precisely these processes that create new boundaries and
new logics of complex rationalities of in- and ex-clusion. It had
become apparent, repeatedly in several cases, that one of the results
of these processes is the separations created by participation in
museum work, that in turn create different subjectivities: those
invited to participate become mere contributors, while those who
issue the invitations become conductors.
Exceedingly few practitioners in these museums really
engage with the inequalities that are embedded in the cultural work

25
of such projects, and that correlate with societal structures. For
who is in a position to define the framework, the process and the
added value of these so-called participatory projects; who can make
decisions that can become reality? The only thing that’s possible
within these settings is the reiteration of similar roles, with a certain
range of variation. But people who do not conform to set defini-
tions—who elude categorisation—are almost never taken into
account. Potential participants who call for more roles, and different
distributions of existing roles within the project setting, are con-
sidered ‘too’ unruly. Furthermore many projects labelled ‘participa-
tory’ don’t really think about their methods and precise aims. Often
they haven’t thought about how to accommodate diverse participants
and their visions. The discourse about ‘opening up cultural institu-
tions’ is often mere lip service that does little to support practices that
create more than just symbolic visibility for marginalised positions.
It is not simply a matter of moral positioning to practise
critique from the perspective of migration; it is a demand to bring
social institutions up to date, and to make them face reality. A fun-
damental paradigm shift is needed, and first and foremost, changes
to how action and distribution are organised in cultural institu-
tions. In order to go beyond the stale logic of compromise that is
often invoked when wishing to harmonise irreconcilable contra-
dictions, I believe that the only effective measures are clean breaks
and the forming of new constellations. This must be preceded by
self-critique—which may be painful—in which everyone involved
understands themselves to be entangled in structures of inequality,
and thus creates an awareness that makes it impossible for anyone
(individual or institution) to claim a position of ‘neutrality’.
I therefore advocate a very pragmatic definition of anti-
racist curating. In my opinion, it consists of taking seriously the
demand for equality and acting accordingly. For this to happen we
need different constellations, methods, concepts, references and
goals than those that are presently still found in the cultural field.

26
 I believe that the first step is to create ‘stumbling blocks’ and
‘holes’ in order to disrupt processes of rationalisation in organisa-
tional and curatorial everyday life. This makes it impossible to pretend
to be above reproach. It also makes it possible to hear the demands
of people who refuse to accept their living conditions in asymmet-
rical, discriminatory power relations, and who thus have to fight
for equality. Therefore, these demands can be a starting point to work
from in the cultural context. I think that this is crucial and necessary
in order to get a solid grasp of the effects of social divisions and
their everyday complex workings that normalise inequality. This is
precisely where fields of action for anti-racist curating can be located.

Nora What does that mean for us? What can we achieve and
what do we want to achieve with regard to institutions, and when
it comes to working in them? Presently we have reached a point
where, while racist politics itself has not changed structurally,
critique of racist politics has been incorporated into cultural insti-
tutions. There is one contemporary example that I find particularly
tricky: the intensity of violence of asylum policy seems to correlate
with the level of desirability and official recognition of artistic
and/or museal cooperation with refugees. Since we are in the midst
of this situation, we are faced with questions such as: When is it
necessary to compromise? And what is the point? I ask this ques-
tion because I assume that there is no ‘outside’. We are in a relation
of dependency whether we work inside or outside of institutions.
For me, the fact that criticism has become part and parcel of
everyday institutional life does not mean that we should 8 María do Mar Castro Varela.
Verlernen und die Strategie des
be fundamentally distrustful of institutions. Rather, like
unsichtbaren Ausbesserns. Bildung
Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak and María do Mar Castro Varela, und Postkoloniale Kritik [Unlearn-
ing and the Strategy of Invisible
I believe in “weaving invisible threads into the already
Mending. Education and Postcolo-
existing texture”.8 But what forms can this take, and when nial Critique]. 2007. www.igbilden
dekunst.at/bildpunkt/2007/wider
does it make more sense to unravel the texture altogether
stand-macht-wissen/varela.htm
rather than keep on weaving? And it seems to me that these

27
 ruptures you mentioned, Natalie, are very important, and I think
that given our state of entanglement, we should insist on them.
The curator and mediator Janna Graham speaks of a ‘para-sitic’
agenda in the context of art mediation, that “this para-sitic agenda
does not claim a position of freedom from these entanglements but
rather the active occupation of this terrain as sites of critique and
struggle. Para-sitic operations might be thought of as those which both
draw from the nurturing and deeply problematic terrain of cultural
institutions, but situate their aims, spaces and constituencies in a here
that is also elsewhere. This elsewhere might be thought of less as a place
and more as a map of affinities, affinities across those who struggle for
9 Janna Graham. Para-sites/ emancipation from the violence of exclusion and exploitation.”9
Para-siten wie wir [Para-sites/
I find this line of thinking to be quite useful for our project.
Para-sites Like Us], in: schnittpunkt,
Beatrice Jaschke, Nora Sternfeld But I would be happy if at this point we could speak in more
(eds), educational turn. Handlungs-
concrete terms...
räume der Kunst- und Kultur-
vermittlung. Vienna: Turia + Kant,
2012. p. 131.
Natalie I like the concept of ‘para-sitic’ as an analytic strategy
and a strategy for action, because it also allows for contradictions
to coexist. Let us examine, for example, the present hype around
dealing with the refugee-and-asylum complex in cultural work.
Self-organised groups and active connected networks have been
combining art, culture and political work for far longer, for exam-
ple, with campaigns, exhibitions and performative actions that
illustrate statements such as “No human being is illegal”, “We will
rise”, “No borders—no nation”, “Fight racism”, “Stop deportations”,
“Bleiberecht jetzt” [right of permanent residence now]. In other
10 Cf. Sandro Mezzadra. Der constellations and regions in the world, self-empowerment
Blick der Autonomie [The view
strategies of marginalised people are central from the get-
of autonomy], in: Projekt Migration
(publication accompanying the go in some cultural and artistic projects, which is not seen
exhibition Projekt Migration, Kölni-
as a contradiction to a kind of art that is typically presented
scher Kunstverein, 30 September
2005–15 January 2006). Cologne: in institutions, nor as something distinct from it.
DuMont and Kunstverlag Köln,
The long ‘summer of migration’ of 2015, in a sense, broad-
2005. p. 794.
ened the insight about the autonomy of migration10 in Europe.

28
Yet local cultural policy agendas about the refugee-and-asylum
complex show the intersections of political and media stagings and
events. Apparently institutions and foundations are only just
becoming aware that because of repressive immigration policies,
there are people living in Europe who have no rights, visibility nor
political representation. Presently everyone is feverishly devel-
oping projects on the topic of refugeeness and people who have
refugee experience, and often beaver away at the notion of ‘partici-
pation’. Non-governmental organisations that work with refugees
are flooded with requests from artists looking to find refugees for
their art projects. The commitment and interest in more sustained
aid that emerged in civil society in this context was much broader
than envisaged by regulatory state practice.11 Many people 11 Cf. Ilker Ataç, Stefanie Kron,
Sarah Schilliger, Helge Schwiertz,
who were not explicitly active politically came in contact
Maurice Stierl. Kämpfe der Migra-
with people who they had only heard of in political debates tion als Un-/Sichtbare Politiken
[Migration Struggles as In/Visible
and in the media, and they have shown a level of commit-
Policies], in: movements. Journal
ment that was a first for them. It also illustrates the reality für kritische Migrations- und Grenz-
regimeforschung [movements.
of a society slow to catch up with the reality of migration
Journal of Critical Migration and
as a social fact. Border Regime Research], 1, no 2
(2015). http://movements-
Here and there, some cultural institutions and mu-
journal.org/issues/02.kaempfe/01.
seums also react with projects and abstract humanitarian ataç,kron,schilliger,schwiertz, stierl--
einleitung.html
declarations of intent. But I get the impression that many
cultural activities are nothing but performative, staged gestures.
Take for example Kultur öffnet Welten [Culture Opens Worlds], an
initiative by Monika Grütters, the German Secretary of State for
Culture and Media, in collaboration with the Conference of Min-
isters of Education and Cultural Affairs. The idea was for cultural
institutions to have one week per year during which they offer pro-
grammes for migrants, and especially for refugees, as a welcome
gesture and a signal of their willingness “to build bridges for mutual
understanding”.12. At the same time, also in 2015, the German 12 Monika Grütters. Kultur
öffnet Welten [Culture Opens
Cultural Council on the one hand called for German to be
Worlds], in: Kulturpolitische Mit-
enshrined in the constitution as the country’s common teilungen, no 150 (2015). p. 37.

29
language, and on the other, by opening up the arts and culture fund
for such projects, encouraged the development of arts and culture
initiatives aimed at refugees meant to support them in dealing with
trauma, to counteract boredom in the shelters, and to encourage
communication. It’s obvious that these proposals did not intend to
effect any changes in regard to political, symbolic and cultural rep-
resentation. Artists of the “freie Szene” [German performing arts
scene] have presently also been producing projects in the name of
solidarity and humanity—but for the most part, these projects do
not even begin to superficially change the conditions of their
actions in favour of the ‘solidarity’ they profess.
I don’t advocate an attitude of strict rejection of such proj-
ects, for one can never predict what will happen, and what they
might develop into. But it is important to clarify who can benefit
from the cultural work, how and with which goals, as well as who
can speak and who will be heard. And everyone should engage
with the reality of refugee-ness: What happens, for example, if
people involved in a project face the threat of deportation while
the project is underway, or right after? How do artists, cultural
workers, project organisers etc. then deal with the fact that the
asymmetries of their programmes become very apparent when it
comes to concrete decision-making or action? Can the positions
of those involved change in the course of such cultural project
situations? Can these projects, which are limited in time and
space, have a concrete impact on the institutions themselves, their
contexts and constellations, as well as on societal and political
contexts? Who will act in and with institutions in the future?

Belinda I would like to follow up on Natalie's point about

imagining clean breaks in all areas of the institution, as well as her
observation that the question of who speaks for and about whom
is still relevant. I find it important to add something: lately I have
also increasingly been wondering what it is that we really want

30
from these institutions that have for many years been well aware
of the polyphonic criticism voiced by theorists, activists, artists
etc., and who like to invite us punctually, on specific occasions, to
comment on specific themes.
It always reminds me of May Ayim's poem gegen leber-
wurst-grau – für eine bunte republik. talk-talk-show für den bla-
bla-kampf, [against liver-sausage-grey—for a colourful republic.
talk-talk-show for the bla-bla-struggle], in which she discusses how
elections prompt the ‘discovery’ of the existence of migrants, peo-
ple of colour, and Black people. The poem perfectly describes these
knee-jerk policies of invitation that we just talked about:

zu besonderen anlässen
und bei besonderen ereignissen
aber besonders
kurz vor
und kurz nach den wahlen
sind wir wieder gefragt
werden wir wieder wahrgenommen
werden wir plötzlich angesprochen
werden wir endlich einbezogen
sind wir auf einmal unentbehrlich
werden wir sogar
eingeflogen
auf eure einladung versteht sich
als “liebe ausländische mitbürgerInnen”
ohne bürgerrechte natürlich als migrantinnen
aus aller herren länder
als experten in sachen rassismus
als “betroffene” […]13

31
 on special occasions
and for special events
but especially
shortly before
and shortly after the elections
we are in demand again
we get noticed again
suddenly we are interpellated
finally we are factored in
suddenly we are indispensable
even get
flown in
upon your invitation
that says “dear foreign citizen”
without civil rights, of course
as migrant women
from countries all over the world
as experts in matters of racism
as “the people in question” [...]13
13 May Ayim. gegen leber-
wurstgrau—für eine bunte repu-
So what is it that we expect from a collaboration? And under
blik. talk-talk-show für den
bla-bla-kampf, in: Blues in what conditions does each individual—in all the multiplici-
Schwarz-Weiß. Berlin: Orlanda
ties of their internalised roles—engage in collaborations?
Frauenverlag, 2005. pp. 62–63.
Is it the resources? The exposure? What exactly do we want
to achieve in and with institutions? It’s important to be very
clear.
Furthermore, I would like to address the unwieldy structures
of established museums, universities, etc.; I want to ask, even if
it sounds trite: to what extent have the institutions allowed for
activist/migrant/anti-racist approaches to be reflected on the level
of permanent staff, in all areas? I'm not talking about the one
migrant/of colour/Black person in the museum/university etc.
who always gets dragged into the spotlight when it comes to

32
outward-facing self-representation, while the embarnacled internal
structures pat themselves on the back and congratulate themselves
for being so ‘colourful’ and ‘diverse’, as they love to say.14 14 Cf. Belinda Kazeem-
Kamiński. Engaged Pedagogy.
This is why I don’t just want to think about how
Antidiskriminatorisches Lehren und
representation should be shaped, but I want to address Lernen bei bell hooks [Engaged
Pedagogy. Anti-Discriminatory
social and economic resources, as well as related design
Teaching and Learning in the Work
possibilities. It is imperative that we go further and finally of bell hooks]. Vienna: Zaglossus,
2016. pp. 145–147.
ask ourselves how these people (who, as Audre Lorde so
beautifully puts it, “were never meant to survive”,15 and whose 15 Audre Lorde, The Black
Unicorn: Poems. New York: W. W.
mere existence already constitutes an antithesis to this
Norton & Company, 1995. p. 31.
heteronormative, colonial European project) can survive at
all in these racist, heterosexist, ableist spaces. I choose the notion
of ‘survival’ deliberately, and in the same sense as how Creative
Collectivity, a collective of QTIBPoC artists, activist and culture
workers from the UK, use it in their Surviving Art School: An Artist
of Colour Tool Kit,16 because for some of us, these are not 16 Evan Ifekoya, Raisa
Kabir, Raju Rage, Rudy Lowe.
fanciful themes, the question is indeed “to be or not-being-
Surviving Art School: An Artist of
able-to-be”. How to survive art school? How to survive uni- Colour Tool Kit. Nottingham:
Collective Creativity and Notting-
versity? How to survive the museum?
ham Contemporary, 2017.
When we reflect upon the current situation, it be- http://qtipoccollectivecreativity.tu
mblr.com
comes obvious that the social and economic distribution
of resources at best boils down to invitation policies along the lines
of “Come into our museum as refugees/activists/critical curators
and contribute to this exhibition, but please leave straight away
after it’s taken down OK thanks bye”. This is also due to the fact
that there are hardly any connectors between institution and ac-
tivist/migrant contexts, which could facilitate the latter’s proper
induction and permanent inclusion. Not to mention that this con-
necting ‘hyphen’ function tends to be quite strenuous and taxing,
given that it is usually an isolated position.
If one is only offered a small slot in the evening programme,
my opinion is set: I think that it is better to say no, to strategi-
cally refuse these mechanisms, and to stick to the self-organised

33
networks in which we do this work on representation anyway.
I say this as someone who is marked as ‘other’ in regards to the
dominant society, but who also holds EU citizenship, has access
to the labour market, a job in an institution etc., so it’s easier for
me to say no to things for strategic reasons. For me, my personal
projects constitute an interesting in-between stage in which
institutions have to hold back and accept that I am bringing know-
ledge to the table that they don’t have, and that they are dependent
on this ‘resistant’ knowledge. This, of course, is connected to a
multitude of underlying needs, ranging from serious political
concerns to issues of representation. It might be possible to reach
an open deal: to exchange resources, modalities of access, etc. for
your knowledge. These types of projects can be used strategically
to benefit the further development of self-organised structures,
provided of course that the institution is not located at the other
end of my own political spectrum.
The best case scenario—and the most fulfilling—is when
you get more than just a ‘deal’, more than a quid pro quo. Contrary
to the logic of the museum, the point of this kind of collabora-
tion is not to develop a final presentable product (protective of the
audience’s feelings), but a process that is not restricted to the levels
of content and topic. Rather, the point is to engage with structures
and examine how they are reproduced within the institution, and
to think about, for example, a possible redistribution of resources,
staffing, etc. This would require institutions to be open to dis-
ruptions, criticism and negotiation, also in terms of the possible
curatorial framing of such a collaboration. Because for me this
approach also means that it is likely that audience expectations will
not be met. What can the audience do in this regard, how can they,
in the best case, get involved? One of the crucial questions is how
we might be able to convey the joyful spirit of resistance, and
whether that is even possible. It should, however, not dictate the
curatorial terms of our work.

34
 I would like to pick up on the image that you invoked, Nora,
weaving in of invisible threads—I find this image encouraging; it
inspires subversion. If we aim to work against the logic of a white
supremacist capitalist system, weaving invisible threads into a
preexisting structure is an important process. The invisibly inter-
woven threads are necessary in order to make the existing structure
more permeable, looser—to destabilise the system, as it were. But
we should not stop there, because the way this system is designed
is that those who are deemed ‘other’ are the ones who will burn
out resisting. In other words, it is important not to forget to weave
(if one can even still call it weaving) something new, something
different, and not to focus solely on the interweaving of these
invisible threads into the existing texture.

Appropriations—How Do We Deal With

the Violence Within Us?
Nora That makes a lot of sense, Belinda. And I think it is only
possible if we don’t forget that struggles in and around institutions
are only a small part of other, bigger, questions and struggles. Anti-
racist curating is devoted to these questions and struggles, even if
this creates obvious contradictions to institutional logics. These
contradictions may even be the most important thing to consider
in regards to the question of either ‘working with institutions’
or ‘leaving institutions’. One issue that I would like to address in
this context is how difficult it is to work towards abolishing racist
structures from within these very structures. You explained it
so well, Belinda: if there is no outside, and if everything that we
do in institutions is always entangled in matrixes of power and
violence, then to practice anti-racist curating seems like quite a big
challenge. Why do I want to do it nonetheless? Because I believe
that curatorial work can change what is visible, effable and think-
able, in order for another possible world to become imaginable,

35
 and to at least practise another way of acting. Having said that, so
many questions then come up next, about replicating dynamics of
power and violence.
What I am hoping for is more than western institutions self-
critically gazing at their reflection in a mirror, in some niche, at
best. The self-reflexive circle reproduces many exclusions. After all,
the core question is, what becomes visible when the ‘West’ is no
longer taken as the measure of everything. What becomes con-
ceivable, imaginable, possible when institutions finally stop divid-
ing everything into the ‘West’ and the ‘rest’? Global intellectual
voices reject the binary categorisation imposed on them, and call
for the museum to (be) decolonise(d); they want to be able to
imagine a different future.17
17 In an interview with the In dealing with works by postcolonial artists like Kerry
German newspaper Die Zeit,
James Marshall, I realised that it is not that easy to imagine
published on 21 January 2016,
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung such a future as a tabula rasa. The powerful and sad last
speaks of an African Futures
chapter of Frantz Fanon's The Wretched of the Earth18, which
Festival in Johannesburg.
www.zeit.de/2016/02/humboldt- deals with the many traumas left behind by the Algerian
forum-documenta-kurator-bona
liberation struggle, taught me to ask: while in the best case
venture-ndikung
scenario we might defeat the colonisers, what do we do
18 Frantz Fanon. The Wretched
with the colonisation within ourselves? This question is at
of the Earth. New York: Grove
Press, 1963. the heart of any desire for radical change. And I think we
can only confront it if we understand that it is not only
great gestures that thwart the reproduction of social relations of
violence, but also small steps. Precisely because it’s also about
the hopes, dreams, desires and visions of anti-racist curators them-
selves, because it’s also about their anger and their self-hatred,
the extent to which they/we can rely on their/our intuition is
limited—and yet, there is nothing else that they/we can rely on.
Luckily, they/we are not alone, despite how isolated their/our
individual situations might be, structurally speaking: anti-racist
curating is only possible as a collective endeavour. I suggest we look
at artistic strategies of appropriation in order to develop a kind of

36
counter-performativity, to pursue an active unlearning of racist
structures. Since there is no other desire nor knowledge than that
produced within social matrixes of power and violence, resistance
must act from within and against this framework, and subvert
these conditions against themselves. We see how every radical
change requires both clean breaks and small steps. I believe that
curating can actualise this performative appropriation of exist-
ing power relations, as small steps towards changing them and
heralding another possible world—this is why I continue to do
what I do.

Belinda European historiography is conceived as a mono-

logue (a polyphonic monologue, sure, but it is a polyphony made
up of many voices that all sound the same when it comes to the
content they sing about) written by the winners that hinges on the
erasure of those who were deemed to be too ‘other’, who were
declassified. And even though we know that people have disagreed
with that historiography—have objected, resisted, rejected, consis-
tently and in many forms—these mechanisms that are built into
mainstream historical narratives still exist today, and are com-
pelling, also with regard to our own desires. It is therefore crucial
to remain attentive to the narratives that have been planted within
ourselves, to continuously work with and against these narratives,
in order not to also remain stuck in monological, linear and sim-
plified structures. It’s important to take this desire as a starting
point, to explore its ambivalence, to use it to continually resist
mental colonisation. The goal here is not only to labour away at
something, to push back against something, but—in the spirit of
bell hooks—to be able to finally work towards realising our future-
facing visions. Like you, Nora, I also believe that “there is no other
desire and no other knowledge than that which is produced
within social matrixes of power and violence”—and yet, I want to
join Audre Lorde in believing that by working with our desire, by

37
19 Audre Lorde. Sister Outsider. working on our desire, we can develop tools that won’t be
Essays and Speeches. New York:
used to build the master’s new house.19 I hope that we will
Crossing Press, 2007. pp. 110–113.
never be done with this work, for as you say in your book
20 Nora Sternfeld. Kontakt-
zonen der Geschichtsvermittlung.
Kontaktzonen der Geschichtsvermittlung. Transnationales Lernen
Transnationales Lernen über den über den Holocaust in der postnazistischen Migrationsgesell-
Holocaust in der postnazistischen
Migrationsgesellschaft [Contact
schaft,20 I believe that “the goal is an ongoing confrontation and
Zones in the Education of History. engagement with the past, and an active remembrance that can
Transnational Learning About the
Holocaust in Post-Nazist Migra-
never be put to rest”. The point is precisely to withstand this
tion Society]. Vienna: Zaglossus, unresolvable situation, and the necessity to constantly
2013. p. 7.
rearticulate one’s own frame of reference.
In summary, anti-racist curating—or, in other words,
curating aiming to disrupt discrimination and related conditions
of injustice—is always a break with the heteronormative, classic,
ableist, racist status quo that we find embodied in the world and
in ourselves. This kind of work is tremendously complex and
educational, and everyone involved gains knowledge in the process.
It calls for concerted action by many people interested in destabil-
ising certainties on multiple levels. Therefore I totally agree with
you, Nora: this form of curating cannot possibly be imagined in
isolation, but only as a collaborative process in which one must
also examine one’s own (non)situatedness, and must be able to
stomach ruptures, friction and discomfort.

Natalie Against the backdrop of the critique that we have

articulated here, and that many others have voiced before us and
with us, I wonder what museums and exhibition-making should
actually be in the present, why and how? Is it about creating or
defending spaces of remembrance of a world not easily grasped
and portrayed? Is it about presenting visionary depictions of a
better life in a utopian society that is free of discrimination, and
for which there is no blueprint? Why do we want to work in cul-
tural institutions that are not only still reluctant to face how their
present form is related to their past as key institutions of national

38
imperialism, but also still fail to draw the necessary conclusions
and to provide for democratic conditions.
I must also say that I have become increasingly stumped by
how social coexistence is growing more irrationally polarised.
At the same time, however, we are witnessing the intensified emer-
gence of more forms of solidarity, in a way that I for one have not
witnessed in the last few decades. This antagonism can no longer
be understood simply in the terms offered by the usual critique of
bourgeois nationalist power constellations and capitalist colonial
global politics. In fact, global geopolitics with far more players, his-
toricities and regimes also impact the cultural sphere. A much more
meticulous understanding of local and global affairs is required.
Therefore I wonder, from our own very comfortable critical
perspective, how I as a curator can deal with the fact that we are
directly linked to living conditions premised on extreme inequality.
I would therefore like to talk about the demand for movable
cultural institutions. Like Belinda previously noted, the goal I also
focus on is the redistribution of resources and a restructuring
of organisational hierarchies. But what exactly does that mean?
My question is somewhat blasphemous: how resilient can these
‘invisible threads’—that have been or are to be woven into existing
textures—be? How much strain and pressure can they actually take?
First and foremost, I understand anti-racist curating as a goal
for creating a society—and, by the same token, also institutions—
based on a strict principle of equality. To this end, one must un-
dergo a constant process of analysis-strategy-action as a principle.
This is in order to first comprehend the permanent reconfigura-
tions of racist exclusion and their pervasive ramifications, and
secondly, to accordingly be able to determine the fields of action,
strategies and methods for anti-racist curating. This work needs to
happen relentlessly, perpetually, from as many angles as possible,
and it should be done from outside the polarities of people in
power and mere contributors.

39
21 Édouard Glissant. Poetics Édouard Glissant has shown in Poetics of Relation21 that
of Relation. Translated by Betsy
the complexity and unpredictability of history is a dynamic
Wing. Michigan: University of
Michigan Press, 2010. process of subjectifying and that, in principle, action is
possible, even if for some cases this may sound very cynical.
Having said that, I would however like to emphasise that in the
context of publicly funded institutions, I consider it the responsi-
bility of curating to design processes that more than just a very
small section of society can relate to. Therefore, it is only through
collaboration that a rigorous practice of anti-racist curating can be
conceived of and practised, even if the institutional framework
does not yet provide for it.
22 Mark Terkessidis. In his philosophy of ‘collaboration’22 Mark Terkessidis pre-
Kollaboration. Berlin: Suhrkamp
sents approaches for ensuring that goal-oriented endeavours
Verlag, 2015.
(and their implementation thereof) that aim to benefit con-
temporary social life are really designed as actual public processes.
These processes can then create spaces in which all human beings
can negotiate and act on specific topics, with all the complexities
and needs that come with them.
In the text that follows this conversation, Beyond Repair:
An Anti-Racist Praxeology of Curating, Mark Terkessidis and I
discuss collaboration as an anti-racist principle for cultural insti-
tutions. The concept of anti-racist curating that we are developing
describes a process of gathering, orchestrating, and materialising
many different kinds of knowledge on the same level. One of the
resulting effects that we emphasise blocks the conservative self-
preserving dynamics inherent in cultural institutions by choosing
to not cover up the inevitable ‘gaps’ that become apparent, but
rather to take them seriously as openings and portals.
I want to build meaningful cultural institutions in order
to seek and invent methods and structures for a better life of equal
opportunity for everybody, in the face of a very inequitable society.
This requires participants who are willing to take on decisions
and, above all, who are willing to change, and we need transparent

40
conditions for organising equality. To this end, I would like to create
flexible assemblages.

41
Don’t Get O
If You Are
Over It:
Over It,
Not
Action Over
Representation
Natalie Bayer and
Mark Terkessidis
Beyond Repair. An
Anti-Racist Praxeology
of Curating

The exhibition conceived in 2014 for Haus der Geschichte der

Bundesrepublik Deutschland [House of the History of the Federal
Republic of Germany] in Bonn, on the topic of Germany as an
immigration country, was titled Immer bunter, which translates as
“ever more colourful”. In 2016, the exhibition travelled to the
German Historical Museum in Berlin. In the context of immigra-
tion in 2014, even the term “bunt” [colourful] on its own had a
certain trivialising and trite ring to it, but what was even more baf-
fling was how this was illustrated on the exhibition poster, with
visual tropes drawn straight from the “Multikulti” [multicultural]
discourse of the 1990s in Germany: a corner store with bright ad-
verts on its outer walls advertising kebabs, “Vietnamese specialties”
and hookah. On the one hand, this poster was clearly based on a
culinary notion of society; this representation had already been
criticised two decades earlier for representing immigration as a
backdrop of ‘digestible’ enjoyment for the native audience. On the
other hand, its visuals reduce the effects of migration to a few
superficial clichés: the poster’s visual statement didn’t include the

47
far-reaching effects of the post-migration turn, nor did it represent
the game developers, trade union presidents, judges, doctors, or
real estate agents with a so-called ‘migration background’.
The exhibition itself was just as problematic. Upon entering
the exhibition space of the Berlin exhibition, the first thing that
visitors found themselves faced with was a huge photograph of
five half-naked ‘Mediterranean’-looking men. Another man, fully
clothed and noticeably taller, was leaning down to inspect their
genitals. Above, the words: “Wanted: 50 male workers [...] recruit-
ment agency contract, Spanish workers, 1961”. The photo is from
A Seventh Man—Migrant Workers in Europe, a famous book by
photographer Jean Mohr and writer John Berger, published in
Germany in 1976. Mohr and Berger were anxious to tell a story that
departed from the official narrative, and to show the individuals
in the photographs as active participants in each given context.
However, using this image in the exhibition objectified these men.
Would someone who had come to Germany as a Gastarbeiter [guest
worker] want to see themselves represented like this in the exhibi-
tion? Would descendants of these immigrants want to see their
fathers or grandfathers like this, subjected to fitness tests?
The fact that this photograph was a loan from the DOMiD
(Dokumentationszentrum und Museum über die Migration in
Deutschland, [Documentation Centre and Museum on Migration
in Germany]) makes this reversal of its original context even more
bizarre. This organisation was founded in 1990 by journalists and
intellectuals who had immigrated from Turkey, precisely in order
to centre the visions and memories of former migrants. Even though
DOMiD offered to collaborate on the content of the exhibition,
Immer bunter did not address these perspectives at all. Instead the
exhibition’s position was that of the Federal Republic of Germany.
In this narrative, the real subject of the story is Germany. The story
begins with Germany putting out a call for foreign workers, who
dutifully answer the call and come to Germany; the story ends with

48
these workers having made society more ‘colourful’. While rather
abstract, this perspective nonetheless provided the viewer with an
angle to identify with. Indeed, this purported position of ‘objectiv-
ity’ was represented by the makers of the exhibition themselves—
professors and PhDs who, oddly, were not experts in migration.
At the same time, the typical demographic of visitors to German
museums—well-educated, middle-class Germans without a so-
called ‘migration background’, and school classes from the German
bourgeois educational apparatus—were granted a look at ‘their’
country from a position of professed ‘objectivity’ seen as intrinsic
to that country: ‘we’ observe what happened when ‘they’ entered
‘our’ society. Consequently, the exhibition focuses more on the
prominently placed Zündapp moped—which was gifted to the
millionth ‘guest worker’—than on the actual person it was given
to. This person was Armando Rodrigues de Sá, who died aged 53 of
the health effects of the heavy industrial labour he had done for
his ‘host’ country. Throughout the exhibition, the immigrants’
subjectivity is hardly acknowledged: the only people represented
as full individuals with their own story are those held up as model
examples of ‘successful integration’.
Given the abundance of cultural productions and events
that engage with the topic of migration, it may seem unfair to harp
on about this extraordinarily bad exhibition. But its fundamental
approach exemplifies a number of problems that are often seen in
many visual culture projects, and that stand in sharp contrast to
the principles of ‘anti-racist curating’.
In the German-speaking museum field, ‘curating’ often just
stands for an extremely traditional idea of scientific ‘objectivity’,
disregarding the fact that, almost invariably, this objective approach
produces a perspective that is nation-centred, state-aligned and
bourgeois, especially in the case of historical exhibitions. ‘Scien-
tificality’ is the credo that is almost always invoked when inter-
viewed about how this so-called ‘objectivity’ is defined, and what

49
it aims for. Meanwhile, museum methodologies (and their system
of references) have shown themselves to be self-serving and to
subscribe to a definition of science that fails to consider paradigm
shifts, contemporary debates or new modes of scientific work.
This perspective is produced in a social bubble, a closed
circuit made up of government agencies, ‘museum authorities’,
academic elites and a public recruited from the same social groups.
In the museum field, it seems to be very difficult to think outside
this bubble.

Approaches and Foundations of

Anti-Racist Curating
For curating to be anti-racist, however, it first needs to con-
sider both subjectivity and processes of subjectivation, and needs
to ensure multiperspectivity. It is crucial to explore and question
all narratives and exhibits of an exhibition along different lines of
inquiry. Whose history is being told? Whose perspective is being
privileged? What kind of images are presented? Who reads these
images and how? How have the exhibits been generated? How are
the texts created? Do the narratives and images empower groups
that have hitherto been either underrepresented or represented in
a way that objectifies them? While these are essentially the very
same questions that have—for a long time already—been guiding
the discussions about ‘history from below’ as well as feminist and
postcolonial historiography, it seems that they keep being actively
forgotten.
These kinds of approaches break free from the dictum of
legitimised ‘objectivity’, but this does not mean that they do not
stick to scientific standards. In fact, the opposite applies: for the
work of knowledge production to be thorough and to follow lines
of inquiry that critique representation, it must, methodologically
speaking, operate according to a very precise, tried-and-tested

50
working method that diligently expands and reflects on its own
approaches and processes of knowledge formation, so as to avoid
becoming a stereotype.
By contrast, commercial products such as US television
shows afford such multiperspectivity and subjectivation with ease.
The protagonists are diverse in terms of their social position, back-
ground, and gender, and the storylines always offer an exploration
of their diversity. This approach is nothing but a commercial move
for the financial benefit of the producers. These shows don’t aim
to subjectivise with a hammer or to rigidly deploy principles of
multiperspectivity according to critical angles of representation.
Nonetheless these shows prove that it is possible to convey com-
plexity to a very broad audience.
In the museum, societal plurality had initially been identi-
fied and located solely in the field of education, which still today is
the primary field that deals with questions of migration. However,
a recent self-evaluation conducted by the Tate Museum group found
out that the Tate Britain in London had made a number of mistakes
in regards to cultural diversity, such as developing special educa-
tional programmes that targeted specific ethnic groups. Not only did
the targeted ‘minority’ groups not participate in these programmes,
they actively rejected them. They were not interested in being pre-
sented with an outside representation of ‘their’ ethnic identity, nor
did they care about simplistic postcolonial revisions of art history
aimed at incorporating their respective places of origin. What they
wanted was, quite simply, more complex representations.1 1 Cf. Andrew Dewdney et al.
Britishness and Visual Culture,
London: Tate Modern, 2011.
Same Same but Different
Actually, what would be the ‘anti-racist’ part of anti-racist
curating? First of all, it should be pointed out that in a democratic
society, this is not something that falls into the nice-to-have cate-
gory. In fact, the term “anti-racist curating” is a tautology: within a

51
 society founded on the principles of legal equality and democratic
participation, there can be no such thing as racist curating. In
this text, racism is understood as a system of social inequality,
as a separation into ‘us’ and ‘them’ that works like an apparatus or
dispositif in which exclusionary practices and processes of know-
ledge formation are interdependent and buttress one another.2
2 Cf. Mark Terkessidis. Exclusionary practices are understood as the material discri-
Psychologie des Rassismus.
mination of certain groups in society with regards to the
Opladen/Wiesbaden: VS Verlag
für Sozialwissenschaften, 1998. distribution of services and resources, as well as their con-
pp. 74–81.
siderable over- or under-representation within the social
hierarchy.
The term ‘racialisation’ denotes a process of knowledge
formation that explains and legitimises the disadvantages produced
by exclusionary practices, which should not exist in a democratic
society. It rationalises discriminations with this explanation: that
certain groups of people have not reached equality is due to their
alleged inherent negative characteristics, such as lower intelligence,
lack of ambition, or even laziness.
The ‘racist knowledge’ we are speaking of is more than just
‘prejudice’ and the false judgements of misguided individuals: it is
a repository of knowledge shared by an entire society. This knowl-
edge operates like an inverted mirror: if one wants to see one’s
‘own’ society as civilised, peaceful, nonviolent, philo-semitic, non-
sexist and gay-friendly, then the Others will be seen as inherently
uncivilised, cruel, violent, anti-semitic, and oppressive to women
and queer people. The structural analysis of ‘racist knowledge’
doesn’t focus on whether or not people who are categorised in
certain groups according to certain stereotypes dis-/agree with
these stereotypes in relation to their own or other perceived
groups. The analysis is more concerned with the process of racial-
isation, which defines a group of people as a natural group according
to certain characteristics, and, in addition, articulates the perceived
essence of said group in relation to one's own group.

52
 Therefore, anti-racist curating must counter exclusionary
practices, especially if the exhibition—understood as a ‘service’—
is funded by government grants intended to benefit the entire
population.
At present, institutions are far from being inclusive: all stud-
ies show that only five to ten percent of the population are regular
visitors to these institutions, and out of these, most are members
of German educated middle-class majorities. This does not mean
that these visitors are a homogeneous demographic group—they
are made up of very different social milieus, each formed around
specific situations, that each have different expectations when it
comes to exhibitions.
The argument frequently invoked in cultural institutions in
German-speaking countries is that ‘culture’ is a programme designed
for the elite that does not reach the lower classes. According to this
position, the popular slogan of the “new cultural policy” movement
of the 1970s, “Kultur für alle” [culture for all], is just not realistic.
The veracity of this claim need not be discussed here, since
this argument does not absolve curating from having to constantly
work towards creating conditions for ‘accessibility’. This does not
mean that a curator would have to negate their own authority or
focus on the smallest common denominator of popular taste. It is
also not about the audience per se, nor about ‘audience develop-
ment’—it is about the process of curating itself.
The approach we suggest allows for many points of access,
engagement and collaboration to be created, for example, when
developing the idea; establishing concepts and thinking about
how to convey them; during technical planning and exhibition
set-up, etc. Therefore the task is to pull curating out of this bubble.
However, curating has its own limits: it cannot transform existing
and historical social inequalities. Anti-racist curating must be care-
ful not to be instrumentalised as a propaganda tool, or touted as an
easy solution to the problem of racism in society. The crucial point

53
is to ensure that the process of curating is anti-racist itself. From
here, it can become one of several necessary social points of depar-
ture, through which curating may work towards social equality.

Working With the Assembly

Another argument frequently used against these efforts to
open up curatorial practice is the claim that the realm of the aes-
thetic infringes upon the freedom of art. German law defines free-
dom of art as an asset that must be protected and supported. So far
however, lawmakers have failed to consider whose art it is that
actually enjoys this freedom. The criteria for defining a "cultural
asset" are extremely vague, and are themselves part of broader social
arrangements. If cultural institutions are used only by a relatively
small group of people, this group then constitutes a network that
doubles as the social pool to which the art professionals belong,
whom these institutions serve as a platform.
When Mustafa Akça started the project Türkisch—Oper kann
das at the Komische Oper in Berlin in 2011, he noticed that there
was not a single child of Turkish origin in the opera’s children's
choir. This seemed astonishing, given the vast number of people
of Turkish descent living in Berlin: how, he wondered, had the
opera managed to keep away all the potential candidates? It had to
do, of course, with the networks that institutions of high culture
usually tap into to recruit young talent. This illustrates how impor-
tant it is to expand the milieu of art professionals.
In the exhibition itself, it is also crucial to pay attention to
the processes of knowledge formation and knowledge per se, i.e.
anti-racist curating must avoid objectification and racialisation.
To ensure this, collaboration is essential. While objectification and
racialisation can certainly be identified relatively easily when they
occur from a normative perspective, this normative perspective—
equality, democracy—may still fail to recognise subjective aspects

54
due to its ‘colour blindness’. The makers of the exhibition Immer
bunter would certainly ascribe to these values. However, collabo-
rative work with a broader scope could have helped to not only
question their own perspective, but also to bring into equation
what Michel Foucault calls “subjugated knowledges”, i.e. “unquali-
fied, even directly disqualified knowledges [...] which involve
what I would call a popular knowledge (le savoir des gens) though
it is far from being a general commonsense knowledge, but is on
the contrary a particular, local, regional knowledge, a differential
knowledge incapable of unanimity and which owes its force only
to the harshness with which it is opposed by everything surround-
ing it.”3 Foucault cites as examples the knowledges of the 3 Michel Foucault. Historical
Knowledge of Struggles, Genealo-
psychiatric patient, of the ill person, and also of nurses and
gies, and Scientific Discourse, in:
doctors, if their knowledge differs from that of medicine. Power/Knowledge: Selected Inter-
views and Other Writings, 1972–
In regards to anti-racist curating, we are speaking about
1977, ed. Colin Gordon. New York:
knowledges that—by virtue of the marginalisation of their Pantheon Books, 1980, p. 82.

perspectives—affords an insight into the mechanics of

objectification and racialisation.
In in his 1970s graphic work, Dragutin Trumbetaš has, like
many other migrant artists, chronicled the transformation in the
everyday life and work of Gastarbeiter [guest workers], and urban-
ity in Frankfurt am Main. He developed a unique artistic mode
of representation, as well as his own repertoire of research meth-
ods. This kind of perspective from the ‘periphery’ right within the
centre had been sorely missing in official representations. Migrant
artists in Germany had only been semi-visible, their work pigeon-
holed as ‘guest worker art’, ‘foreigner art’ or ‘intercultural art’ (or
some other catch-all othering category), which at best would only
be dealt with by some marginal socio-culture centres. Some of
these artists rejected these straitjackets, resisted curatorial en-
croachment on their own work, and demanded the right to self-
define; Trumbetaš, for example, pulled out of an exhibition right
before the opening.

55
 Several “struggles of migration” (Manuela Bojadžijev) have
taken place in German-speaking Europe, but none of these gave
rise to a large-scale movement comparable to those in the US, nor
did they produce interpretational criteria (for racism) or historical
remembrance of social struggles and social exclusion.
Collaboration is a principle that makes excellent sense in
order to create multi-perspectival knowledge, and to deal with this
gap curatorially. In the context of cultural work, however, close
attention must be paid to collaboration in order to avoid the
common risk of only involving people and organisations that, from
the get-go, buttress a perspective that already forms a hegemony,
and who are not concerned with equality and inclusion.

Curating the Overflow of Knowledge

What has been shown by critiques of cultural institutions
and migrants’ struggles for visibility within the master narrative,
by the right to determine representations of themselves, by break-
ing up the hierarchy of knowledge processes, and by bringing
about changes in staff, is that official platforms of representation
do not relate enough to the multiplicity of subjectivities that are
present within a society. Who participates in the process of design-
ing visions for another, new museum, and how do they go about
it? How can a fair distribution in the production of multiperspec-
tivity be ensured?
Despite being commonly placed in categorical margins,
many cultural forms and platforms have developed over time.
They generate new and intriguing concepts for cultural work by
using multiperspectival narratives, de-hierarchised approaches
to history, and self-determined historiographies and modes of
representations.
DOMiD had already acquired Trumbetaš’ work when the or-
ganisation was first established, as part of their growing collection

56
of documents and objects that were to form the basis for their
planned Museum of Migration in Germany. From the very be-
ginning it had been conceived as a museum not for and about
migrants, but about Germany as an immigration country, in order
to allow for a new culture of remembrance. Aytac Eryilmaz, one of
the founders and DOMiD’s first director, stressed that the organi-
sation was aiming for a completely different museum, a “labora-
tory for migrant self-empowerment and participation”4 4 Aytaç Eryılmaz. Ein Migra-
tionsmuseum in Deutschland—
and a space of equal rights to authorship. From 2015, new
kulturpolitische und soziale
strategic steps were taken towards realising the museum Bedeutung [Cultural-Political and
Social Significance of a Museum
project; its updated concept is now a thematic park and a
of Migration in Germany]. Paper
group of buildings on a bridge.5 presented at Expert Meeting on
Migration Museums conference,
In hindsight it becomes clear that with the DOMiD
Rome, October 2006. p. 6.
museum project, the initial idea, the latest concept, and
5 Cf. Auf dem Weg. Ein
everything in-between, were all born out of networked
Forum für die Zukunft: Das zentrale
collaborations in different constellations. Migrationsmuseum [On the Way.
A Forum for the Future: The
This work style also characterises the French asso-
Central Museum of Migration].
ciation Génériques, founded in 1987 by immigrants and Köln: DOMiD e.V., 2016.

political activist intellectuals for the most part, in order to

conduct research and act as an umbrella organisation for cultural
projects on migration in France. From the outset, the association’s
work has been multi-pronged and operating on multiple levels. In
addition to running their own exhibitions, collections and research
work, Génériques also acts as consultants for private individuals
and small organisations across the country, dealing with questions
of archiving and advising them on how to develop their own
sources. Through their cooperation with these local groups as well
as with national organisations, Génériques has been able to create
a wide range of possibilities for research, storage and profession-
alisation. Networking has proven to be a useful strategy to expand
the scope for action. Through networking and collaboration,
DOMiD and Génériques were able to expand their collections and
multiply research activities.

57
 Textures for Shifts
Self-organised, small and non-centralised projects and plat-
forms often have no other choice but to practice multiplication at
different levels, given their very limited resources. The organisa-
tional diagram of Theater X in Berlin, for example, is not a pyramid
with only one person at the top with exclusive decision-making
power. Instead, Theater X is led by a working group of young people
who collectively decide on all areas of the theatre, while decisions
regarding central affairs are taken by young people and employees
of the JugendtheaterBüro Berlin, together, as a cooperative company.
Similarly, Wienwoche, an art and culture festival in Vienna,
is also collectively helmed by several people who are jointly respon-
sible for artistic direction and management. For its annual festival,
the team publishes an open call that explicitly addresses: “artists,
workers, refugees, cultural workers, activists, researchers, students,
migrants, unemployed people, regardless of citizenship, residence
permit or work permit, of any gender, age or size” to take part in
6 Nataša Mackuljak and Ivana Wienwoche.6 The website provides a great deal of detailed
Marjanović. Open Call Wienwoche
information about the application process, criteria, the
2018. www.wienwoche.org/en/
465/projekte selection process and the jury, as concrete measures to
facilitate the participation of cultural creators with little or no
previous experience in the fields of art and culture. In addition,
the management team holds public information sessions, offers
consultation services for applicants, and supports participants
throughout the production process. The festival is not about pre-
defined artistic aspects, but about processes that create spaces for
socio-political action.
7 Cf. Richard Griswold del There are more experiences and interesting examples of
Castillo, Teresa McKenna, Yvonne
this type of collaboration in the US—for example, the exhi-
Yarbro-Bejarano. Chicano Resist-
ance and Affirmation, 1965–1985. bition Chicano Art. Resistance and Affirmation, 1965–1985, at
Los Angeles: Wight Art Gallery,
the Wight Art Gallery, at UCLA.7 For more than a year, the
1991.
exhibition’s Advisory Committee was made up of 40 to 50

58
“Chicano scholars, artists, and administrators”. They determined a
basic curatorial framework that stipulated that the focus would be
on art (rather than ethnic artefacts) and that “Chicano sensibilities”
would be integral to the installation, design and communication
aspects. As these demands had come out of the highly politicised
Chicano movement in the US, the participants were evidently
highly aware of and well-trained in the issues at stake.

Collaborative Curating
In the cultural and institutional framework of a museum, col-
laborative curating shifts the focus away from the final product and
towards processes of emergence. If a museum aims to look beyond
its own backyard, to have positive effects, and to be meaningful for
a broader social spectrum, it must begin by departing from current
routine procedures when developing museum displays.
This was particularly evident when working on a museum
display about the ruthless series of murders and bomb attacks com-
mitted by the far-right terrorist NSU, the so-called National Socialist
Underground. Until the murderers were finally exposed in 2011, it
had been the victims and their communities who were suspected
of having committed these crimes—despite the total absence of
evidence—and accused of being entangled in criminal dealings
“among migrants”. Despite all investigations in this direction coming
to a dead end, authorities ignored the many statements pointing
to the actual perpetrators and their links to far-right terrorist
circles. They also delegitimised voiced hypotheses that these were
racist hate crimes. The politics of the gaze that arose in regards to
these crimes was based on state authorities, or bodies representing
the state, ostracising the victims from any legitimate belonging
to German society, and defining them as imagined outsiders. The
victims’ families were severely affected by the consequences of
how institutional racism was reiterated in the criminal proceedings

59
 and media representations: they suffered long-term social stigma
and exclusion, which, in turn, continues to shape narratives of the
“NSU complex” and the ongoing examination about facts and back-
grounds. To this day, the perspectives of the victims, their families
and communities remain marginalised. So far, most media reports
and art projects have primarily focused on individual perpetrators,
rather than recognising structural large-scale state failure, while
objectifying the victims.
Curating can only develop a mode of representation that
fractures the allegedly ‘objective’ perspective (that turned out to be
one-sided and completely wrong) on the basis of unconditional
inclusion of the parties that had hitherto been erased and silenced.
Only then can it allow for other cultural subjectivities to become
manifest. When developing the concept for an exhibition display
at the Münchner Stadtmuseum [Munich City Museum], curator
Natalie Bayer (co-author of this article) deliberately chose the knowl-
edge and questions of the families of the two Munich men mur-
dered by the NSU as the jumping-off point. Why, they asked, had
Theodoros Boulgarides and Habil Kılıç been chosen to be killed, of
all people? Why these two rather inconspicuous citizens, based in
unspecific urban locations in Munich? Why did society choose to
ignore clear indications that racist motives were obviously at play
in these murders? Why have people who recognise and call out
institutional racism been systematically ignored and sidelined—
and continue to be—for being migrant voices? Why did the nor-
malisation of racist violence in Germany manifest itself even in
the language used to describe the series of murders?8 Who do the
right-wing terrorist murders and attacks aim to address?
8 Translator's note: Curatorially, the first step was to reach out personally to the
The NSU murders were dubbed
victims’ relatives, who had experienced state institutions to
"Döner-Morde" in the press, which
translates as “the döner kebab be very untrustworthy. This way, the idea of historicising
murders”—a trivialising, clichéd
the murders of family members in a museum, as a public
and racist designation.
narrative, became something that needed to be discussed

60
and explained. This idea became an object of negotiations that re-
quired transparency about the institutional process and solutions
to new challenges: How is history written on the exhibition stage
and behind the scenes? How can the authority for decisions about
personal mementos remain in the hands of their owners when the
design of the institutional framework does not provide for this?
By working together, the curators and families found a way
to address these questions that are not usually dealt with at all in
regular museum procedures. Despite the restrictive framework,
collaboration made it possible for the bereaved and the curator to
be actively involved in developing the display, and to make deci-
sions regarding content, exhibits, as well as the display’s placement
within the museum.
The position assumed by the murder victims’ relatives was
almost like the other museum employees. While working on the
display, they were also vested with the authority to negotiate mean-
ing, for instance with regard to the production of all texts of the
exhibition display.

New Frameworks for Anti-Racist

Cultural Institutions
In anti-racist curating, participants collaboratively develop
ways for displays to convey meanings and narratives that depart
from the classic principle of self-contained explanations. What
does it mean to work ‘collaboratively’ when the power to act and
make decisions is bound up in a hierarchy? Theodoros Boulgarides’
relatives did not expect the curator to work in this way. They did
not insist on creating the narratives and the visual presentation
themselves, nor did they want gestures towards a symbolic repair
of an irretrievable loss.
Rather, they repeatedly asked the cultural institution the
question “why?”. This allowed for a dialogue to emerge that is still

61
 ongoing, in which the positions of who is speaking and who is
listening, who is creating and who is observing, are not fixed, in
which these roles remain flexible.
For Bayer, collaborative curating does not mean placing
ideas, concepts and one’s own position either behind or in front
of the subjectivities involved, but rather side by side, in order to
work together.9
9 Ayşe Güleç, co-founder of The exhibition at the Munich City Museum does not pretend
Initiative 6. April and the action
to speak for the victims’ families and communities, nor to
group NSU-Komplex auflösen,
describes her approach in similar be able to redress the injustice. Yet the narrative articula-
terms.
ted through the display does not fix the people who have
come to harm into absolute positions of passive victims. Rather, it
gathers the knowledge of different people who are pushed to the
margins in relation to the NSU complex, and, in so doing, show-
cases hitherto unheard urban and historical dimensions of Munich
as a migration city.
Therefore, collaborative curating aims to de-monopolise
museum language. To this end, organisations must be flexible and
‘pliable’, and must be able to break through restrictive, closed and
predetermined sequences. In collaboration, the focus lies on the
process that takes place before the exhibition concept is drafted,
before the displays are designed, and before the museum narrative
is articulated. Consequently, such a museum practice develops an
administrative correlation that takes into account the positions
of everyone involved. This inevitably produces situational shifts
and role changes. This kind of anti-racist curating is therefore best
understood as an ever-evolving practice of asking questions, search-
ing, and correlating.
One can only speculate as to whether collaborative curating
can really influence and change societal structures, policies and
debates, and how. ‘Reprogramming’ curating in the museum
towards an anti-racist, equitable society can be an attempt and an
exercise in changing the architecture of governance, and in shifting

62
power relations. However, when considering the dynamics of
collaboration, as long as access to social, cultural and economic
resources remains unequal, the inequity in relation to who can
even speak must be acknowledged.
And yet it is possible to act in accordance with explicitly
anti-racist objectives and methods within the structure of a mu-
seum. The potential of collaborative curating lies in its ability to
bring together many different individuals, and to multiply the
different positions they represent. However, new forms of organ-
isation must be developed in order to accommodate the knowl-
edge, the overflowing wealth of ideas, and the pronounced desire
to act of marginalised people, whose presence and contributions
are so urgently needed in cultural institutions. The apprehensions
often voiced in regards to this way of working—the idea that such
an approach misses the point of a museum’s purpose and scope, or
might lead to ‘diminished scholarly or artistic quality’—are based
on rigid, antiquated views of the museum as a self-contained box.
But it is now more important than ever to restructure the museum,
given the current exacerbation of social rifts along inherited,
updated and new forms of racism. Likewise, the structure of rep-
resentation is becoming more and more inadequate, since the very
ideas of representation standing in for someone or something—
portraying and standardising an entity—are still based on a selec-
tive, reductionist and limiting definition of what a ‘group’ is. Modern
democracy might afford a certain heterogeneity in this regard, but
one that remains limited by certain predefined criteria, and thus
does not offer the necessary space for real ebullient plurality.
Collaborative curating thus allows for organising curated
collaboration and non-reduction. In cultural institutions sincerely
dedicated to this principle, there would be no need for explicitly
anti-racist curating, as it would be a given. In that case, the focus
would be on shared interests, in terms of content, ideas, improve-
ments and changes—and, above all, on doing exciting cultural work.

63
Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
Unearthing.
In Conversation1
 This is in remembrance of those to come.
This is in anticipation of those that are.
This is in conversation with those that were.
We are.

1 For an in-depth discussion The first time I encounter you, is in Frankfurt.

of the theoretical and artistic back-
2014. I look at old ethnographic materials,
ground of the video ‘Unearthing.
In Conversation’ (2017) see the photographs taken by an ethnographer and his collaborators.
Fall issue 2018 of The Journal of
Critical Ethnic Studies, a peer-
review journal published by the There is a connection, something that clings to me—
University of Minnesota, edited by
the immediacy of a colonial flashback, an uncanny familiarity
Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang.
See more here: http://www.critical lingers.
ethnicstudiesjournal.org/

My eyes are meeting yours.

I wish that you would open up and tell me what you were
thinking, while standing there. I wish that the thoughts of your
past could channel through the materiality of the represen-
tation. That they would creep right into my present, be trans-
ferred to me, whenever we lock eyes. I want to know what
you were thinking.

How can I talk to you—the people in the photographs?

How can we communicate?
While I try to formulate my questions, it seems as if the others—
ethnographers, photographers, missionaries, writers—
are always in the way. Their words, their photographs, their
everything.

There is a proverb, used in various African countries. Loosely

translated it says:
“Until the lion has their own storyteller, the hunter will always
have the best part of the story.”

67
68
69
Some people read my first attempts as pop art.
Other ones say that the collages remind them of Baldessari.
As if this would be the reason I chose to use the red, blue, and
yellow squares …
… red, blue, and yellow—the colours of the national flag of
nowadays Democratic Republic of the Congo. What does it
mean to cover you with the colours of that flag, the colours of
a nation that discriminates against you and questions your
belonging? And by the way, I don’t even like flags.

Still, it’s not about the colours, it’s the strategy I applied that
I question: besides wanting to focus on the ethnographer, I
was aiming at protecting you, shielding your images from looks
that have preserved themselves since the first colonial en-
counter. Looks that keep on inviting and enabling the becoming
of colonial agents.
But by doing so, I have covered you up, making it impossible
for you to address the spectators, to look back.

Back to the photographs, I am focusing on the ethnographer

in your midst. “Who is this guy?”, I think.
Lips grimly pressed onto each other, eyes covered by the shade
of his hat—in fact his two hats.

It takes me a while to understand that he is signalling some-

thing. As I will find out later, his pose repeats itself in various
times, bodies, and contexts.

When he decides to freeze this moment in space and time, he

wants the possible future viewer, the audience he is envision-
ing, to get the message he is transmitting immediately.
While I look at the photographs, my need to oppose becomes
inevitable.

70
How does one oppose by looking? How does one develop an
oppositional gaze?

How did he manage to not mention the Belgian colonial system

at all? There is no trace in his writings—at least as far as I have
seen until now.
It seems as if he had been moving somewhere totally out of
time and context, moving in an anachronistic forest that hasn’t
been part of the colonial world.
If not for the photograph of the Belgian colonial administrator,
there would be nothing pointing to a colonial system.
Schebesta was moving in his own imagination of the Congo,
a place called Congo Free State by that time.

My aim is to concentrate on Paul Schebesta and other colonial

agents, but the effect is that I am taking part in your erasure,
I am literally cutting you out of the frame.

At first I leave the cut out empty,

I feel your absence painfully.
Secondly I put a mirror underneath—I want the viewers to
confront their own presence, their imaginations, their thoughts,
their knowledge.

71
72
73
74
75
The Congo and its people functioned as a screen for Europe’s
colonial imaginations.
In order to conquer the Congo there had to be measures taken,
a social identity of the Congo had to be constructed,
a spatial identity of the Congo had to be invented,
enabling a colonial script to be written to make specific prac-
tices acceptable.
But by applying these representational strategies, I equate you
with the land, again.

I cannot throw the cut-outs—your images—away. And while

I look at them, I realise that all this is not about wanting to
focus on Schebesta: I cut them out of the photographs because
I cannot let your images stay in the pictured positions: ordered
to stand in a row, hugged by the ethnographer, placed next to
a dead gorilla, because Schebesta couldn’t resist visualising
the monkey-black people trope that fuelled and still fuels
colonial fantasies.

I collect your images, keep them together, waiting for the day
when I will be able to arrange a different context for you, a place
that could be less violent, a surrounding that could become
home.

You used a Piki-Piki whistle against Schebesta. He recalls the

episode of finding it in one of the huts he goes to in order to
collect things, objects that later ended up in Western museums
and collections.

Filled with the belongings of an enemy,

the Piki-Piki whistle shields from possible violence.
But lacking self-awareness, Schebesta doesn’t even think about
the fact that you saw the necessity of protecting yourself.

76
I concentrate on the haunting.
On what makes me come back to these pictures,
the immediacy of the colonial flashback,
the restaging of othering processes in the present.

I call on you.
You guide me while trying to find oppositional ways of looking,
of transmitting your oppositional gaze.
I need your presence. While researching
I become part of your army of ghosts haunting.
Haunting.

77
78
79
80
stills from ‘Unearthing. In Conversation’, videoloop, 13’
performance, concept, editing: Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
camera, editing: Sunanda Mesquita
sound, light, editing: Nick Prokesch
production, director’s assistant: Liesa Kovacs
http://www.sixpackfilm.com/de/catalogue/filmmaker/6031?

81
Christopher Wessels,
Marianne Niemelä and
Ahmed Al-Nawas
We Do Encourage Promis-
cuity, But This is Not a
Motel. Anti-Racist Curatorial
Strategies From the
Margins to the Centre

“For there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them
felt, of examining what our ideas really feel like being lived on a Sunday
morning at 7am, after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving
birth; while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears
of being silent and impotent and alone, while tasting our new possibili-
ties and strengths.” Audre Lorde, Poetry is Not a Luxury, 19841 1 Audre Lorde. Poetry Is Not
a Luxury. Sister Outsider: Essays
and Speeches. California: Crossing
The allusion to the motel in the title is metaphorical, Press, 1984. pp. 36–39.

yes; it is a metaphor that also draws on the situationality of

space and the interactions within it. Promiscuity can take
place in a motel partly because a motel, in a way, offers a

83
space for behaviour that is prohibited in public space or at home,
i.e. behaviour that needs to be taken to a space that is inherently
impermanent, that exists in a fluctuating temporality. Similarly, an
art space is a space of sporadic encounters, encounters that are
often also not possible in public space or at home. The art space ex-
ists precisely for these brief encounters. And these spaces become
spaces of possibilities. When we say that we “encourage promiscu-
ity”, it is an allusion to opening up the art space in an attempt to
remain open, to collaborate, and to spark dialogue. When we stress
that we “are not a motel”, we mean that we are not indifferent to
the acts taking place in the art space—rather, they flow into our
engagement with the interrelations and dynamics in the space,
which we want to expand to a larger discussion also outside of the
art space. In this text, we want to explain what we consider to be a
“way of being”—a way of challenging normative thinking to shift
some of the contradictions that are inherent in the art scene—and
in what ways hegemony organises society, illustrated by two exam-
ples of artistic curatorial research practices that aim to do just that.
We consider it necessary for anti-racist and queer discourse
to be framed within the need to nurture a more progressive class
consciousness. Consequently, we must ask how we can challenge
the centrality of the upper middle class in political, social and
cultural life. Within the rise of ultra-nationalist organisations,
white supremacy has always been portrayed as the preserve of
working class and lower middle class white people. How does one
debunk that notion of white supremacist discourse being one that
is exclusive to the working class? In his essay for Jacobin titled
‘Twenty-First Century Victorians’, Jason Tebbe eloquently com-
pares the nineteenth century western bourgeoisie to today's west-
ern elites and upper middle class, showing how both use morality
to assert class dominance:
“As calories have become cheaper, obesity has changed from
being a sign of wealth to a sign of moral failure. Today, being unhealthy

84
functions as a hallmark of the poor’s cupidity, the same way working-
class sexual mores were viewed in the nineteenth century.
Both lines of thinking assert that the lower classes cannot control
themselves, so they deserve exactly what they have and nothing more.
No need, then, for higher wages or subsidised health care. After all, the
poor will just waste it on cigarettes and cheeseburgers.
Both then and now, these purported health differences register
disgust with working-class bodies. In The Road To Wigan Pier, George
Orwell discussed his late-Victorian upbringing, writing that he was
trained to believe ‘that there was something subtly repulsive about a
working-class body.’ In Orwell’s time, soap—not fitness—made that
distinction; he was taught that, (...) ‘the lower classes smell’ (…)
Mothers must breastfeed for an extended period, provide only
organic food to their children, and keep screen time to nil. Slip-ups
indicate failure. This represents perhaps the clearest link between Victo-
rian values then and now: both restrict women and reinforce gender
hierarchy.
It is hardly coincidental that these new expectations require
money and time. A working mother who has to juggle multiple service-
sector jobs will find it much harder to pump breast milk at work than a
woman in an office job.
Intensive parenting expectations continue well after children
leave infancy. Young children are encouraged to participate in costly club
sports, and parents to give up their free time to support them. These
activities take time and money, two resources working people lack.”2
In our formative unlearning of the ‘normative’, and 2 Jason Tebbe. Twenty-First
Century Victorians. The Jacobian.
in understanding how matrices of power operate (always
https://www.jacobinmag.com/
an ongoing process, we must admit), we gave ourselves a 2016/10/victorian-values-fitness-
organic-wealth-parenthood/
little exercise to demonstrate how privilege works. In this
exercise (you can try it with the above-mentioned quoted excerpt)
you can substitute the words ‘poor’ or ‘working class’ with ‘Black’/
‘Roma’/‘gay’/‘lesbian’/‘mentally ill’/‘immigrant’/‘refugee’ or the
name of any other group that faces many prejudices. Having now

85
highlighted the tenuousness of the myth of universality, it is inter-
esting to consider the ‘universality’ of prejudice and bigotry. When
we talk about racism, we believe it to be necessarily related to
power and privilege, because this is how we usually define it. We
start by asking ourselves how our everyday racisms can be disman-
tled. This is not a moral question, nor one of guilt, shame or denial.
It is a question that concerns responsibility and awareness, espe-
cially in relation to what we exhibit in the art space, and how this
pertains to censorship and freedom of speech. In this text, we want
to question the ‘neutrality’ of language and of symbolism. How can
anti-racism be more than just ammunition in a neoliberal canon
of political correctness, but rather a consistent way of being?
At this point, we would like to define racism through strate-
gies of challenging its manifestations in everyday life. In her book
Plantation Memories: Episodes of Everyday Racism, Grada Kilomba
writes of “the construction of difference”—that these “constructed
differences are inseparably linked to hierarchical values”. This, she
writes, is what gives rise to prejudice, that “both processes are
accompanied by power—historical, political, social and economical
power” and that it is “the combination of both prejudice and power
that forms racism”. She goes on to explain that racism manifests
on a structural level as well as on an institutional level: everyday
racism is located at the intersection of these two levels.
The question of curating is almost always also a question of
space, of how we interact in that space, as well as the possibilities
of space. In order to approach curating from an anti-racist per-
spective, it is thus essential to consider how to act ‘decolonially’ in
a space, given that space is never neutral. In queer activism, space
is approached as a way of questioning power relations, the con-
struction of race being one of the several issues it focuses on. In
order to work towards breaking hierarchies, or at least making
them visible in the space (even though that aim might not always
be achieved), one needs to acknowledge the privileges that exist

86
within it. Some of these are easier to understand than others:
accessibility for example is a concrete thing. Other practical meth-
ods, such as unisex bathrooms, question basic assumptions about
gender. When moving to questions of class, race, and heteronor-
mativity, assumptions get complicated. How can a space exclusively
occupied by white people call itself anti-racist? Isn’t it as essential
to question what or who is not in the space as it is to question what
or who is? Similarly, when running an art space we must ask: who
runs this space, and who does not?
In our practice at the Museum of Impossible Forms M{IF}
(and initially at Third Space), we have aimed to adopt the position
of the margin. We refer to bell hooks’ notion of the margin as a site
of “resistance-as-location” of radical openness and possibility.3 We
reject the marginality that is imposed on us; rather, we use 3 bell hooks. Choosing
the Margin as a Space of Radical
marginality as a position to act and think from. The know-
Openness. Yearning: Race,
ledge that can be gathered through de-centring what is Gender and Cultural Politics. New
York: South End Press, 1990.
usually centred has been integral to this strategy. So: what
pp. 145–154.
does it mean to use de-centring as a strategy to challenge
white supremacist-capitalist-patriarchy? What does one do,
concretely?
We would like to talk about two projects that seek to
challenge this at the intersection of structural-institutional and
everyday racism: the first is the Children’s Library Project based at
Åbo Akademi University in Turku; the second is the Museum of
Impossible Forms M{IF} located at the Kontula Mall (Kontula is
a historically working class neighbourhood in East Helsinki).
These projects are born out of what we see as the necessity to build
anti-racist institutions to shift what is normative.
Historically, ‘culture’ has always manifested in middle- or
upper class neighbourhoods, places where theatres, museums, and
galleries exist. Libraries are one of the few exceptions, in terms of
cultural institutions established by the state in working class areas,
and are a result of the European social democratic project that

87
lasted from the ‘60s to the ‘90s. The Children’s Library Project is a
socially engaged artistic research project, premised on the idea that
the marginalised child is the embodiment of the revolutionary
democracy that Finland has not yet learned how to imagine. The
project is about the lived world of children and the prevailing
configurations of global racial identities and power. The project
has three main foci that could be defined as: “revisiting memories”,
“revisiting the collection/archive”, and “new narratives”. The most
obvious place and site for this artistic action research project is the
library, since in Finland public libraries are one of the last free (in
an economical sense) public spaces not suffused by the imperative
of consumption, as well as one of the most equally accessible
spaces in the public sphere. In Children’s Library Project, the library
functions both as the site for research as well as a site for making
new knowledge available in the public sphere. The project uses
artistic methods such as artistic curatorial methodologies, creative
writing, memory work, photography, and role-play to explore
experiences. The immediate research objective is to make visible a
certain experience that has historically been erased and silenced,
such as a racialised Finnish childhood. The further aim of the focus
group is to develop a children’s story (book) on the topic of racism,
beyond a ‘multicultural’ approach, based on the self-reflexive artis-
tic research that the group has and will conduct. A further aim is
an intervention into the children’s section of the public library in
Turku: a mapping project, with which we want to, in a sense, find
an alternative route to the children’s library archive that makes
evident the stories that deal positively and creatively with race,
class, sexuality and gender. These two foci obviously support and
intersect with one another. The project’s main objective is to develop
an intervention at the library that draws and builds upon work
revisiting memories and revisiting the archive.
Kontula is, in a sense, typical: it is what we call an ‘inten-
tionally’ culturally underdeveloped neighbourhood, commonly

88
characterised more by the availability of cheap beer than cultural
activities. Today Kontula is a neighbourhood with a large immi-
grant community. Locating M{IF} outside the binary of centre and
margin is about nurturing and growing the potential that is so often
sidelined by mainstream society. We know that even though mar-
ginalised areas were underdeveloped culturally, it does not mean
that they are devoid of culture. Rather, they tend to be without
hegemonic capital, ‘voiceless’ and unseen by mainstream society.
Can we meaningfully engage with these communities sincerely,
ethically, and from within? M{IF} aims to establish precisely such
a practice by embedding ourselves within that context. At the core
of the endeavours of M{IF} in Kontula will be an archive of work
that happens at and around the space, and a multilingual library
of migration, resistance, change and struggle. There will also be a
workshop space—a cultural laboratory of sorts—that will facilitate
art, electronics and new media workshops.
Another focus is a gallery/display space, but with the primary
concern of a curated ‘discursive’ art programme. The space will act
as a platform or catalyst for critical dialogue, with the programme
as a method of engagement. A reality we are very aware of is the
possibility of gentrification that follows artists and art spaces.
Kontula is a peculiar case: while it is undergoing gentrifica-
tion, this gentrification is driven by immigrants who are giving new
life to this public space. We want to embed our cultural work with-
in this context by moving our artistic and curatorial praxis to these
spaces, both within existing institutions (the university and the
public library), and by actively building institutions with a clear
vision of anti-racism, class consciousness, and a queer way of being.
We intend to not just talk the talk of anti-racism, but fundamen-
tally challenge a system that historically needs unequal develop-
ment, that at its core actively upholds western hegemony with
white supremacist ideology embedded in its subconscious. This
cultural work goes hand in hand with a constant critical reflection

89
of our own class positions, and of how our praxis is affected by
this positionality, and vice versa. It affects what we do, where we
do it, how we do it, who does it, and, most importantly, why we
do it.
Helsinki, 5 December 2016

90
Katharina Morawek
The Whole World in
Zurich. Collaborative and
Transformative Strategies
of Negotiating
‘Urban Citizenship’

The dialogical art project Die ganze Welt in Zürich. Konkrete Inter-
ventionen in die Schweizer Migrationspolitik [The Whole World in
Zurich. Practical Interventions in Swiss Migration Policy] aimed
to use the means of art to explore the feasibility of concrete urban
citizenship proposals for Zurich, and to turn them into public
proposals. Moreover, it created a space where social utopia could
be imagined, discussed, and negotiated communally—beyond
material constraints—and then could be transformed into com-
mon political action. The project was initiated by me in the role of
artistic director, together with the artist Martin Krenn, as part of the
Shedhalle Zurich programme, and was implemented in collabo-
ration with a transdisciplinary working group. As an artistic pro-
ject, it aimed at intervening in and having an effect on political
conditions and realities. Zurich was to become a ‘safe haven’ for
all who already live in this city, and for all those who were to come

91
in the future. In both public and non-public talks with decision-
makers, stakeholders and local and international participants, the
working group discussed the potential of this new concept of
‘urban citizenship’ for the city of Zurich. They developed concrete
projects focussing on the topics of “freedom of residence”, “free-
dom from discrimination”, and “freedom to create”. Urban citizen-
ship thus became a prominent topic in Zurich.

The Iceberg in Lake Zurich

Late autumn 2014, on the shores of Lake Zurich. Elections
have been announced for the following year. Once again, the cen-
tral topic of these elections will be migration, and once again they
will take place excluding the 25 percent of the population who do
not enjoy citizenship rights in Switzerland and are therefore not
allowed to vote. Given these circumstances, can Switzerland really
be called a democracy? In the context of the so-called Bewegung
[movement] (an assemblage of 1980s urban social struggles in
Zurich), the image of ‘pack ice’ had emerged as an iconographic
descriptor for the hardened Swiss political conditions: pack ice that
locks in the city and seals up the lake. The Bewegung was later
renamed Züri brännt [Zurich is burning]. Did this pack ice still
exist, perhaps as residual icebergs floating around in Lake Zurich?
And if so, what would be able to melt it? Shedhalle Zurich is located
on the shore of Lake Zurich. Its white spaces, too, had emerged
from the struggles of the Bewegung. Could enough heat be pro-
duced to melt the residual iceberg, 23 years later? In short, could
the history of the Shedhalle—a founding place of interventionist
artistic practice in the German-speaking world—be updated and
made to enter into the equation of the current political situation
in Switzerland?
As stated, a quarter of all Swiss residents are excluded from
political and legal participation because they do not have Swiss

92
citizenship. Many of them also face obstacles in accessing social
services, education, jobs, public institutions and other spaces. Mi-
gration is still spoken of as a ‘problem’, and many migrants are still
construed as sources of conflict, while they remain structurally
excluded from political decision-making. In recent years, many
initiatives have tried to secure more civil rights, but were defeated
at the ballot boxes of various Swiss cities and cantons.

Urban Citizenship—The Right to Rights and

the Right to the City
The failure of existing demands to expand the rights of
citizens is a call for new political forms to overcome the pervasive
legal and social inequalities among the Swiss population. The
following principles could show the way forward: the continuing
democratisation of society and its institutions, and insisting on
a “right to rights” with regard to all areas of the political, 1 Katharina Morawek. Städte
statt Staaten [Cities Instead of
social and cultural public sphere.1
States]. WOZ—Die Wochenzeitung.
In practical terms, this would mean, first and fore- 9 July 2015.

most, that every inhabitant of a city should also have equal access
to social services and resources. These principles are the lifeblood
of the concept of urban citizenship. The right to (social) rights and
access to resources is tied to the centre of the city inhabitants’
lives, not to their nationalities. Urban citizenship therefore means
‘citizenship of urban dwellers’ or ‘citizenship of city inhabitants’.
While the term ‘citizenship’ binds fundamental rights to the borders
of a nation state—to mobility control and sedentariness—urban
citizenship means adapting political instruments to the manifold
normality of modern (large) cities. The concepts mobilised in urban
citizenship therefore do not address migration as a core factor
determining access to rights, but highlight the problem of the un-
equal distribution of social rights, and the corresponding unequal
access to resources.

93
 The urban sociologist Marisol Garcia describes the condi-
tions for urban citizenship as follows: “Urban and regional forms of
citizenship develop when policy instruments are introduced locally and
regionally in order to maintain and/or create social entitlements as a
result of citizens’ demands or as a result of local institutions’ innovative
practices, and when the mechanisms for political integration provide an
open sphere for participation and contestation, not only for established
citizens, but also for denizens.”2
2 Marisol García. Citizenship On the one hand, the interplay of government practices and
Practices and Urban Governance
social struggles lies at the heart of this definition: urban
in European Cities. Urban Studies.
43 (4), 2006. p. 754. citizenship refers to changes in local governance, but always
takes into account known social struggles ‘from below’.
3 Cf. Henrik Lebuhn, Talja
Blokland, Christine Hentschel, These social struggles have been continuously calling for
Andrej Holm, Talia Margalit. Urban
social rights to be expanded, and social participation to
Citizenship and the Right to the
City: The Fragmentation of Claims. become more inclusive. Beyond the specificity of given
International Journal for Urban and
political interest groups, they coalesce to what could be
Regional Research. 39 (4), 2015.
pp. 655–665. called a democratisation movement.3
On the other hand—and that is the crucial point—this
expansion of participation is brought about precisely by those who
previously did not count as ‘citizens’. For the movement for urban
citizenship, it cannot possibly be a desirable goal for their struggles
to follow the same paternalistic pattern that determined the
history of women's suffrage in Switzerland: despite the decades-
long emancipatory struggle for their own rights, in 1971, women
were ultimately dependent on men granting them these rights at
the ballot box. In this system, the only possible way for a historical
leap out of the hitherto enforced traditional matrix of dominance
(in which men were at the top and centre) was through the dis-
criminated women’s acceptance of men’s authority. The urban
citizenship movement must radically re-examine the concept of
representative democracy—or, in the case of Switzerland, semi-
direct democracy—if it does not want to take this same detour via
dominant society.

94
 Melting the Iceberg—Zurich as a Port City

Back to Zurich: in the mid-1990s, the Shedhalle underwent

a curatorial turn towards ‘the political’. It opened up its programme
to welcome less conventional forms of art and mediation thereof,
and strengthened collaborations with other social initiatives. Since
2012, the focus of my curatorial work at the Shedhalle has been to
re-actualise this practice of transdisciplinary collaboration, as well
as to be personally involved in the political practices of (local) social
struggles. Oliver Marchart describes this as “immersing oneself into
the muddy waters of social struggles”.4 4 Oliver Marchart. The Art
of Pre-Enactments. Lecture,
One important aspect of my curatorial work is to
HZT—Hochschulübergreifendes
make intensive use of the insights I gained during many Zentrum Tanz, Berlin, 9 July 2014.
https://vimeo.com/114242197
years of political work in collaborative artistic projects, and
to voluntarily engage with their logics. This is what Nora Sternfeld
describes with the notion of “involved curating”: “Thus, the constant
involvement of curators can be understood not only in terms of their
entanglements, but also in terms of their conscious and permanent
solidarity with and involvement in public debates and social struggles.”5
Another thesis I developed in my curatorial work is 5 Nora Sternfeld. Involvierun-
gen. Das post-repräsentative
that artistic projects can generate ‘pre-enactments’ of new
Museum zwischen Verstrickung
forms of transformative practice. Oliver Marchart uses the und Solidarität. Bielefelder Kunst-
verein. www.bielefelder-kunst
term “pre-enactment” in reference to the work of the Israeli
verein.de/ausstellungen/2013/
collective Public Movement; he defines pre-enactment as museum-off-museum-blog/nora-
sternfeld.html#.VzuTpFeh6Rs
the artistic anticipation of a political event.6
Training, exercise, rehearsing the future, and the 6 Marchart 2014
(same as note 4).
prefiguration of the future are important notions in relation
to pre-entactments. Marchart writes: “While what was called 7 Marchart 2014
(same as note 4).
‘the future’ appears to have been ruined and abolished by the
neoliberal austerity regime, it might still be here among us in
the form of pre-enactments.”7
In its developmental stage, one influential source
of inspiration for Die ganze Welt in Zürich was an updated

95
 reiteration (albeit not a re-enactment as such) of a previous event:
the project 8 Wochenklausur that took place at Shedhalle in 1994.
As part of the aforementioned ‘political turn’ of the Shedhalle, the
artist collective Wochenklausur (based in Vienna) conducted an
eight-week-long intervention in Zurich drug policy. They arranged
boat trips with experts and decision-makers to solve a deadlocked
political situation and explore new possibilities. The aim was to
create a space for drug-using sex workers in Zurich.
In order to begin melting the iceberg, a cooperation with
the artist Martin Krenn was set up to jointly develop a project on
the theme of ‘democracy’. Krenn has dealt extensively with dialo-
gical formats, both in his artistic practice and in his theoretical
work. The first decision was to place the project and its methods
explicitly in the tradition of socially engaged art.8
8 Grant Kester. On the The aim of the project was to use the means of art to explore
Relationship between Theory and
the feasibility of concrete urban citizenship proposals for
Practice in Socially Engaged Art.
Fertile Ground. www.abladeof Zurich. These were to be subsequently submitted as public
grass.org/fertile-ground/on-the-
proposals for concrete policy, a step towards broadening
relationship-between-theory-and-
practice-in-socially-engaged-art political, social and cultural participation in the city. Die
ganze Welt in Zürich was also intended to create a space where
social utopia could be imagined, discussed, and negotiated com-
munally, beyond material constraints. Thus, as an artistic project,
it aimed at intervening in and having an effect on political condi-
tions and realities. Zurich was to become a ‘safe haven’ to a certain
extent: for all who already live in this city, and for all those who
were to come in the future.
In non-public talks with decision-makers and other stake-
holders, the working group developed concrete projects relating to
three aspects of urban citizenship: freedom of residence, freedom
from discrimination, and freedom to create. In three public Harbour
Forums, local and international participants discussed the potential
of this new concept of ‘urban citizenship’ for the city of Zurich.
Urban citizenship thus became a prominent topic in Zurich.

96
 At the beginning of our project, we were faced with 9 Kijan Espahangizi. Stimm-
und Wahlrecht für Ausländer?
the question of how to implement a “right to rights”, a
Nein, danke! [Voting and Election
democratisation of democracy, and a right to a city in a city Law for Foreigners? No thanks!],
WOZ—Die Wochenzeitung.
like Zurich: Which specific interventions in Swiss migra-
25 June 2015.
tion policy did this require? Can artistic practices be used
10 Naika Foroutan Coşkun
to open up new possibilities for a democratisation of soci-
Canan, Sina Arnold, Benjamin
ety, and if so, how? Can we find ways out of the ‘deadlock’ Schwarze, Steffen Beigang, Dorina
Kalkum. Deutschland postmi-
of migration policy9 and carve new paths that are adequate
grantisch I. Gesellschaft, Religion,
for a post-migrant society10? What contradictions might Identität. Erste Ergebnisse
[Post-Migrant Germany I. Society,
arise from the stubbornness of democratic processes on the
Religion, Identity. First Results].
one hand, and an institutionally-anchored art project on Junge Islambezogene Themen in
Deutschland (JUNITED) [Young
the other, and how can the project address these? Can a
Islam-Related Topics in Germany].
project based on a methodology of dialogical aesthetics Berlin: Berliner Institut für
empirische Integrations- und
(that enjoys little support in the (local) art scene), position
Migrationsforschung (BIM) [Berlin
itself as ‘best practice’? And wouldn’t such a politicised Institute for Empirical Research
on Integration and Migration],
form of participation—as a shared interest of all con-
Humboldt University Berlin,
cerned—not appear to be too concentrated and outdated Faculty of Art, Social and Educa-
tional Sciences, 2014. www.pro-
compared to a paradigm of participation that is universally
jekte.hu-berlin.de/de/junited/
accepted, the pitfalls of which have already been widely deutschland-postmigrantisch-1

critiqued?

Is it Art?
To take urban citizenship seriously according to the above
definition—taking into account the level of social struggles and
movements—means that the people involved in such struggles
should have an active voice in the project. The next step was to
create a working group that would act as the project’s ‘organisa-
tional core’. My involvement in the networks mentioned made it
possible for the working group’s line-up to reflect these connec-
tions: people from the fields of science, social movements, law,
and trade union organising. After some preliminary discussions,
the working group met for the first time in June 2015 to lay the

97
 groundwork for its project, combining far-reaching, in-depth
expertise with heterogeneous experiences, perspectives, and
approaches regarding the question of urban citizenship, social
inclusion and participation in Zurich. The members of the working
group all have a wide range of project experience, and are con-
nected to or part of networks and contexts that are anti-racist, deal
with migration politics, and engage with art. The idea was that
the project itself would benefit from these other networks. The
working group held regular meetings to determine and develop
the project’s strategic direction as well as its main themes and
priorities. Alongside me, the members of the working group were:
Martin Krenn (executive artist), Bah Sadou (activist, Autonomous
School Zurich), Bea Schwager (director SPAZ, contact point for
undocumented migrants in in Zurich), Dr. Kijan Malte Espahangizi
(Managing Director of the Centre Geschichte des Wissens [Centre
for the History of Knowledge]), Osman Osmani (Union Secretary
11 Translator's note: Unia is the for Migration UNIA11) , Dr. Rohit Jain (social anthropologist,
largest trade union in Switzerland.
University of Zurich/Zurich University of the Arts), and
Tarek Naguib (legal expert, Centre for Social Law/Zurich University
of Applied Sciences). Their activity as part of the working group
was remunerated, and the respective projects (as well as follow-up
projects the following year) were allocated budgets.
The curatorial ethics that underlie Die ganze Welt in Zürich
are that it is the obligation of a public institution such as the Shed-
halle to use the tax money it is largely subsidised by (which is paid
not only by citizens of the state) for projects that work towards a
democratisation of society.
In numerous projects and in my role as curator, I often refer
to the concept of artistic intervention. Since the 1980s, this term
has been used for artistic practices that intervene in social and/or
discursive realities in the hope of having a permanent effect.
An evocative idea that became central to Die ganze Welt in
Zürich was that of a harbour, calling to mind a multitude of related

98
notions such as mobility, globality, action, negotiation, arrival,
anchoring, diversity and cosmopolitanism. The project was accom-
panied by an exhibition on the history and practice of ‘socially
engaged art’ in the Shedhalle. It presented historical references
in the form of drawings based on original photographs (by artist
Andreas Bertschi). They were found all over the exhibition space
as posters wheat-pasted on advertisement pillars. The exhibition
acted as a contextual frame for Die ganze Welt in Zürich, and drew
connections to related historical and contemporary projects. The
exhibition architecture was central to the exhibition: it created
dialogic spaces for the Harbour Talks, the Harbour Forums and the
working group sessions, which were also designed around the
project’s key metaphor of a harbour.

Concrete Interventions,
Public and Non-Public
The project used both public and non-public formats.
While the (non-public) Harbour Talks concretised the implemen-
tation of the project in dialogue with other experts and decision-
makers, the Harbour Forums provided a space for public debate
and involvement.
The numerous (non-public) Harbour Talks provided 12 Kester 2015
(same as note 8).
a dialogic space12 for the working group members and
invited representatives of interest groups, decision-makers, city
politicians, public-sector staff, etc. They began at the Opernsteg,
continued on a boat trip over Lake Zurich, and progressed to the
Shedhalle after arriving at the port of Wollishofen, in its immediate
vicinity. Given that these talks were not open to the public, the
Shedhalle thus acted as a protected discussion space.
In the three day-long (public) Harbour Forums, local and
international actors met, debated and exchanged experiences (the
detailed program can be found at www.shedhalle.ch). The project’s

99
 goal to facilitate discussions at eye level was mirrored spatially
in the exhibition scenography of stylised interconnected jetties
and a meeting space furnished with mobile multi-level seating
elements. The Harbour Forums took place on 24 October 2015,
28 November 2015, and 6 February 2016. While the first Harbour
Forum provided an initial insight into current debates on urban
citizenship, the second historically located the project within the
history of the Shedhalle, as well as in debates about the ‘right to
city’. Artist Katharina Lenz presented the project 8 Wochenklausur
by the artist group Wochenklausur, which, as previously men-
tioned, was an important reference point for Die ganze Welt in
Zürich. The third forum provided space to examine and discuss the
project's questions and concerns from the perspective of political
theory, urban research, art theory and mediation: can an art project
simultaneously be a concrete political intervention? Which defini-
tion of the ‘political’ is productive when speaking about conflicts
about equal rights for all city dwellers? How can new forms of joint
solidarity be found? And what do similar debates and struggles look
like elsewhere?

Three Priorities: Freedom of Residence,

Non-Discrimination, Freedom to Create
13 More information in The working group defined three priorities for the project:
Katharina Morawek. #urban-
“freedom of residence”, “freedom from discrimination”
citizenship. Stadt und Demokratie
[#urbancitizenship. City and and “freedom to create”.13 To keep things short I will only
Democracy]. Zürich: Shedhalle
describe the third focus in more detail here. The idea of
Zürich, 2016.
Salon Bastarde as a concrete intervention in Swiss migra-
tion policy came from the project focus “freedom to create”. It
developed concrete models of urban citizenship that stress parti-
cipation in cultural life, i.e. cultural citizenship. To this end, the
key managers Kijan Espahangizi and Rohit Jain organised several
Harbour Talks, to which they invited Zurich-based cultural workers

100
with a history of migration and/or experiences of racism. With the
Salon Bastarde came the idea of a concrete cultural-political inter-
vention in the form of a series of events at various locations in
Zurich. The salon aimed to strengthen the contexts within which
debates about representation in the context of anti-racism take
place, and to allow for more participation in cultural life in public
space. The kick-off event took place at Zurich’s Exil nightclub in
February 2017, and was followed by a series of events at different
cultural locations and institutions throughout Zurich. The events
used educational and artistic formats, and were equal parts scientific
reflection and political intervention, with each aspect combined
carefully, critically, experimentally, and entertainingly. “Freedom
to create” was understood as both the self-organised formation of
an anti-racist post-migrant community in Zurich, as well as the
appropriation and multiplication of public spaces locally. In this
way, we could reflect together—and with international guests—on
racism in Zurich and Switzerland on the basis of theoretical, artis-
tic, and political analyses, as well as upon personal experiences. An
‘educational space’ is created in which already existing anti-racist
analyses and knowledge can develop further, and in which links
between individual experiences become apparent. The objective
is to promote empowerment of and networking among people
with experiences of racism, as well as to encourage new anti-racist
institutional alliances.

Democratisation as a Process
Halfway through the project (at the turn of the year 2015-16)
it became clear that the topic of urban citizenship had arrived in
Zurich and Switzerland. Interest in it had clearly intensified, as
evidenced by numerous requests for lectures in civil society con-
texts like St. Gallen, Bern, and Basel, for example. The concrete idea
of a ‘City Card’ seemed to be of particular interest and popularity:

101
a sort of permit or authorisation card for all inhabitants of a given
city that would offer them access to services such as healthcare,
municipal swimming pools, libraries and social services, regardless
of their residency status. The City Card would also be a valid ID
document recognised by the registry office, police, etc. A similar
City Card scheme was implemented in New York City for example,
in early 2015. In early 2017, the city of Zurich set up an interdepart-
mental working group for the possible future implementation of
a City Card for Zurich.
The ‘translatability’ of such an idea, however, reaches its
limits as soon as it is abstracted from the respective concrete situ-
ation on the ground. As emphasised above, the analysis of (political)
power relations as well as of the configuration of social struggles
happening in a given context remain central to this endeavour.
It is quite likely that the idea of urban citizenship might further
positively develop in the aforementioned Swiss cities.
The project also managed to strengthen connections to
social movements. 550 participants came to the Shedhalle on
7 February 2016 to discuss a (post-) migrant right to the city, and
new opportunities in Swiss migration policy. This event was part
of the Wir alle sind Zürich [We Are All Zurich] city forum, which
itself had grown out of the like-minded Congress of Migrants
and People with a Migration Background project. Urban citizenship
was also the key topic in this discussion. In his keynote address,
political scientist Mathias Rodatz pointed out that cities offer one
of the most important arenas for research and political action:
“As long as post-national statehood does not make further progress, we
should focus our attention on cities, because the crisis of the principle
of nation-based belonging is felt there on a daily basis, and it is there
that we can learn to rethink our idea of citizenship.” Rodatz formulated
three central theses in his talk: First, he noted the intensifying crisis
of nation-state organising of social balance and democracy. Second,
that this crisis is increasingly felt in cities. And thirdly, new forms

102
of socialisation and citizenship are emerging that can be 14 Cf Mathias Rodatz. Migra-
tion ist in dieser Stadt eine Tat-
ways out of this crisis.14
sache. Urban politics of citizenship
In her opening speech, political scientist Shpresa in der neoliberalen Stadt [In This
City Migration is a Fact. Urban
Jashari described the spirit of a newly emerging post-mi-
Politics of Citizenship in the
grant policy that moves beyond “fearful reaction” towards Neoliberal City]. suburban. 2, no 3
(2014). pp. 35–58.
“self-confident action”: “I am no longer afraid of the adju-
dication that Swiss voters will pass on us, who are not allowed to
take part in decision-making. Will they acknowledge our value this
time? If not for our sake, then maybe for the sake of ‘their’ state
under the rule of law? No, this time, instead of just hoping to be
recognised by the supposed ‘social majority’ and anxiously waiting
for what will be the next move of the nervous ‘national body’,
I feel like taking matters into my own hands. And I want to start
here, where I live, in my city, Zurich.” Moreover, several workshops
and discussion events were offered that highlighted present strug-
gles in post-migrant contexts, and the work of existing migrant
organisations.
The context, working group and the figure of the ‘involved
curator’ (which overlapped with Wir alle sind Zürich) can thus be
understood as transformative factors in the course of the Die ganze
Welt in Zürich project. Furthermore, Die ganze Welt in Zürich, and in
particular its format of Harbour Talks, can be described as pre-
enactments, given that they brought urban citizenship into Swiss
political discourse and articulated a tangible vision for a common
future for all of us without racist structures, exploitation and
discrimination.
Shedhalle Zurich presented the exhibition #urbancitizenship.
Stadt und Demokratie [#urbancitizenship. City and Democracy]
from June to September 2016 as one of the follow-up projects. The
focus was on the project’s history and methods: what is urban
citizenship and what does it want? What significance can it hold
for Switzerland and Zurich? What methods were used, and why use
art as a method? And what results did the project yield? Some of

103
the concepts, methods, and narratives were translated into charts
and graphs by graphic designers Roger Conscience and Carolina
Cerbaro. It presented conceptualisations of the notion of urban
citizenship as well as of other related terms: of its beginnings
worldwide, its arrival in Switzerland, and its future—a city open
to all.
Die ganze Welt in Zürich and its follow-up projects City Card
Zurich, Salon Bastarde and a public protest and tribunal against
racial profiling, are indeed likely to bring about long-term effective
change in Zurich and influence its future.
On the one hand, an interpretation of urban citizenship
based on social transformation requires strategies that bolster the
civic rights of citizens and noncitizens alike. So it is not just a ques-
tion of developing a new, smart (i.e. participative) tool for integra-
tion or population management with limited resources (since it
grew out of an art project), but it is first and foremost about taking
politics into your own hands, just like social movements have
always done. But to live up to the promise of urban citizenship—
which is also a cosmopolitan one—social movements and progres-
sive policies that understand how to produce political effects are
needed at a national and European level. This would enable the
negotiation and development of structural changes to data merging;
immigration and visa policies; cooperation between authorities and
police; and asylum and deportation standards, for example. It would
then become possible to embark on this important pan-European
journey towards democratising democracy, and extending the right
to rights based on one’s place of residence.

104
This text first apeared in German in p/art/icipate–Kultur aktiv gestalten,
issue 7, Take Part, 2016. www.p-art-icipate.net/cms/the-whole-world-
in-zurich-die-ganze-welt-in-zurich (07 March 2017). It was updated for
this publication.

105
Strategies
Interventio
 of
on:
Uninvited
Speaking Back
Jelena Vesić
Notes On Bafflement:
The Universal Right
To Baffle1

The term I present is not a part of the usual common(s) 1 First presented as Notes
On Bafflement: The Universal
vocabulary; it does not stand for a function or a feature, but
Right To Baffle at The Glossary of
for an act, and for a certain effect: I would like to speak about Common Knowledge: Commons.
Museum of Contemporary Art
the gestures that are baffling, and about the state of baffle-
Metelkova, Ljubljana, Slovenia,
ment. To baffle is a certain (common) right of the disprivi- 27–29 June 2016. Online at:
Glossary of Common Knowledge,
leged, powerless and deprived in situations of confronting
http://glossary.mg-lj.si/referential
the violence of power. fields/commons/baffle

Bafflement is not a trick nor a tactic used in the process of

negotiation; it is an act that comes after the possibility of negotia-
tion has proved impossible. In a time-sequence analysis of a conflict,
bafflement occurs either when one side seems to already be defeated,
or when the different sides in an unfolding conflict are dramati-
cally asymmetrical in terms of power.
To baffle is not a part of the ‘tragedy’ or ‘comedy’ of the com-
mons; it is neither a resource nor a strategy. It is a right that no one
can undo or deny—to make the attempt to turn the existing set of
circumstances upside down, to try to unilaterally change the existing
paradigm itself.
To baffle is a political and material gesture: it has conse-
quences, it exists as action. But the history of bafflement outlines

111
 no clear ‘theory of baffling’, as no two bafflements are the same.
A practice of bafflement does however exist. Successful instances
of (political) bafflement are rare, and by its very nature we will
probably never know about most of the unsuccessful attempts.
Baffling is and should be a common phenomenon, even a
right, under certain circumstances. However, no act of bafflement
is or could be a ‘common’ one. Political bafflement is always a
singular act.
The notion of political baffling emerged as one of the
outcomes of the research project and the publication titled On
Neutrality that I recently published together with Rachel O’Reilly
and Vladimir Jerić Vlidi, examining the concepts of political peace
and active neutrality in the gestures of the Non-Aligned Movement
(NAM). The politics of active neutrality opposed both the Euro-
Atlantic juridical management of political neutralism, and the
2 Political peace and active western ideology of peace.2 At the same time, it introduced
neutrality were NAM's answer to
something new and unexpected—‘uncommon’—that can be
the two historical moments that
had been formative for the Euro- summarised in Edvard Kardelj’s thesis of the Non-Aligned
Atlantic juridical concept of politi-
“third position” in his Historical Roots of Non-Alignment. This
cal neutralism and the ideology of
peace: the post-Westphalian idea thesis, a certain twofold negation of the power-blocs, does
of balance of forces and a more
not imply reaching the point of ideal “equidistance” from
modern concept of collective
security, which had both proved the existing centres of power, but (actively) countering power
crucial for the establishment and
politics as such.
operation of the UN. NAM
regarded world peace and collec- What follows are a few historical examples of situations in
tive security as being common
which baffling was the only option left for disprivileged
issues that concern all. For power
blocs, world peace was to be people. In some cases it managed, at least temporarily, to
achieved only from the perspec-
transform the situation in favour of their cause; in all of the
tive of absolute victory.
cases it succeeded in producing the statement of truth and
of justice through invoking the paradigm of the future. In those
moments, at least briefly, the power had to stop advancing, experi-
encing what those submitted to it live as a daily experience: disori-
entation, disbelief, and the sense of loss of any logic or legitimacy
in what they thought is a ‘valid’ social contract of the moment.

112
 Our common protection is the privilege
of being allowed, when in danger, to invoke
what is fair and right
An early example of such opposition to power politics can
be found in the historical-literary writings of the famed Athenian
strategos (general) Thucydides (c. 455–400 BC), one of the earliest
known western historians. His History of the Peloponnesian War
describes the confrontation of the Athenian army with the island
peoples of Melos during the war between the state of Athens and
Sparta in 416–15 BC. The population of the small and militarily much
weaker island was considered to be historically closer to Sparta, but
were now independent, and until the Athenians showed up in full
force, had explicitly refused to take part in the war. The Athenians
forced the Melians to choose between two options: surrendering
or being annihilated. However, they did accept a final meeting with
representatives of Melos, as requested. The Athenians framed their
willingness to ‘negotiate’ as a humanitarian gesture of an empire that
cares about the ‘safety’ of their war operation, cunningly talking
about their wish to preserve the Melian country and avoid loss of
lives on both sides—but only under the condition that Melos un-
conditionally surrender to their rule. That exchange was described
by Thucydides in what became known as The Melian Dialogue (the
conclusion of our research proved that The Athenian Monologue
(With Occasional Melian Responses) would have been a more accurate
title), and it went something like this:3 3 This excerpt from The
Melian Dialogue was edited by
Rachel O'Reilly for the purposes of
Athenians: If you have met with us to reason about brevity and emphasis. Emphasis
mine. For the full text cf.: http://
presentiments about the future, or for any other
www2.warwick.ac.uk/fac/arts/clas
purpose than to consult for your safety, we will give sics/students/modules/introhist/
usefuldocuments/thucydides_v.8
over; otherwise we will go on.
4116.pdf
Melians: It is natural and excusable, for men in our
position, to turn more ways than one—both in thought

113
and utterance. However, the question in this conference is,
as you say, the safety of our country.
Athenians: We shall not trouble you with specious pretenses,
and hold a long speech that would not be believed anyhow.
In return, we hope you don’t say that you have done us no
wrong and that you know as well as we do that the notion of
‘right’ is only in question between equals in power, while the
strong do what they can and the weak suffer what they must.
Melians: You ask us to ignore what is right, and talk only
of interest—[but] our common protection is the privilege
of being allowed, when in danger, to invoke what is fair
and right, and even to benefit from arguments that are not
strictly valid, as long as they can be argued well.
Athenians: The end of our empire, if end it should, does not
frighten us: we come here in the interest of our empire, and
the preservation of your country.
Melians: How could it be as good for us to serve, as it is for
you to rule?
Athenians: Because you would have the advantage of sur-
rendering before suffering the worst, and we would gain by
not destroying you.
Melians: So you would not consent to our being neutral,
friends instead of enemies, but allies of neither side?
Athenians: No, for your hostility cannot so much hurt us as
your friendship will be an argument to our subjects of our
weakness, and your enmity of our power.
Melians: Is that your idea of equity, to put those who have
nothing to do with you in the same category as peoples that
are for the most part your own colonies, and conquered rebels?
Athenians: As far as ‘right’ is concerned (…) if any maintain
their independence it is because they are strong. If we do not
molest them it is because we are afraid; so besides extending
our empire, your subjection would make us gain more

114
 security. The fact that you are islanders and weaker than
others renders it all the more important that you should not
succeed in baffling the masters of the sea.
Melians: How can you avoid making enemies of all existing
neutrals (…) if you risk so much to retain your empire, and
you risk your subjects to get rid of it, then we would surely be
base and cowardly if we are still free and don’t try everything that
can be tried? (…) to submit is to give ourselves over to despair
(…) action still preserves for us a hope that we may stand erect.
Athenians: Hope, danger's comforter, may be indulged in by
those who have abundant resources (…)
Melians: (...) we are as aware as you are of the difficulty of
contending against your power and fortune. But we trust
that the gods may grant us fortune as good as yours, since we
are just men fighting against injustices… Our confidence,
therefore, is not so utterly irrational.

What caught our attention in this exchange between 4 Since the mid-2010s this
‘case study’ of the conflict
the Melians and Athenians is precisely the political logic
between the Melians and Atheni-
of the supposedly non-pragmatist and ‘irrational’ Melian ans has often been used and
misused in global media to either
response to the historical expectation of their submission,
speculate on the contemporary
and the Athenians’ persistence with a purely economical and Greek agony with regard to its
creditors; to fuel the global military
cynical interpretation of Melians’ positioning.4
industry and internal/external
Borrowing from the Athenians’ own wording, in the power politics; or to infotain the
world while financialisations
essay-book On Neutrality, we called this Melian manoeuvre
tighten their global grip. In con-
and the Athenians’ response ‘bafflement’, and it is precisely trast, Thucydides' chronicles of the
Peloponnesian War can be seen
how the stated non-aligned position of those not attributed
in this context as an allegorical
with power is received. Historically, this has repeatedly been prefiguration of the politics of the
Non-Aligned Movement regarding
the reaction of large powers—regardless of how rational,
its positioning within the logic of
patient or logical the position of (non-)alignment is argued. active neutrality towards the
power politics of USSR and USA.
Power politics excludes the powerless, placing them
below the threshold of waging any consequential politics,
beyond the possibility of participation in the world affairs

115
as serious political partners—it denies their capacity to think and
act towards the production of commonality, it neglects them as
political subjects, it infantilises their attempts to self-position and
to self-determine. The gesture of political baffling is a performative
way to state “we are small but we have politics”. And such a statement is
often connected with the most dramatic situations, structured around
issues of war and peace, life and death, survival or annihilation.
The act of political baffling always includes risk, but the kind
of risk that is not a calculation within the parameters of the known
that could be potentially beneficial or profitable. Importantly, to
baffle is not the same as bluffing! Rather, it is a total risk, which is
often the only—and the common—way for the disprivileged to
participate in politics. This risk usually lurks in the possibility of
invoking the new paradigm too soon.

The risk of invoking the new paradigm

too soon / Against the rationality of positions
of those who participate in power politics
(The Demands of the NAM Conference,
Belgrade)
The inaugural Non-Aligned Conference held in Belgrade in
1961 was constitutive for this international movement struggling
for decolonisation of the world, negating the rule of power politics,
and imposing a demand for a complete re-arrangement of global
power relations.

The Ambition of Belgrade, 1961:

“(T)he general situation in the world: the establishment and
strengthening of international peace and security; respect of the right
of nations to self-determination; the struggle against imperialism and
liquidation of colonialism and neocolonialism; respect for the sovereignty
and territorial integrity of the states and non-interference in their

116
Non-Aligned Movement Summit Conference, Belgrade 1961
© Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade

117
 internal affairs; racial discrimination and the policy of apartheid; gene-
ral and complete disarmament; the banning of nuclear experiments and
the maintenance of military bases on foreign territory; peaceful coexis-
tence among states with different social systems; the role and structure
of the United Nations and the application of its resolutions; an equal
economic development; the improvement of international economic and
technical cooperation; and a number of other questions.”5
5 Source: Istorijska The very first NAM conference had stunned the world by
konferencija u Beogradu (1961),
expressing, on behalf of all who are not in a position of power,
50 godina Pokreta nesvrstanih
(2011), Filmske novosti Beograd. a universal demand to reject and to dismiss the logic of “the
strong do what they want and the weak suffer what they must”.6
6 Thucydides, Same as note 3.
The NAM demands had baffled the big power blocs for merely
7 The critique of instrumental
daring to imagine turning the world ‘upside down’, and for
reason was Theodor W. Adorno
and Max Horkheimer’s project demanding that change immediately and with no further
of the 1940s. Theodor W. Adorno
questioning of yet-to-be elaborated new principles of a New
and Max Horkheimer. Dialectic
of Enlightenment, trans. John World (as that would be rational in the hegemonic perspective
Cumming. New York: Herder &
of instrumental reasoning).7
Herder, 1972.
Although it is sometimes part of diplomatic processes, baff-
ling belongs to the ultimately counter-diplomatic register of political
behaviour. Bafflement in itself coexists with the tactic of abandon-
ing the rules of ‘proper’ diplomatic conduct, which is set by power
blocs. It is the last instance of a certain constellation/situation/
relation; sometimes it can be the first instance of the new one.

How could it be as good for us to serve,

as it is for you to rule? (The Demands of
the NAM conference, Colombo)
The Colombo Conference of 1976—probably the biggest
summit of Non-Aligned countries, representing at the time “two
thirds of the world” in numbers—again baffled the power blocs
with its demands, now of an economic nature. Met from the side of
power politics by the attempts to denounce or to infantilise the

118
summit, the demands of those who rejected participation
in power politics opposed (and baffled) the same financial
oligarchy that, up to the present day, gains its power
through the seemingly ever-intensifying rule of global cap-
italist corporatism. To the shock and disbelief of power, the
NAM countries declared that the rules of global debt—as
set by western power players—might not be valid anymore,
if those rules do not change to reflect not only ‘the eco-
nomic reality’ but also ‘what is fair and just’ in any, includ-
ing financial and economic, mutual relations.8
The Demands of Colombo, 1976:
1. Immediate suspension of foreign debt payment by
“the poorest countries and those countries subjected
to imperialist pressures.”
2. A “new universal monetary system”, which should
replace the World Bank and the International Mone-
tary Fund.
3. The creation of new liquidity, which should be
automatically coupled to the needs for global deve-
lopment.
4. The world community of nations should be inclu-
ded in this ‘universal system’ by means of triangular
trade agreements among the developing sector, the
socialist countries, and the developed countries of
the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and
Development (OECD).9
Power politics as a colonising force controls and
distributes world resources; sets the canons and rules for
political negotiation; implements the laws that keep ‘justice’
on the side of power; and appropriates surplus value. It is
entangled in its own logic, and it is absolutely confident
about the operationality of this same logic. Therefore, the
119
8 For years the NAM coun-
tries tried to have their message
heard that should a substantial
change in the global economic and
especially financial system fail to
happen, they would resort to the
measure of a unilateral morato-
rium on debt. Their message was:
if the system does not become
more equal and fair (according to
the demands of the majority
involved), we will effectively reject
the system altogether. i.e. the
NAM members would act as if
the system did not anymore, and
consequently refuse to pay the
debt. At that time it was difficult
to imagine, but not entirely in-
conceivable: the period was marked
by a significant oil crisis and global
restructuring affecting global
living standards, and it was also a
time of invigorating political
imagination and debate within the
‘western bloc’. Despite the
seemingly favourable timing, this
instance of baffling was however
kept from succeeding by the con-
certed massive efforts of western
diplomats and business circles.
Greece tried a similar strategy
recently, unfortunately with a sim-
ilar outcome. In those moments
people invest into the future, or
conceive of the future, by trying to
make it become reality today.
9 Cf. Nancy Spannaus. When
a New Just Monetary System
Was On The Agenda. The New
Federalist, 17 no 14 (2003).
The entire list of Colombo
declarations: http://cns.miis.edu/
nam/documents/Official_Docu-
ment/5th_Summit_FD_Sri_Lanka
_Declaration_1976_Whole.pdf
 Non-Aligned Movement Summit Conference, Colombo 1976
© Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade

gestures that invert and fundamentally negate this very logic—

whatever the price is, regardless of the consequences—produce
utter confusion and disorientation among the powerful. They
cannot believe in what they hear and see, they are politically baffled.
And this very moment of bafflement produces a temporary sus-
pension of the logic of power and of the powerful.

Bolje grob nego rob! Action still preserves

for us a hope that we may stand tall
The act of baffling is not an abstract experience of a kind of
a nominal political proclamation, but an actual, real experience that
requires bodily presence in a very concrete situation, and is often
potentially lethal.

120
 The people of Belgrade’s protest against the fascist politics
of the government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia and its pact with
Nazi Germany took place under a baffling political slogan: “Bolje
rat nego pakt, bolje grob nego rob” [Rather war than the pact, rather
death than slavery].
We see that baffling is often a negative statement, or is based
on a term of negation, although it contains in itself a political
proposition that, indeed, is a projective one—the proposition to
envision the world differently.
To produce bafflement is often the only possibility for the
disprivileged, powerless and deprived to ‘stand erect’ in a situation
of being exposed to the violent aggression of power—to present
their stance not as a retreat, not as a self-victimising call to human-
itarianism, not as a particular mode of negotiation, but as a truth-
ful and strong defence of their own just (pro)position. To baffle
is to act in defence of something that is, pragmatically speaking,
indefensible; it is to stand for something that was not a part of
the real-political options, nor customs, nor memories, before it was
being performed.
The political value of the gesture of baffling lies precisely in
its claim to what is non-existent, to what is impossible in the sphere
of hegemonic rationality. Political bafflement leaves behind the
entire morality, all the practical reasoning and the dominant logic
produced by whatever the existing power relations are at the time.
In most cases, the powerful are effectively shocked precisely by that
‘irrationality’ that temporarily suspends the rational logic 10 Or, as Alain Badiou wrote
in Métaphysique du bonheur réel
of power (when they believe that surrendering to the logic
[Metaphysics of Real Happiness],
of power would be the rational thing to do). In politics, “economical and political ‘realism’
is a grand school of submission”.
rationality is almost exclusively reserved for those who are
Quoting Rousseau, he adds that
in positions of power and who are supported by various laws, a proper method to achieve
freedom is to “leave all the facts
as they design the criteria and the very logic of such laws10.
aside”. Alain Badiou. Métaphysique
Bafflement is the product of a non-calculating atti- du bonheur réel. Paris: Presses
Universitaires de France, 2015.
tude, which is the main reason why the language of power

121
politics categorises it as ‘irrational’ or ‘irresponsible’ behaviour. It
risks everything, despite not having much to offer in the first place,
from the perspective of capital. What it offers is the articulation
and opening of all the ambivalences of a certain concrete situation,
precisely by using the truth-speak that escapes the normative
diplomatic and institutional forms of addressing, which brings
language to a different level, i.e. redirects language to a different
track of reasoning.
Baffling is never an act of aggression, although it can take on
a form that can be considered violent. Political theory reflects on
violence as a possible reply to oppression in the discussion on ‘just
wars’. It is important to note here that bafflement has never been,
and cannot be, an act of terror.
Bafflement is an act of freedom precisely because it occurs
in a situation in which one has nothing to lose and everything to lose
at the same time. Baffling is the last instance of the right one can
invoke in order to preserve freedom. The ultimate message of the
practice of baffling is that it is preferable to die free than to live
enslaved. The bafflement induced rests on the premise that free-
dom is more important than life, i.e. that the subjects deprived of
freedom cannot accept this condition as a valid form of human
life, however ‘bare’ its terms may be.
Therefore the act of bafflement needs no authorisation, no
contract, no agreement, no permission; is not any traditional right,
it is the right of (ultimate) need, and one that is self-decided upon.
It should be considered a common right for anybody to decide if
and when those in power are to be baffled.
Bafflement always occurs unexpectedly, and frequently
introduces its own formulation and argumentation for the very
first time. Some historical acts of baffling preceded the very names
that describe the principles they exercised, e.g. the case of active
neutrality, of socialism, of feminism, of anti-colonialism, of pretty
much all of the semantic reflections of equality. One might even

122
 Demonstration against the government of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia
and its pact with Nazi Germany
© Museum of Yugoslavia, Belgrade

say that every emancipatory notion of principle had to be preceded

in practice by acts of bafflement, before the given principle was
named and recognised.
The only resource required for the act of baffling is free-
dom, political freedom. To baffle is to reject the ultimatum of
power politics (“We will save your life, but you will be our slave”)
which in contemporary times operates as ultimatum of choice in
the politics of ‘lesser evil’.
To produce baffling is therefore not a small gesture, nor a
‘modest proposal’. It is an exceptional and important act of political
freedom, often capable of making at least a tiny crack in the all-
surrounding dome of dominant rationality. It offers a glimpse of
the possibility of a better future, and insists that it can begin to
already become reality today, whatever it may cost.

123
Sandrine Micossé-Aikins
and Bahareh Sharifi
Curating Resistance.
Political Interventions into
an Elitist, Hegemonic
Cultural Landscape

Introduction
“Dear audience, welcome to Mind the Trap. When we—people
who are labelled young, non-western, with disabilities, low-income—
read the flyer, I mean the leaflet, for Mind the Gap, we found it really
touching and cute that the organisers noticed the existence of obstacles
that can block access. It seems like an ambitious attempt to bring forth
change. However, we noticed some significant traps. That's why we, an
alliance of critical cultural workers, did not want to miss this opportunity
and why we came to join you. You did not invite us, but we came anyway.
We have come to lend you a helping hand and give you free tutoring—
one might call it ‘development aid’.”

The quote above is an excerpt of a speech that was part of

the intervention Mind the Trap. It was a reaction to Mind the Gap,
the 2014 conference organised by the University of Hildesheim

125
1 Intervention in the DT. Mind that took place in the Deutsches Theater.1 The conference
the Trap. https://mindthetrapber-
purported to deal with the obstacles that control access to
lin.wordpress.com/intervention-
im-dt the professional cultural field, but no representatives of the
groups actually affected by these barriers were invited to speak,
and the topic of discriminatory structures within the cultural
field itself wasn’t broached. We, an alliance of critical scholars and
cultural workers, expressed our discontent and perplexity by
occupying the stage with an artistic intervention before the con-
ference Mind the Gap even began. We immediately uploaded the
video of the intervention. It spread rapidly online, and was met
with keen interest and positive feedback. As a result, the press con-
ference the next day was well attended. To this day, many critics
have used the intervention Mind the Trap as a point of reference
to illustrate the continuing ignorance of the cultural sector and
German cultural studies, with regard to their own discriminatory
mechanisms of exclusion.
Just recently we were reminded of the long lineage of critical
interventions that our own intervention is part of: in the summer
of 2016, the US-American feminist artist group Guerrilla Girls called
attention to the problematic collection and exhibition practices of
Ludwig Museum in Cologne, as they’ve done previously in other
art institutions. They showed that the Ludwig Museum’s collection
consists mainly of works by white male artists: of all the artists
2 Guerrilla Girls. Girlsplaining in the collection, only 11 percent are women, and only two
Museum Ludwig.https://www.you
percent are people of colour.2
tube.com/watch?v=5uyPcWW0v
3Q&feature=youtu.be Cf. Henri Their striking intervention once again exposed the persis-
Neuendorf. Guerrilla Girls Unfurl
tence of patriarchal and Eurocentric structures in a suppos-
Giant Banner on Facade of
Museum Ludwig in Cologne: edly ‘postcolonial’ age, and how it creates an invisible bottle-
The Collective of Art Activists Turn
neck of whiteness and masculinity in the art sector. This
Their Attention to Europe.
Artnet. https://news.artnet.com/ tendency is buttressed by the traditionally strong influence
exhibitions/guerrilla-girls-mu-
of private collectors, whose personal preferences for a few
seum-ludwig-protest-622715
select artists is expressed in their own museums. Museums
and galleries are thus not an accurate reflection of important

126
historical or contemporary artistic creation, rather, they represent
“the history of money and power”3. Curators also play an increas-
ingly important role in these structures, as gatekeepers of the
institutions, as people who determine meanings, and as mediators
between works of art or exhibits, themes and audiences. 3 Ibid.

The relationship between curators and artists, writers

4 Sylvester Okwunodu
or scholars is sometimes a problematic one, and is often Ogbechie. The Curator as Culture
Broker: A Critique of the Curatorial
characterised by a more or less pronounced asymmetry of
Regime of Okwui Enwezor in the
power. On the one hand, in their role as “cultural brokers”4, Discourse of Contemporary African
Art. Aachronym. http://aachro
curators in public museums and galleries create and enforce
nym.blogspot.fi/2010/06/curator-
a (supposedly representative) meritocratic elite of visible as-culture-broker-critique-of.html

actors based on criteria that are Eurocentric, often classist

and capitalist. According to Sylvester Okwunodu Ogbechie, this is
often the case even for postcolonial curatorial approaches, in
which, for example, actors from the Global South are granted
space, and the usual Eurocentric understanding of the world is
called into question. On the other hand, due in part to their being
positioned at the intersection of institutions, public discourse,
artists, scholarship and the art market, curators may disrupt hege-
monies and centre marginalised perspectives. But it always gets
complicated when curatorial practice operates beyond the status
quo and aims not for the centre but for the periphery, especially
if it locates itself in the latter. Thus, if the point is more than just
hinting at, illustrating or aestheticising power relations, but to
seriously question them, a critique of power must be reflected on
the conceptual level as well: in staffing; in spatial organisation and
design; in language; in the definition of what is considered art or
not; in the legitimisation of knowledge. In this essay, based on the
practical example of the conference Vernetzt euch! [Get connected!]
we want to trace the field of tension in which our own curatorial
practice is situated, within (and outside of) a hegemonic cultural
landscape that usually only welcomes criticism and change if it
does not challenge the foundations of established hierarchies. In

127
 doing so, we will discuss structural obstacles, dilemmas, and pos-
sible approaches towards solving the problem, sketching our vision
for a kind of curating that is critical of power.

Curating as a Practice of Empowerment?

As cultural workers who also see themselves as activists, our
curatorial practice is closely aligned with the needs and everyday
realities of our (marginalised) communities.
5 Cf. for example the pro- While recently there has been an increasing amount of
gramme 360°—Fonds für Kulturen
programmes in which ‘participation’ and ‘diversity’ play a
der neuen Stadtgesellschaft
[360°—Fund for Cultures of the central role,5 they usually lack a basic understanding of how
New Urban Society] of the Kul-
discrimination works on a fundamental level. Projects such
turstiftung des Bundes [Federal
Cultural Foundation] www.kul- as the programme Kulturelle Vielfalt im Museum: Sammeln,
turstiftung-des-bundes.de/
Ausstellen und Vermitteln [Cultural diversity in the Museum:
cms/de/projekte/nachhaltigkeit_
und_zukunft/agenten_stadtge collecting, exhibiting and mediating], sponsored by the Fed-
sellschaft.html
eral Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media
6 Timo Reuter. Migration als between 2013 and 2015, are conceived merely as a cosmetic
Modeerscheinung [Migration as
fix and not for challenging and dissolving existing authori-
a trend]. TAZ. www.taz.de/
!5018388 tarian, patriarchal structures. In this project, scholars whose
biographies indicate a history of migration were awarded a
scholarship and given the task of increasing internal cultural diver-
sity, as well as integrating migration as a cross-sectional theme in
permanent exhibitions. When, at the closing event of the project,
the scholars spoke of their experiences of racism and discrimina-
tion, project management accused them of constantly framing
themselves as “victims”6.
The existing knowledge of people affected by mechanisms
of exclusion is almost never included in the preparations of these
projects, and it’s even rarer that these approaches lead to a long-
term strengthening of these communities. Usually, only a few of
those who belong to disadvantaged groups find access to cultural
institutions, and seldom—if at all—will they be used beyond

128
instrumentalised tokens to signal diversity to the outside world,
while the discriminatory structures in everyday work life remain
in place. The logic of tokenism also implies that one person can
serve as a substitute and representative of their respective commun-
ities, which are imagined as homogeneous groups. Their 7 Tokenised, marginalised
individuals are often attributed the
criticism is often ignored or even trivialised by the com-
responsibility of "providing
pany or institution. Social scientist Sara Ahmed describes diversity" to their dominant work
environment, even if this is not
this state as an invisible wall that diversity workers literally
explicitly their mission or expertise.
bang their heads on, but that is not even recognised by priv-
8 Sara Ahmed. On Being
ileged colleagues and superiors. “Diversity workers”7 are thus
Included: Racism and Diversity at
tasked with the irreconcilable twin roles of working with Institutional Life. North Carolina:
Duke University Press, 2012.
and against the institution.8
We understand art and culture as a field in which social rela-
tionships are not only represented and negotiated, but also produced.
The exclusion of many perspectives—for example, those of people
of colour, people with a history of migration or flight, and people
with disabilities—from large parts of the German cultural scene,
effects marginalised groups far beyond the realm of art and culture.
This is precisely why we find it important to anchor a critique of
power within this realm, not only in theory but also in practice.
The focus of our work will therefore always be the question
of how cultural workers can use art as an empowering practice
that can spark long-term social change. Since this is only possible
with the corresponding appropriate resources and spaces, a funda-
mental part of many of our projects is to deal with the current
conditions of production faced by, for example, artists of colour.
We discuss the art world’s exclusionary structures, question estab-
lished spaces, try to make marginal and taboo topics visible, and
establish resistant networks linking different communities. Art
sometimes plays a role in our work, but our work is not always
artistic. One of our most-used formats is interventions in the
cultural field. Interventions allow us to insert critical perspec-
tives—especially anti-racist ones—in contexts in which they are

129
9 Cf. the work of Bündnisses otherwise categorically hidden and suppressed. This approach
kritischer Kulturpraktiker_innen
makes it possible to effectively highlight power relations
[Alliance of Critical Cultural Prac-
titioners]. https://mindthetrapber- in a way that can reach a certain level of public visibility, to
lin.wordpress.com/intervention-
expose the scandalous exclusiveness of cultural institutions,
im-dt/ (16 March 2017) and Büh-
nenwatch http://buehnenwatch. and to demand equal access to spaces and resources in the
com/erste-interventionaktion-
art sector for marginalised communities. Through occupy-
gegen-blackface-an-deutschen-
theaterbuhnen. ing spaces9 via physical presence, we highlight and de-legit-
imise the claim that racialised perspectives are dependent
10 After our intervention Mind
the Trap, which called attention to on gatekeepers and cannot represent themselves.10 It also
the lack of self-representation of
allows for marginalised communities to become visible, not
marginalised communities at a
conference about nonaccessibility, only as a potential audience for art, but also for its needs
Vanessa-Isabelle Reinwand-Weiss,
and wishes to be recognised, namely, through content that
the director of the Bundesaka-
demie für Kulturelle Bildung is empowering rather than that which reproduces racism,
(Federal Academy of Arts Educa-
sexism and other forms of discrimination.
tion), asked: "Which medical con-
ference would find it self-evident Many of the exhibitions and events we have curated are
to invite patients to join discus-
intended as, or are extensions of, political interventions.
sions, just because the discussions
are about them?" This statement This was also the case for the conference Vernetzt euch!.
shows how the knowledge of
Even though our projects are usually located beyond the
experts with first-hand experience
of discrimination was discredited established, dominant cultural canon, we still depend on
and how their designated role was
the cultural industry’s existing structures, for example, with
that of objects of discussion.
www.vanessareinwand.de/2014/ regard to funding. Because of our anti-racist and inter-
01/12/mind-the-trap-uber-eine-
sectional approach, discursively we operate in the lineage
wissenschaft-voller-fallen
of postcolonial critique, which champions the interests
11 "The term 'people of colour'
of people of colour11, but does so while still referencing a
refers to all racialised people
who have different proportions of framework of western, exclusively white conceptions of art
African, Asian, Latin American,
and modes of knowledge production. At times, employing
Arab, Jewish, indigenous or pacific
origins or backgrounds, and who academic language, adopting certain modes of expression,
are therefore not read as white.
or using media that the western art canon labels ‘contem-
It connects those who are margin-
alised by the white dominant porary’, seem necessary in order to be able to both move
culture and collectively devalued
within Eurocentric structures and access resources. Concur-
by the violence of colonial
traditions and presences. This rently, this produces curatorial and artistic concepts that often
creates an analytical and political
remain completely inaccessible to those very communities
framework that makes it possible
to address differences, similarities that are supposed to be centred within our efforts.

130
 It is important that we constantly monitor how our as well as intersections of different
dynamics that oppress and exploit
work relates to the ‘inside’ and ‘outside’ of the status quo.
people of colour in a post-colonial
Some of the exigencies that arise are in conflict with one context. This term takes into
consideration (projected) ethnic,
another. What are the criteria that must be met for curating
sexual, cultural and sexual
to be critical of power while remaining relevant for people identities and subject positions. It
also enables going beyond these
who are usually not included in dominant society?
particular affiliations while
How can approaches that critique power impact negotiating a common position,
and it undermines the strategy of
normative spaces and support the long-term inclusion of
‘divide and rule’ by trying to find a
marginalised narratives, or even effect a change of perspec- common positioning."
Kien Nghi Ha. ‘People of Colour’
tive? In which cases does it pay to cooperate with estab-
als Diversity-Ansatz in der antiras-
lished institutions, and when does it jeopardise one’s own sistischen Selbstbenennungs- und
Identitätspolitik [The Term ‘People
goals?
of Colour’ as Diversity Approach in
Anti-Racist Self-Designation and
Identity Politics.] Heinrich Böll
From Mind the Trap to Stiftung. https://heimatkunde.boell.
de/2009/11/01/people-color-als-
Vernetzt euch!—Curating Community diversity-ansatz-der-antirassistis-
chen-selbstbenennungs-und
“Without community there is no liberation, only the
12 Audre Lorde. The Master's
most vulnerable and temporary armistice between an indi-
Tools Will Never Dismantle the
vidual and her oppression. But community must not mean Master's House. Sister Outsider:
Essays and Speeches. California:
a shedding of our differences, nor the pathetic pretense
Crossing Press, 2007. pp. 110–144.
that these differences do not exist.”12
13 For example, the group
For decades the discriminatory structures of the
Bühnenwatch’s protests against
cultural sector have met with resistance and criticism.13 Blackface since 2012 and against
the use of racist terms in
In response, cultural practitioners from marginalised com-
children's literature since 2013
munities have established their own spaces and institu- (www.tagesspiegel.de/kultur/kolo-
niale-altlasten-rassismus-in-
tions—usually under very precarious conditions and outside
kinderbuechern-woerter-sind-
of heavily funded large cultural institutions—so that art waffen/7654752.html, and the
stage occupation of the Frankfurt
can be created that goes beyond mainstream perspectives.
Schauspielhaus by the Jewish
The JugendtheaterBüro Berlin [Youth Theatre Office Berlin], community in 1985 against anti-
Semitism in the Fassbinder piece
a self-organised initiative by and for people of colour;
Die Stadt, der Müll und der Tod
Shut Up and Sign_Speak, a project that stages collaboration (Garbage, the City and Death)
(www.juedische-allgemeine.de/
between deaf people14 and hearing performers through
article/view/id/16694
spoken word, hip-hop and sign language performance; the

131
14 “The deaf and hard of hear- integrative theatre project RambaZamba, which provides a
ing community is diverse. There
stage “for people with so-called disabilities”; the festival
are variations in how a person
becomes deaf or hard of hearing, Reclaim the Beats, run by queer PoC musicians; the Rroma
level of hearing, age of onset,
Aether Klub Theater; and the Black drama ensemble Label-
educational background, com-
munication methods, and cultural Noire are just a few examples of these kinds of initiatives that
identity. How people ‘label’ or
not only give a voice to marginalised perspectives, but also
identify themselves is personal and
may reflect identification with the explore collaborative ways of working that do not reproduce
deaf and hard of hearing commu-
the rigid hierarchical structures of big institutions, pushing
nity, the degree to which they can
hear, or the relative age of onset. back against tokenism and the hype of individualism.15
For example, some people identify
Most of the founders and participants of these projects have
themselves as ‘late-deafened,’
indicating that they became deaf many years of experience not only in their work as cultural
later in life. Other people identify
producers, but also in dealing with a cultural field and funding
themselves as ‘deaf-blind,’ which
usually indicates that they are deaf structures that are, among other things, hierarchical, classist
or hard of hearing and also have
and racist. Even if the experiences of exclusion of people
some degree of vision loss. Some
people believe that the term belonging to different communities are often similar, in
‘people with hearing loss’ is inclu-
everyday work there are only few points of contact between
sive and efficient. However, some
people who were born deaf or hard them, especially if they experience forms of discrimination.
of hearing do not think of them-
In October 2015, we—an alliance of critical cultural practi-
selves as having lost their hearing.
Over the years, the most com- tioners—organised the conference Vernetzt euch! It was meant
monly accepted terms have come
to strengthen links of solidarity and channel energies into
to be ‘deaf,’ ‘Deaf,’ and ‘hard of
hearing.” National Association of discussing possible "strategies and visions for a cultural scene
the Deaf. https://www.nad.org/
that critiques discrimination”.
resources/american-sign-
language/community-and-culture- As a kind of counter-conference to Mind the Gap, Vernetzt euch!
frequently-asked-questions
aimed to rectify the latter’s shortcomings. As such, it started
15 i.e. creating a hype around off with ambitious goals. We wanted to offer a space for cul-
individual artists from marginalised
tural practitioners whose work critically engages with dif-
communities without supporting
collective empowerment. ferent forms of discrimination and beyond, and/or who are
affected by these forms of discrimination. Our understanding
of discrimination was an intersectional one. Through the event, we
aimed to offer the opportunity to not only share experiences with/
in the hegemonic art business, but first and foremost, to discuss
tried-and-tested empowerment strategies; to design new ones; and
to jointly consider how we can develop and establish sustainable

132
structures of our own. Its target audience was therefore not the
mainstream cultural scene, nor the decision-makers and leaders of
big established institutions. We absolutely wanted to avoid a situa-
tion in which people who are discriminated against once again had
to explain and ‘prove’ the existence and quality of their experiences
of exclusion to members of dominant society.16 16 A classic example is when
mainstream institutions organise
We developed an approach that made it possible to
panel discussions on discrimination
go beyond policy discussions. Moreover, the conference and put people from dominant
societal groups (who have not
was to be a collaborative project as much as possible, a com-
themselves experienced discrimi-
mon endeavour that would not reproduce the traditional nation experience and lack
anti-discrimination expertise) on
hierarchies of the cultural sector, but that would also meet
the same panel as experts from
the needs of the target groups. marginalised communities—to
make the discussion more “contro-
versial”. Cf for example the taz.lab
panel held on 20 April 2013, The
Curating as a Collaborative Practice End of the White Mainstream.

Due to adopting the approach of a collaborative, open cura-

torial process, the collaborations between contributors took longer
and were more complicated than expected. But this is precisely
what made it possible to include a broad diversity of expertise, per-
spectives, and experiences in the concept, whose linking together
allowed for the creation of meanings across communities.
But how open can such a process be, if we’re also ensuring
that content and goals don’t get watered down? And how rigidly
can distinctions be drawn so that they don’t reproduce discrimi-
nations and exclusions? This project required almost two years of
lead time; this was necessary not only because the original team
was quite large and its cast changed over time, but also because it
was important to have enough time to negotiate these complex
issues. How selective could we be when selecting participants, and
what kind of selectivity was appropriate? We organised get-togeth-
ers in order to extend our networks beyond our own communities,
and to meet other potential contributors, but it was not up to us
who would accept these invitations. It was also our responsibility

133
to be conscious of problematic, exoticising or fetishising dynamics
stemming from dominant positions within our own structures,
and to reflect on and transform them.
We realised that ultimately, clearly articulating and high-
lighting the project’s intentions—namely, to engage in a construc-
tive critique of power rather than just dropping hip academic
buzzwords—as well as the targeted community reach-out, created
an effective ‘filter’ that kept important content from being depoli-
ticised or watered down.
Moreover, it was also important to actively include, from an
early stage, experts with experiences of discrimination that we did
not have, especially those having to deal with ableism. Consulting
with these experts before and during the conception phase of the
project, rather than just at the end or even later, was one of our
core principles. In our own experiences we have seen that institu-
tions usually only approach communities and anti-discrimination
experts at a stage when it is too late to make any significant changes
to the content. These kinds of approaches indicate that there
isn’t actually any real interest in marginalised perspectives, but that
superficial encounters with token individuals only serve the
purpose of legitimising finished, exclusionary concepts.
Furthermore, honouring expertise through appropriate
remuneration is just as important as early active networking. Too
often, marginalised people are expected to provide valuable know-
ledge and work for free ‘for the cause’. This was another challenge
we faced, due to the difficulty of acquiring funds for the project,
and which we will discuss in more detail later.

Giving Space, Shaping Networking,

Materialising Resistance
The heart of the conference was a mix of interactive work-
shops and short keynote speeches, rounded off by a networking

134
brunch that offered attendees the opportunity to present them-
selves and their projects, as well as find allies.
After lengthy consideration, we decided to hold the con-
ference at the Berlin University of the Arts (UdK). While UdK is an
established and exclusionary institution, access to spaces was made
relatively uncomplicated by our cooperation partner Interflugs, a
self-organised student group. Together, we wanted to symbolically
occupy the UdK by bringing in groups and topics that are usually
not found there. Moreover, we saw the university as an example
of a place in which many people begin to engage with art more
deeply, and where they also begin to internalise dominant and
hierarchical ideas of culture.
In that sense, we considered the conference itself to be an
intervention into a dominant cultural space.
The workshops presented successful and empowering best
practice initiatives, and spoke about obstacles and problem-solving
strategies. We paired groups from different communities who
shared similar working methods or topics. The aim was to identify
patterns in experiences of dominance, and to extrapolate recom-
mendations for future action and other initiatives. However the
format of the workshops was up to the workshop organisers, allow-
ing them to choose the right (creative) form for their content and
expertise. The sole task we gave them was that by the end of their
workshop with their group, they should have identified the three
most relevant and transferable strategies. Despite the open nature
of the conference, we chose to stress concrete results that could
be of use to participants in their daily artistic and activist work;
this was a political decision. It was also based on the awareness that
a large network of people acting in solidarity—themselves often in
precarious professional situations—had sacrificed time and energy
in order to make Vernetzt euch! happen. We found it important for
the conference to not remain stuck in a purely discursive realm,
but rather to empower and generate agency.

135
17 In the study Vielfalt in It was crucial to give the participants some historical refer-
Bühnen (Diversity in Theatres), the
ence points that could be understood alongside an overview
initiative Vielfalt entscheidet—
Diversity in Leadership examined of the present moment. In speaking about Arkadaş Theatre,
the staffing of 57 Berlin theatres,
founded in 1983 in Cologne, Azadeh Sharifi shared the long
and looked at how many people
with a history of migration/ struggle and far-reaching complexity of marginalised artists.
people of colour/women hold
We encouraged conference participants to both honour and
leadership positions in dramaturgy,
directorship, stage direction, understand themselves in relation to this history and the
technical team, press, and admin-
individuals involved in that struggle. A study17 was also pre-
istration. http://vielfaltentschei
det.de/vielfalt-in-berliner-buehnen sented that demonstrated the extremely low number of cul-
tural workers of colour in decision-making roles in publicly
funded cultural institutions.

Positioning Oneself
Bringing together people with different experiences of
discrimination also brings with it the responsibility to make sure
these experiences won’t happen again in that space. Awareness
Talks were scheduled at the beginning of the conference to avoid
situations in which some participants might say or do something
racist or ableist out of ignorance. These talks briefly explained the
basics of each political position. They were also an indirect set of
instructions meant to protect participants. When signing up for
the conference, participants were asked to agree to the Terms and
Conditions that we had formulated: they had to agree to accept
when other participants spoke of and identified types of discrimi-
nation they experienced, and not to question other people about
biographical details if they did not volunteer these themselves.
Moreover, it was important that the space be as accessible as possi-
ble: sign language translation was offered for example, and spaces
were (made) accessible for wheelchair users. Other measures were
also taken, such as designating a prayer and relaxation room, and
providing childcare. During the development phase, discussions
with experts from various community self-organisations guided us

136
in designing more accessible spaces. We covered up the binary gen-
der toilet door symbols with labels that gave concrete information
on the type of toilets (sit-down or stand-up toilets). We wanted to
signal that anyone, irrespective of their gender identity, could use
the toilets, without pretending that this space was entirely free
from the workings of dominant power. This way, nobody found
themselves having to see someone urinating while standing up. We
made announcement videos in German sign language in order to
reach the Deaf community.

A Few Words on Funding

As a group with no other common reference points besides
activist work, operating outside of institutionalised structures, it
proved very difficult to obtain funding from the usual foundations
and funds; possibly this was also due to our concept and its criti-
cality. Personnel costs accounted for most of our budget. However,
given that institutional support is a prerequisite for funding eligi-
bility in the cultural sector, funding conditions are designed 18 Cf. for example, the Werk-
statt der Kulturen or the Jugend-
in such a way that if personnel costs can be claimed, then
theaterBüro Berlin, which received
fair payments to contributors, especially marginalised peo- the Integration Award of the
Berlin Mitte district in 2014. At
ple, is sometimes made plain impossible. Although cultural
the award ceremony, the Jugend-
funding is very generous in Germany compared to many theaterBüro made it clear that the
point of their artistic work was
other countries, it is structured by the same exclusive prin-
not “integration” of socially disad-
ciples that underpin the dominant Eurocentric and elitist vantaged youth, but giving
visibility to structural exclusions
understanding of culture. Projects predominantly by and
in the cultural sector. Never-
for PoC are often ghettoised, and contributors thus find theless, they accepted the prize
money and donated it to the
themselves having to resort to far more meagre resources
campaign "My Right is Your Right"
offered through “integration” funding.18 Moreover, fund- whose aim is a fairer asylum policy
in Germany. Andrea Walde.
ing applications often require a lot of work, since they are
Für ein besseres Miteinander.
sometimes very complex. This process can be very chal- Berliner Zeitung. www.abendblatt
berlin.de/2014/12/07/fuer-ein-
lenging for small initiatives by members of marginalised
besseres-miteinander
communities, particularly when they’re working outside of

137
 pre-existing infrastructure without other financial resources.
Consequently, people in these small initiatives are usually not paid
for their work, or only poorly paid.
The political and moral dilemma we were initially faced
with, was that while our project was meant to challenge these pre-
carious structures, having no funding would mean that we would
be replicating them. Ultimately, it was only when we received com-
prehensive funding from a private foundation from abroad19 that
19 The donors wish to remain this dilemma could be resolved. It allowed us to remunerate
unnamed as the foundation
our own work as well as to appropriately remunerate all
operates according to a donation
principle and therefore requires contributors (such as, for example, people working as advisors).
neither material nor immaterial
consideration.
Learning From Mistakes, For the Future
As a platform, Vernetzt euch! was able to prompt many new
impulses, while drawing attention to areas of action that we as
organisers gained knowledge from, that will flow into future work.
The conference documentation we published gathers many of
these newly gained insights in the form of a strategy map, mainly
based on the contributions of workshop participants. More prac-
tical consequences could be ascertained from the preparation
process and the actual event, which are relevant for a curatorial
practice that aims to take into account different forms of exclusion.
For example, in order to be able to offer good translations
into sign language, interpreters require certain conditions that were
insufficiently met during the conference, such as speakers avoiding
technical terms and academic jargon; using easy-to-understand,
short sentences; pausing regularly to allow interpreters to catch up;
and providing them with a written overview of speaking points
prior to the public talk. The fact that these conditions were not
adequately met during the conference meant that the interpreters
had to improvise a lot, keep up a very fast pace, and were often dis-
satisfied with their translations which were sometimes incomplete.

138
It made for a rather strenuous experience for the (few) Deaf con-
ference guests.
Moreover it must be kept in mind that interpreting is just
one of many criteria for making a space accessible and relevant to
Deaf people. Although there was a workshop led by a Deaf person,
as well as an artistic contribution from Shut Up and Sign_Speak,
sign language should have been more present as a conference
language, for example, having presentations in sign language or
sessions moderated in sign language.
Something else that caused tension or dissatisfaction in
some cases was the pairing of workshop leaders who previously
did not know one another. Cultural workers working in precarious
conditions usually had little time to prepare their contributions.
The concept we chose required workshop leaders to meet ahead of
the event in order to co-develop the sessions, but this was not
possible for everyone. While our concept was open enough to give
the workshop leaders some scope of action, what was lacking was
some kind of moderation or mediation (before and during the
event) that would have helped to ensure successful cooperation.
In order to connect political concerns and to be able to
develop approaches collaboratively, a longer process of negotiation
is needed, and it must be well organised and funded. If this is not
possible, it is important to provide a nuanced mediation that can
offer enough space for everybody involved, as well as the proper
conditions for balanced, fair discussion.

Where Do We Go From Here?

Curatorial work manages the creation of both mean- 20 Ogbechie 2010
(same as note 4).
ing and value.20 It can question commonly held ideas about
art and culture. But which audience this curatorial content manages
to reach also plays a key role in what can be received and understood,
and how. The core task of a critical curatorial practice is to create

139
spaces in which marginalised people are welcome both as creators
of culture and as audiences, with themes important to them, their
methods and perspectives. For this to be possible, we need resources
and conditions that are not tied to the reproduction of dominant
norms, but allow for experimentation to happen, and are open to
failure, reflection, visions, and the invention of new aesthetic tools.
Vernetzt euch! attempts to explore these conditions.

140
Minna Henriksson
Valkeat
‘Valkeat’ is an artwork that Ahmed Al-Nawas and I developed
for the exhibition Finnish Landscape, curated by Joanna Warsza,
and organised by Checkpoint Helsinki at the Seurasaari Open
Air Museum in summer 2016. Seurasaari Museum, founded
in 1909 on an island in Helsinki, presents buildings of ethno-
graphic interest from different regions in Finland, thus creating
a ‘little Finland’ of past traditions. ‘Valkeat’ was developed
as an intervention developed specifically for the context of
Seurasaari.

The plans for Seurasaari Museum were presented to Finnish

Parliament on 20 October 1909; it was stated that the task of
the museum was to showcase “the development of material
culture from primitive beginnings up to the present". Its
purpose was first and foremost to educate and cultivate—
particularly the ‘common’ people—about the distinct stages
of cultural development amongst Finnish people. It was
also stated that “the purpose of the museum is to highlight
developments in Finnish material culture”. If necessary, other
Finno-Ugric cultures would be present in the museum (albeit
to a lesser degree), merely to highlight contrasting devel-
opmental stages, and to trace the cultural evolution from the
more ‘primitive’ (Finno-Ugric) to ‘cultured’ (Finnish).

Surveying the buildings in Seurasaari Museum, one quickly

realises that—with the exception of one cottage that was
added to the museum in the 1980s—all the houses, farm-
steads and manors come from a bourgeois context. They also
all come from within the borders of today’s Finland. So we can
conclude that the educational and cultural task of the museum
was twofold: on one hand, to educate the masses strictly
about the past, within the defined area of the Finnish nation
state, while excluding other areas within the historically shared

143
sphere of exchange and reciprocal cultural influence. On the
other hand, the museum’s educational and cultural task
appears to have been to ‘bring culture’ to the peasants and the
proletariat, but only in relation to the traditions and culture
of the bourgeoisie, and not their own. These two strands of
history and traditions are what Seurasaari preserves, and this
informs how it wants to educate us.

One result of ethnographic collecting practices was the found-

ing of Seurasaari; in Finland these practises began in the late
19th century. With increasing awareness around discourses
of race, researching the culture and population of Finland
became politicised towards the end of the 19th century. It
became an instrument in an attempt to prove that Finns were
related neither to Slavs nor to Mongols. Various ethnic groups
in Russia that had linguistic and cultural connections to Finns
also became the subject of extensive research from the 1870s
onwards. The researchers’ fascination with these peoples was
motivated by racism; they were regarded as more primitive
and less cultured compared to Finns, who regarded them-
selves as very advanced in comparison. One of the Finno-Ugric
researchers was the ethnologist and archaeologist Axel Olai
Heikel, who also founded Seurasaari Open Air Museum. Heikel
traversed Siberia and Mongolia, and contributed artefacts
(looted and cheaply bought) to the ethnographic collections of
Finnish student unions. These collections became the corner-
stone of the Finnish National Museum.

144
10
above and right: display of mannequins representing 'Finnish types',
from the collection of the Kansallismuseo—The National Museum of
Finland. The mannequins were made in the 1870s and were on display
in the permanent exhibition Land and Its People until 2017.
Photograph courtesy of Minna Henriksson
following page: some of the 1268 portraits that were part
of the 'Finnish Female Type' competition, launched in 1926 by the
magazine Suomen Kuvalehti and the Anatomic Institute Helsinki.
First published in Suomen Kuvalehti, no. 27, 1926.
Drawings page 159, 168-169 courtesy of Minna Henriksson.

146
147
This is the context in which Ahmed Al-Nawas and I made
‘Valkeat’. We didn’t offer a translation alongside the title.
Valkeat has several meanings. One of them is “fires”, specifically,
“bonfires”. Seurasaari is the central location of Helsinki’s annual
Midsummer celebrations: the Juhannusvalkeat [Midsummer
Valkeat] festivities were first hosted there in 1954. Tradition-
ally, several bonfires are lit around the island on Midsummer
night, following traditions enacted across different regions in
Finland. The island’s festival grounds are a central location for
Midsummer night celebrations; many ceremonial activities
take place there, from speeches to folk dances and a traditional
flag parade. We installed one part of ‘Valkeat’—24 large silk
flags—on the very flag poles usually used for the parade, thus
occupying one of the central locations of the Midsummer
tradition through replacing traditional Midsummer flags.

Valkeat also means “the whites”. This is commonly used in

descriptions of Finnish nature—white nights, white snow... But
it is also used in the context of the Civil War of 1918, where
the bourgeois-national Whites fought against the socialist-
revolutionary Reds. The Whites won the war; the period until
WW2 is largely understood as the time of ‘White Hegemony’.
But the legacy of white hegemony noticeably reached far
beyond the 1940s, and is still present, even today.

The continuing silencing of the legacy of the left, and the

undermining of leftist culture, are examples of how the Whites’
ethos permeates post-Civil War culture. It became apparent
in cases like the ten-day World Festival of Youth and Students,
that took place in Helsinki during July and August 1962.
18 000 youth from all over the world gathered in Helsinki. The
festival originated in the Eastern Bloc; the first festival was
organised in Prague in 1947, and held biennially thereafter

150
within the Eastern European socialist countries. In 1959, the
festival was held for the first time in a so-called ‘neutral’
country—Vienna—to attract youth from outside the Eastern
Bloc. This move was met with strong resistance, but three
years later, a ‘neutral’ location was again selected. The pro-
gram in Helsinki emphasised decolonisation, and there was a
strong presence of youth from countries in the midst of revo-
lutions, fighting for liberation from colonialism. There were
also numerous representatives of new experimental art forms,
including some of the most progressive free jazz musicians
from the US: The Archie Shepp – Bill Dixon Quartet played two
songs in Helsinki, one dedicated to Patrice Lumumba, the
other to Jomo Kenyatta. Angela Davis and Alice Walker were
part of the US delegation. We found it really interesting and
amazing that international advocates of radical politics visited
Helsinki for ten days in the summer of 1962—and that no trace
of it was left today! We addressed this void and silence in
the radio programme that Ahmed Al-Nawas, Araba Evelyn
Johnston-Arthur and I produced, and tried to look into its
underlying reasons. Our research points out that right-wing
industrialists collaborated with the CIA to co-finance and
organise anti-festival actions. They also propagated a total
media boycott in all but the leftist press, and influenced the
state and city governments’ refusal to rent out spaces for the
festival.

‘Valkeat’ addresses two different notions of independence.

One, in connection with the decolonising theme of the 1962
Youth Festival, speaks of an independence in which a people’s
liberation is the key element. This was manifested in the Seura-
saari flag installation. We borrowed a commonly used sen-
tence from the Algerian liberation struggle—Un seul héros, le
peuple (“There is only one hero, the people”)—and emblazoned

151
it across the flags. The liberation struggle of Algeria against
French colonial rule had just ended in early July 1962, a few
weeks before the festival took place. During the festival,
there was an important encounter between Algerian freedom
fighters and French leftist youth. Moreover, nearly 20 000
people came to the island to celebrate the “day of Finland” in
the 1962 festival. We wanted to commemorate this inter-
national gathering, despite there being no trace of it on the
island, not even in its archives. The annual Midsummer Valkeat
celebrations, on the other hand, are well documented.

Valkeat can also mean “the whites” in racial terms. The other
part of the work, placed next to the Museum’s Florin’s Tea
House building, addresses how race theories articulated
around the turn of the century and during the early years of
Finnish independence—supported by Axel Olai Heikel among
others—were constitutive of national projects such as the
founding of Seurasaari Open Air Museum.

The part of ‘Valkeat’ placed next to Florin’s Tea House discusses

the notion of “the people” quite differently from how it is used
in the borrowed Algerian phrase. The version of independence
we observe in Finland is a bourgeois-democratic one. A core
difference between the liberationist independence of the
decolonising countries and Finnish independence, is that in
Finland, the means of production did not change hands and
were not seized by the people, but remained controlled by the
bourgeoisie. It was the people who were measured and cate-
gorised, and were deemed suitable for the nation—or not. In
race hygiene projects in the early days of Finnish independence,
certain segments of society were rewarded for reproducing in
great numbers, while others were sterilised, and yet others
were executed. Both race and class played important roles in

152
people’s destinies. The struggle of Florin’s Committee—founded
and funded by Jenny Florin in 1911 to realise her father’s will—
was to halt the “degeneration” of Finland’s Swedish-speaking
minority, accompanied by the systematic dehumanisation of
supporters of socialism (with the assumption that these two
could not coexist).

Historical facts about Florin’s Committee were the starting

point for our intervention in the museum space. The target of
our critique was the museum’s text about Florin’s Tea House
(also donated by Jenny Florin) that does not mention Florin’s
other legacy. Our intervention consisted of creating a new
text panel, installed in front of the house and in front of the
museum's panel. It exposed this alternate history, also encom-
passing similar projects in the early years of Finnish indepen-
dence that applied race science to the population, conducted
by authorities of both Swedish and Finnish speakers.

153
Among the buildings in Seurasaari, Florin’s Tea House, added
to the museum in 1911, represents urban Helsinki and the
international bourgeoisie, epitomised by hand-painted water-
colour wallpapers from mid-19th-century France. In contrast,
a Sami goahti from Inari, also brought to the museum in 1911,
was its total opposite. In Heikel’s Seurasaari, the Sami dwelling
represented the most rudimentary form of living. In a text about
it, Heikel refers to himself as a “civilised being” and wonders
about the Sami goahti’s suitability as a form of housing. In-
spired by Swedish race theorist Gustaf Retzius’s classification
of types of people, Heikel then determined and classified the
other types of Finnish housing into four comparative and
evolutionist categories, using the dining/living room (tupa) as
a central point of reference.

Large numbers of people visit Seurasaari museum every sum-

mer, mainly tourists and lovers of Finnish folklore. I am not sure
if ‘Valkeat’ managed to raise awareness about oppressive
forces in history that are still at play today, and how they have
influenced the construction of Finnish national identity and
discourse. At least, quite ironically, the colourful flag instal-
lation provided a backdrop to hundreds of family photos during
Midsummer celebrations. Sadly, the flags were vandalised a
few weeks before the end of the exhibition; most of them were
torn and burnt. Police were called in by the museum staff to
investigate the acts of vandalism. Nobody was prosecuted,
and the police closed the case after it remained stagnant for
some time. The final police report stated: “The work is a leftist-
spirited political art work”, suggesting that the acts of vandalism
might have been motivated by this content.

156
157
160
page 171: Text board in front of Florin’s Tea House, part of the
installation ‘Valkeat’ by Ahmed Al-Nawas and Minna Henriksson.
page 172-173: part of the installation ‘Valkeat’ by Ahmed
Al-Nawas and Minna Henriksson in front of Florin’s Tea House.
left: flags at the Festival Grounds of Seurasaari
up: flags at the Festival Grounds of Seurasaari after an act of vandalism.
following page: flags at the Festival Grounds of Seurasaari after
an act of vandalism.
All photographs courtesy of Minna Henriksson

161
Appeals:
Sustained
Resistance
Unfinished Conversation
Nuray Demir and Nanna
Heidenreich in Conversation
About Possible Strategies
Against Exoticism in
(Visual) Art, the Ordering
of Things, and a Post-
Identity That Is Aware of the
Workings of Power

Nuray Demir Archiv-Arbeit VIII came out of the work that Tümay
Kılınçel and I did in the archive of Julius-Hans-Spiegel-Zentrum, at
the Sophiensaele in Berlin. In particular, it came out of our focus
on a box in that archive that is labelled ‘Exotic Dance’. This box
is part of the historical collection of dance photographs of the
Lipperheide Costume Library. The collection contains a total of
four archive boxes, categorised as ‘Ballet’, ‘Russian Ballet’, ‘Modern

169
Dance’ and ‘the rest’, namely that which was labelled ‘Exotic Dance’.
We took this as a starting point for taking a closer look at exoticism
in German dance history.

Nanna Heidenreich That’s what it was called? ‘Exotic Dance’?

And inside the archive box there are photographs?

Nuray Yes. The photographs were just thrown in arbitrarily.

I was interested in the criteria for that categorisation: the photos
might have been categorised according to dance techniques or
costumes, or perhaps neither. In the ‘Modern Dance’ archive box,
there is a photo of a woman—a dancer who looks European—pre-
sented as “oriental belly dancer”. Another photo shows a woman of
colour in the pose of a belly dancer, but this photo was put in the
‘Exotic Dance’ box. A dancer from Switzerland will be linked to mod-
ernism, while a dancer from Egypt will be exoticised. It became
clear to me that the logic of this archive was about bodies and not
about dance techniques or costumes.

Nanna This division of people into different categories

would certainly not have happened if this was not the logic it was
based on... The Egyptian dancer, do you know where she danced?
Was there any clue in the photo that would allow you to locate it?
It would also be interesting to see how the dancers were recontex-
tualised each time they danced on international stages.

Nuray The Egyptian dancer mainly danced in Egypt. But we

also found a photograph of an Indonesian dancer who danced in
Berlin. It was also put in the ‘Exotic Box’. Drawing a parallel to the
institution of the art school, I observe, over and over, that when
white people appropriate cultural signs from other regions, it is con-
sidered contemporary art. When people of colour engage with cul-
tural differences in their art, it is seen more as folklore.

170
 Nanna …which is seen as something inherent to them.

Nuray It won’t be accepted as art at all, but will be relegated

to a category like ‘social work’. Something that is really an art project
will be read as a just another hip-hop project for youth with a so-
called ‘migration background’. That’s why I think it’s so important
for the institution of the art school, as an educational centre, to be
subjected to a critique of power. I think that it reproduces a lot of
exoticism. This can begin by taking stock of who is studying art
there in the first place. Art school students looks very homoge-
neous to me in terms of race, class and gender. It's also important
to talk about gatekeepers: who has the power to decide what
modern or contemporary art is, and what is not?

Nanna Yes, exactly: who and what is given access to the cir-
cles of contemporary art? But I would like to ask again, why would
you use the term ‘exoticism’? Is it because of the archive boxes, and
the label ‘Exotic Dance’? We might also consider the term ‘racism’,
or examine certain processes of ‘racialisation’.

Nuray Or ‘exoticisation’…

Nanna Exoticisation. I am interested to talk more about this,

because it is not really a term I use, and I have to think about what
I associate it with. There are particular ways of borrowing and
appropriating orientalisms in the history of contemporary art—
above all, the practice of displaying difference as a spectacle. All
these varieties of spectacle, like human zoos, variety shows... I
would call this exoticisation, or exoticism. I’m wondering whether
your interest in this term is also because of how it links to this
archive box you found?

Nuray I borrowed the term.

171
 Nanna That's a good way of putting it, ‘borrowing’.

Nuray You’re right, it would be more appropriate to speak

of racialisation and exotisation, since these terms stress that it’s a
process, and make clearer how racisms are reproduced. But I think
we should look at this intersectionally, because other things are
also subject to being exoticised, for example class: when I look at
theatre plays about young people with a so-called ‘migration back-
ground’, or about people who receive the Hartz IV unemployment
benefits, I see that as exoticism as well.

Nanna So you’re saying that exoticisation takes place in the

moment that something is exhibited. In the case of art schools, we
could talk about structural issues and gatekeepers, seeing as racism
is a structural problem. But exoticism begins at the very moment
when something is exhibited or categorised. For example, the cul-
tural capital gained through work with young people from educa-
tionally-disadvantaged backgrounds or, at present, working with
refugees. I am personally really stunned by the sheer magnitude of
this current phenomenon, the massive cultural capital generated
through working with refugees. There should be projects made
about the following: friends of mine who made film projects about
illegalisation and migration told me how often people call them to
ask, “Can I borrow your refugees?” What’s shocking about this is
how unequivocal those statements are, and the magnitude of this
phenomenon. A performance artist I know (who is quite radical,
politically speaking) told me about having (more than once) over-
heard people in dance centres talk about how they should imitate
the body movements of refugees on boats, or something like that.
As I said, in my own work, exoticism does not have a lot of
theoretical sharpness, but I find it interesting to not only speak of
racism and racialisation, but of the exoticism or exoticisation that
occurs at the moment when something is exhibited.

172
 Nuray But I am also interested in projections onto bodies
that are not so normative.

Nanna As with the Egyptian dancer photographs, that ended

up in the box ‘Exotic Dance’ because she is Egyptian, and was con-
sidered ‘exotic’ by the person who did the archiving? But could you
please explain why you are so interested in the body? Why do you
focus on the body and not, for example, the costume?

Nuray I'm not just interested the body. But what I find sig-
nificant about it is the practice of ‘othering’ and the simultaneous
reproduction of ‘whiteness’ as a norm. Thus, everything that devi-
ates from this imaginary norm can be marked as different, and be
exoticised. And that does not only apply to the big category of race
per se, but also to beauty ideals such as being thin. Exhibiting what
is normative reproduces this normativity.

Nanna Your thesis, your observation, is also a duplication: a

naturalisation of both the exhibited exoticism and the exoticised
individuals. When someone who receives Hartz-IV unemployment
benefits takes part in a dance project, there is an assumption that
they are unskilled, even though they could just as well be a trained
dancer who is unemployed. There is an othering of bodies as well
as an othering in relation to the field of dance, art or theatre. Hence,
people who get exoticised are categorised as not belonging to this
field. Moreover, their art is not acknowledged as such, but seen as
craft, cultural knowledge about their place of origin, or folklore.
The institutional logic is that these people do not belong there, but
are foreign bodies, as it were.

Nuray Well, institutions such as museums, art colleges or

theatres do not represent our immigration society. Rather, they
make ‘art for a few’.

173
 Nanna It would be interesting to investigate which shifts
have occurred in cultural institutions. I would say there have been
thematic shifts: today there is some diversity in German theatres
with some postcolonial projects, in a way that might not have been
possible 20 years ago. But the structures of the institutions have not
changed, and consequently, neither have the assumptions around
who the audience is.

Nuray I would begin this investigation by looking at edu-

cational institutions. At the Academy of Fine Arts Hamburg for
example, almost all professors are white Germans; this is the same
for the students.

1 Translator’s note: “Gymna- Nanna Some students who don’t have German names told me
sium, in the German education
about their experiences in school, about how their elemen-
system, is the most advanced of
the three types of German sec- tary schools would not give them a recommendation to go
ondary schools, the others being
to Gymnasium.1 It has nothing to do with their grades; the
Realschule and Hauptschule.
Gymnasium strongly emphasises teachers think that the child does not need to go to Gym-
academic learning (...). Students
nasium or that they should not be there. 20 years ago, when
are admitted at 10 or 13 years of
age and are required to have com- Germany was a declared non-immigration country, it was
pleted four to six years of Grund-
exactly the case with all my friends who didn’t have a German
schule (primary education). In
some states of Germany, permis- name and who are now academics.
sion to apply for Gymnasium is
nominally dependent on a letter of
recommendation written by a Nuray It was the same for me; this is why I don’t have an
teacher or a certain GPA (...). Final
Abitur.2
year students take the Abitur final
exam.” https://en.wikipedia.org/
wiki/Gymnasium_(Germany)
Nanna I believe that this is due to structural aspects, and
2 TN: Abitur is the qualifica- the fact that racism is not being talked about as a structural
tion granted by the completion of
problem. In addition, of course, the well-educated middle
Gymnasium. For people who went
through the German secondary and upper classes are clearly ill-suited for thinking about
education system, it is the prereq-
class, given that not talking about class is part of class
uisite for matriculation at a Ger-
man university. habitus. Pretending that wealth is irrelevant is only possible
if you’re not worried about money. A friend of mine—a

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scholar with whom I worked for a while at the same university,
both as mid-level faculty—once shared that his being gay in the
academy was one thing, but the main point for him, (and what he
considered the biggest career obstacle within the academy), was his
working-class background. And it keeps on haunting him, precisely
because class is not talked about. In Germany there is a historical
overlap between class and migration in relation to the immigration
of so-called ‘guest workers’, since the ‘guest worker’ scheme was
also an intentional class transformation: it afforded upward class
mobility to a very specific segment of the German population.
Yet only few children with a so-called migration background are
admitted to Gymnasium, and later to university. And this pattern
is then also seen in hiring practices, and in who is selected for
scholarships.

Nuray This is extremely problematic, and is not addressed

even in PoC communities. By the way, I struggle with the term
‘PoC’, because it is ambivalent: on the one hand, it can produce
unity, on the other hand, it can cause disruptions amongst existing
solidarities. In the context of Berlin, I notice repeatedly that in
many PoC spaces, people do not like to talk about class. I also find
it remarkable that even though they are the largest minority group
in Berlin, Turkish communities are not well represented in PoC
spaces. Therefore, I prefer to speak of Academics and Activists of
Colour (AAoC), which is an academic self-designation, and there-
fore a very exclusive one. But I think it’s a more accurate descrip-
tion of the backgrounds and spaces of people who call themselves
PoC.

Nanna I think the term ‘PoC’ is problematic for other reasons

as well, because that whole discussion of who is included in it
reproduces extremely racist classification criteria. Racism should
be discussed in terms of its structural nature, and it would be good

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to not personalise racist categories even more. Therefore, I would
like to continue to speak about the term ‘exoticism’ and check
whether it can be make workable, and how it could be made
operational in the context of the art school, art, theatre and dance.
To think about whether it makes sense to use the term as a ques-
tion, and as point of departure for a critical examination of these
fields—i.e. in relation to education at art colleges—and to the
question of what counts as contemporary art and what doesn’t, and
who occupies which positions. I want to look at how these in-
stitutions—museums, exhibition spaces, theatres—are actually set
up. It would be interesting to focus on the term ‘exoticism’ since
there is a long history of exoticism in contemporary art, dance and
theatre. This term still being used today is problematic and inter-
esting.
I wouldn’t have thought of it myself, but I find it very inter-
esting to use it as an analytical method to examine those contexts
in which it played such an important role (before it slipped into
oblivion). I believe that the last exhibitions and reflections on
exoticism took place in the 1990s. After that, there was not a lot of
talk about it. But it would be interesting to examine this discourse
within this temporal frame; to probe this term and see what it
yields; to see what you can find out when going through dance
archives, for example; and what happens when you reflect history
in contemporary practice.

Nuray I have observed that exoticism is still a factor today

when it comes to access: for example, it’s evident in discussions
about the importance of having a more heterogeneous audience,
while not actively doing anything for this, and without changing
anything about staffing and positions within the institutions (such
as who is hired as curator or dramaturge). After all, who can afford
to study and to then do unpaid or poorly paid internships, just so
you can be in the right place at the right time to snatch a low-paying

176
job? It's not just about precarity, it's about exclusion. Access to
institutions is clearly linked to privilege.

Nanna I always wonder how many people who are part of

German educational institutions actually realise just how much the
German education system pretty much faithfully reproduces social
inequality based on national or ethnic origin. There is much less
class mobility in Germany than in other countries that do not give
that impression at first from outside, such as Britain or France.

Nuray I think that people who are affected by it are very

conscious of it. But I believe that the authorities that are respon-
sible for this state of affairs always like to outsource responsibility.
Art schools, for example, usually locate the reason for this class
rigidity elsewhere, such as in secondary education.

Nanna You said that you want to tie exoticism back to the
body. And I believe that there are two criteria that determine
whether a picture or a person will end up in the box ‘Exotic Dance’.
One is the racialisation of the body or the localisation of the
body on the map of exoticism—because like Orientalism, exoti-
cism operates on the basis of an imaginary border. To know which
countries fall into the category ‘exotic’, you only need to look at
the special deals to ‘exotic destinations’ offered by travel agencies.
This gives us a rough indication of where the land of exoticism is
located, supposedly.
The other criterion is who decides which dancers get filed
into this ‘exotic’ box and which ones don’t, regardless of the car-
nival costumes, belly dance attires or turbans they don. Like the
Swiss dancer you mentioned at the beginning: her practice and
costume would indicate that she actually belongs in the ‘Exotic’
box, but she ended up in the ‘Modern Dance’ box. This raises the
question of how this is related to class. How does one become

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 naturalised as an exotic subject that does not produce art, but
folklore? And how is this also determined by the question of
origin?

3 TN: “Kanake” and Nuray These are also topics that we should think about
“Schwarzkopf” are racist slurs
transnationally. “Kanaken” should be invited as artists in their
used in German-speaking
countries against people of own right, or for other relevant positions, not only when it’s
Turkish, Southeastern European,
about postcolonial issues. It should be possible for Ibsen’s
or Middle Eastern ancestry.
Nora to be played even by a “Schwarzkopf”.3

Nanna Yes. I don’t know much about theatre. There are

similar examples in other fields. The driver of the taxi I took earlier
came to Germany in the late 1990s, from Iran. He was trained as a
speech therapist and cameraman. He had made films and had done
work mainly on sign language with Deaf children and teenagers.
Germany refused to recognise his degrees, even though he had
eleven years of professional experience. In Germany he was active
in theatre, wrote novels and, well, became a taxi driver to make
money. That’s what he’s been doing ever since. Non-recognition of
degrees is an effective strategy for keeping certain people out of
certain classes. As a result, so many biographies are just excluded.
This taxi driver is by far not an isolated case. People in the German
academy have never come together to voice objections and demand
for the degrees of their colleagues to be recognised.

Nuray I think it's also about complicity. The women's

movement in Germany, for example, was carried out on the shoul-
ders of migrants. The social progress that was made possible for
many white German women was at the expense of migrants.

Nanna I would actually say that in the 1980s and 1990s,

feminism was one of the few venues where racism was being
talked about in Germany. For example, Orlanda Frauenverlag4 and

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the founding of ADEFRA5: they were part of the women's 4 TN: Orlanda Frauenverlag
is a feminist publishing house
movement and were accompanied by fierce disputes. But
founded in the 1980s in Berlin
it was one of the very few places where these discussions that foregrounds works on
anti-racism and writing by women
happened at all. However, this history was forgotten as a
of colour.
result of the institutionalisation of feminist theory in gen-
5 TN: ADEFRA is the name
der studies. Nowadays in gender studies, it is not a given to
of a self-organised cultural and
link things back to feminism. And the fact that dealing with political forum by and for Black
women in Germany, founded in
racism was a very important part of feminism is also not
the mid-1980s. www.adefra.com
very well known. But in the history of the German women's
movement, there was also a segment that did not count racism
among their concerns. And some of these people went on to be-
come part of the institutionalisation of feminism. So your thesis
is correct, because it is very telling to observe who is able to inte-
grate into the institution and who isn’t. On top of that, the reason
why many women were able to pursue a professional career was
thanks to the outsourcing of reproductive work to migrant women,
i.e. cleaning ladies, nannies, etc.

Nuray The University of Fine Arts in Hamburg now offers

a preliminary study programme for refugees. In principle I think
that's a good idea. However, in the programme, they only teach in-
tellectual traditions of Western art, culture and society—whatever
that is—to refugees. That sounds to me like a pretty Eurocentric
understanding of art history and scholarship. And it betrays their
assumption that these refugees are not artists and haven’t studied
art before—that they need the university to explain art to them.
I am not sure whether this new programme represents a real open-
ing of the art school, or whether the university is just banking on
this as positive PR.

Nanna I think it's both. I believe that many things that had
to be fought for with a lot of effort, for decades, now have a
broader public and wider reach. At the same time however, this is

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linked to that certain way of addressing people: refugees are seen
as potential students, but not as people with their own professional
and educational trajectories, or this is an afterthought. Instead, the
institutions cast themselves in the roles of carers, providing
educational welfare, and thus establish a relationship dynamic that
rules out the possibility of an encounter at eye level, on equal
terms, based on an understanding of equality that should be the
bedrock of democratic self-understanding. And this is related to
the massive resistance to talk about racism. Racism is only taken
seriously as a problem if it happens elsewhere. But surprisingly,
it is not possible to talk about racism as a structural problem.
Whenever racism is discussed on the radio, it’s from a socio-psy-
chological perspective—as if racism was just a question of attitude
or personal creed. But if change happened on a structural level,
learning processes would also change as a consequence.

Nuray Vassilis Tsianos once said something very interesting

about this: research focuses on the objects of racism while the sub-
jects of racism are always absent. And nobody thinks of themselves
as racist.

Nanna I was thinking about a title for your project or your

question: I think it would be a nice project to test out and ask
whether ‘exoticism’ is the name that art schools can give to the
racism that happens in their own institutions.

Nuray It's interesting that we’re talking about exoticism, but

it's really racism that we’re actually talking about.

Nanna And that's why I think it would be nice to try to use

the notion of exoticism as a lens through which to address racism
at art schools and in the field of art. Because this way you can ex-
amine archives, labels and art historical reference systems. It would

180
also allow you to survey your own experiences in this field, such
as which topics are attributed to you by outside opinions, and
which topics they think you can’t broach, and how this is commu-
nicated—as a theoretical deficit, or as biographical excess or what-
ever. Because there is a lot of resistance in cultural institutions, in
particular, when it comes to talking about racism. They are more
likely to invite artists and choreographers in who deal with these
topics.

Nuray In my experience, I often only get invited when certain

topics are on the menu, for example, I’ll get invited do a piece about
belly dancing. And I don’t see why I should accept that certain topics
get forced on me. This is a very common practice of instrumentali-
sation. I am not interested in being labelled a ‘migrant artist’ and in
cleaning up the colonial mess—like a cleaning lady in the art field.

Nanna That was also my point of departure for discussing

the complete incomprehension of the fact that people don't ever
want to be only addressed as a singular, fixed identity, for example,
as a woman or as a migrant, because that’s very reductive and can
be insulting. I experienced this constantly as child in conservative
Baden-Württemberg: being a girl, I always had to prove that I was
just as good at maths as the boys. You probably have experiences
that are comparable, like being addressed as a ‘migrant’, which
you might not even be at all. This permanent being framed as
something, and being addressed accordingly, means that it then
also becomes part of one's experience, because it leads to those
moments in which you experience being boxed-in by those outside
ascription that purport to already know who you are, what you
know, and what you can do. But as soon as you name it, they will
rub it in your face constantly. And if then you decide: “I don’t want
to have to deal with this all the time, why don’t you go label
yourself”, they won’t let you.

181
 Nuray After all, my artistic work has a lot to do with my bio-
graphy. But I don’t want to put a label on that. And in my opinion,
knowledge is also experiential knowledge and biographical know-
ledge, which many people do not recognise as legitimate know-
ledge.

Nanna A masters student at the university where I currently

work presented the book project she produced, and the interviews
that she conducted for this project. She talked to people who have
some connection to migration, in the broadest sense. Both in the
interviews and in the book, she took great care to avoid the typical
designations, terms, and words commonly used when speaking
about this topic. And she managed to do that very well. She asked
herself how she can ask others about something that she herself
has no experience of. She grappled with how to talk about some-
thing that she has little knowledge of, without relying on assump-
tions, ascriptions, and presumptions. She also thought a lot about
questions that are really relevant politically and personally, and
especially about how to approach them from the margins. I really
liked her work and was very happy about it, as it is rather rare that
works get made on this topic without being flattening, and without
centring themselves or oneself. Instead, she left this centre empty,
without putting any labels on it, while moving along the outer
perimeter herself. And then I thought: this is a student doing her
masters, and she gets it. So more people should be able to get it too,
and behave in the same way, and acknowledge that yes there are
different people with different biographies with different ranges
of experiences, and that racism does exist, while not permanently
shoehorning people into a reductionary idea of their migration
experience, and only foregrounding this about them.

Nuray I am also more interested in post-identity. But I think

it's very important to be aware of how power operates. By that I

182
mean a strategy for political empowerment comparable to queer
identity politics. But it’s important not to be ignorant about how
power operates in the world and also within people, i.e. not to say
that “we’re all the same”. This is how racism and classism remain
obscured. I find that very problematic. Because when a certain
emphasis on queerness produces heterosexual white cis men who
just, like, wear nail polish and mimic ‘queerness’ in their behaviour
or affect, it obscures the fact that sexism is still a very real issue.

Nanna Post-identity—yes, exactly. Existing without labels,

free of outside ascription. This reminds me of the video artwork
‘Semra Ertan’, made by Cana Bilir-Meier in 2013. Bilir-Meier is a
graduate of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna, and received the
Birgit Jürgenssen Prize for this piece in 2016. The artwork is about
her aunt Semra Ertan, who self-immolated in Hamburg in the 1980s
in protest of xenophobia and racism in Germany. The film is also
about an archive, a box owned by her family. But it is something
that is not talked about—it is a very painful and difficult memory.
With this artwork, Cana Bilir-Meier speaks of something very
specific; the story that she tells is one of violence. The film’s narra-
tive is evocative, and doesn’t prescribe meaning—it leaves space,
because the artist never actually met her aunt, and does not know
her. The film creates a narrative space, but the story is never fully
told. It remains open-ended. This moving image work makes it
possible to address the difficulty of not naming, and the violence
(because self-immolation is an incredibly violent act). It acknow-
ledges them, and does not rush to resolve them abruptly.
And these are similar practices that, in my view, address
precisely what a restructuring of educational institutions would
mean. Structural changes are sorely needed, but they must happen
in a way that does not force the individuals who are the protago-
nists of this change into yet another box with a new label. Instead,
this process of change should be conducted from the margins—as

183
a perspective and point of departure—and include a thorough
analysis of the history of exoticism.

Nuray Exoticisms and their reproduction in the field of art

constitute the starting point of my work. I am concerned with
thinking critically about discrimination and privilege. These reflec-
tions are an ongoing process that will never end, that will remain
an unfinished conversation. And my approach is to take advantage
of this situational potential, and to create moments that demon-
strate strategies of deconstructing exclusionary dynamics. This is
how my concrete artistic and curatorial practice operates: I don’t
create final objects and conclusions, but situations in which it
becomes possible to question and challenge the status quo.

This text is an excerpt from Nuray Demir’s written diploma thesis

Das Ende des Exotismus in der (bildenden) Kunst [The End of Exoticism
in (Visual) Art]. It is part of the research for her practical diploma thesis
Die Ordnung der Un_Dinge with which she graduated from the College
of Fine Arts Hamburg in 2016. The work consisted of a spatial
installation and a performance about the exoticising gaze on migration.

184
Anti*Colonial Fantasies/
Decolonial Strategies
A Conversation
Between Imayna Caceres,
Sunanda Mesquita and
Sophie Utikal

The project Anti*Colonial Fantasies/Decolonial Strategies1 1 The publication Anti*-

Colonial Fantasies was published
at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna brought together Black
in 2017 in cooperation with the
students and lecturers of colour from different diasporas, publisher Zaglossus. The book
documents the exhibition project
who all engage in a critique of the consequences of colo-
and further elaborates on the
nialism within and outside of the academy, as well as with positions of the involved artists.
Online project documentation:
the imagination and possibility of alternative realities.
www.facebook.com/anticolonial
Working with various media and participatory formats, fantasies

the artists exposed the ways in which coloniality persists, estab-

lishing their point of enunciation, i.e. speaking from their own
experiences and histories. They took diverse forms of resistance,
social and institutional critique, and knowledge production as
points of departure to raise questions of race, sexuality, gender, and
spirituality. The aim was to create a space where it was possible to
address the need to decolonise the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna,
to share experiences and struggles, and to work on creative strate-
gies of dealing with discriminatory structures. The project was part

185
2 For an overview of and dif- of a long genealogy of artistic interventions and decolonial2,
ferentiation between approaches,
postcolonial, anti-racist initiatives produced by BPoC artists
cf. the work of Gurminder K.
Bhambra, for whom “[d]ecolonial that seek to affect change in the discursive, social, political,
and postcolonial arguments
and material realities of the spaces they inhabit. Curated
challenge the insularity of historical
narratives and historiographical by Imayna Caceres, Sunanda Mesquita, and Sophie Utikal,
traditions emanating from Europe,
Anti*Colonial Fantasies took place at Friday EXIT in Vienna
in favour of arguments that sug-
gest the necessity of considering between 20-28 May 2016. It included an art exhibition;
the emergence of the modern
performances; workshops; talks by decolonial thinkers and
world in the broader histories of
colonialism, empire, and enslave- activists; and the signing of a petition demanding a BPoC
ment”. Gurminder K Bhambra.
professorship at the Academy of Fine Arts, Vienna.
Postcolonial and Decolonial
Dialogues. Postcolonial Studies. 17,
no 2 (2014). pp. 115–121.
Participating artists and guests:
Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Gerardo Montes de Oca, Verena
Melgarejo Weinandt, Amoako Boafo, Stephanie Misa, Sandra Mon-
terroso, Ezgi Erol, Firas Shehadeh, Hansel Sato, Rini Mitra, Mariel
Rodríguez, Naomi Rincón Gallardo, Cana Bilir-Meier, Pêdra Costa
and Eduardo Triviño Cely, Sunanda Mesquita, Imayna Caceres,
Sophie Utikal, Yurderkys Espinosa, Daniela Ortiz, Alok Vaid-Menon
and Janani Balasubramanian of DarkMatter.

Imayna Caceres It’s important to begin by clarifying that we

use the terms ‘Black’ and ‘people of colour’ as a political self-defi-
nition relating to the original wish for a transnational movement
of peoples across borders. The capitalisation of ‘Black’ refers to the
racial categorisations produced by the modern colonial project
that placed Blackness at the bottom of humanity, and points to the
undoing of this differential history.
We acknowledge the limits of the term ‘BPoC’ in how US/
western imperialism produces hierarchies among BPoC (for exam-
ple in terms of citizenship, freedom of movement, comparative
quality of life, value of life/mournability), but we sought to counter
the limits of the term by intertwining it with class, nationality,
gender, disability, sexuality and spirituality, inviting the artists to

186
address those specificities and their intersections in their works.
Historically, the term ‘person of colour’ was used during colonial
times and by different colonial powers to refer to Black people
of mixed white European descent, Black people of free status or,
more recently, as a synonymic euphemism for the term ‘coloured
people’. Faraway from those uses, the origins of the term ‘BPoC’ lie
in the solidarity movement of ex-colonised peoples across the
globe, in a context against imperialism of old and new powers, and
against white supremacy. In that sense, the term ‘BPoC’ could
be considered rather useful for anti-racist struggles in Western
European contexts of anti-migrant discourses and policies, as long
as nationality and passport differences are always also at the centre
of the conversation.
The concept of coloniality that we are using was 3 Anibal Quijano. Coloniality
of Power and Eurocentrism
coined by Peruvian sociologist Anibal Quijano3. It describes
in Latin America. International
how race and labour were articulated in the colonial Sociology. 15, no 2 (2000).
pp. 215–232.
period, and the continuation thereof in the present. This
articulation operates in four interrelated domains: control of the
economy (land appropriation, exploitation of labour, control of
natural resources); control of authority (institutions, army); control
of gender and sexuality (family, education), and control of subject-
ivity and knowledge (epistemology, education and the formation
of subjectivity). Taking this as a point of departure, we will speak
of decolonial curating as an approach that includes anti-racist
practices, and that understands itself as a practice of overcoming
these relations of domination.

Decolonial Curating
Sunanda Mesquita Personally, I can’t separate the notion
of decoloniality from my practice of curating, because for me
it means creating a space that is open specifically for QTIBPoC
(queer/trans/inter/Black/people of colour) artists that are excluded

187
 from contemporary art discourse, and a space that is open for
discussions, for conversations, for different points of departures
and points of views, and for differences and knowledges. For
me, it also means being open to a constant unlearning: unlearning
4 “‘Poner el cuerpo’ means to the way I was socialised growing up in the west, unlearning
be really present and involved; to
what I learned about art, and about what an exhibition
put the whole (embodied) being
into action, to be committed to a should look like. When I am curating, I actively try to unlearn
social cause, and to assume the
fixed notions—things that I never questioned before—
bodily risks, work, and demands
of such a commitment. Poner el because they seemed so clear to me, because I learned it at
cuerpo is part of the vocabulary of
school, university and at home. This is why the aim of my
resistance in Latin America, and
implies the importance of material curatorial practice is to discuss the question of what is con-
bodies in the transformation of
sidered to be knowledge and what isn’t. The contemporary
social relations and history.”
Barbara Sutton. Poner el cuerpo: art world is still very exclusively reserved for artists that cen-
Women's Embodiment and Politi-
tre their works solely around materiality and surface. Sure,
cal Resistance in Argentina. Latin
American Politics and Society. 49, those can be interesting topics to tackle, but the importance
no 3 (2007). pp. 129–162.
lies in including discussions on race, class, gender, sexuality
5 My use of the term “ger- and (dis)abilities. It took me a long time to acknowledge my
manic/white” refers to the particular
embodied knowledge as a valuable point of departure from
history of whiteness in Europe that
divides Nordic Europe from which to create art and to curate. Decolonial theorists,
Southern Europe, and Western
artists and friends helped me a lot during this process, and
Europe from Eastern Europe; that
has a established a racial hierarchy deeply influenced my decolonial curating. For example, the
that places whiteness at the top;
writings of Grada Kilomba, bell hooks, Gloria Anzaldúa,
and that produced a history
of oppression and persecution Rupi Kaur, and the seminars of Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
of certain groups and nations. As
and Sushila Mesquita at the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Charles W. Mills explains, the
boundaries of whiteness are not
always drawn in the same way in
different countries, nor does the
Imayna I understand decolonial curating here in Austria
designation of whiteness rule out as the act of putting the body4 in spaces whose histories
internal “racial” heterogeneities
have been constructed as germanic/white5 but that stifle
and hierarchies within the white
population itself. Charles W. Mills. awareness of this historic construct. At the same time, I
Global White Ignorance.
relate the term ‘curation’ to the word ‘curación’, which is
Routledge International Handbook
of Ignorance Studies, Matthias Spanish for ‘healing’, as in a process of transformation that
Gross and Linsey McGoey (eds.).
passes through the body and implies the development of a
London/New York: Routledge,
2015. p. 217. new consciousness. Most of the artists I have worked with

188
ground their artistic work in thorough research, investigating the
heritage of colonialism and the impact of racism because they see
the fractures of colonial history in their own lives, and aim to
transform part of this through their work. They have the know-
ledge of what it means to inhabit racialised, migrant, ‘third world’,
disabled, non-heteronormative, spiritual bodies; they come from
generations that have lived these exclusions and were experts on
the topic of oppression before they had a name for it. As Daniela
Ortiz remind us in The Culture of Coloniality6, a decolonial 6 Daniela Ortiz. The Culture
of Coloniality. L’Internationale.
approach requires a constant effort to take a position in
http://www.internationaleon
regards to the migratory control system—the existence of line.org/research/decolonising_
practices/34_the_culture_of_
migrant detention centres, forced deportation flights on a
coloniality
mass and individual scale, and extreme violence in border
zones. The hierarchy of mobility is an after-effect of colonialism:
it grants nationals of ex-colonial empires visa-exempt passports
that allow them to travel unhindered, while it posits migrants and
nationals of ex-colonies as having fundamentally different rights
as political beings and bodies. It establishes categories of life of a
differentiated class, one that is constantly being pushed towards
illegality, a life without the right to move through borders, without
the right to work. It creates a different class of lives that—without
having committed any crime—can be imprisoned in one of the 393
detention centres for foreigners that currently exist in Europe, or
join the long list of immigrants who died at the internal, external
and outsourced borders of the EU. In this frame, I see the role of
the curator as moderating and intervening in a community of
senses, undoing, questioning and getting involved in wider 7 Miguel A. Lopez proposes
this understanding of curatorship
political work for a radical reimagination of society.7
in a recent interview. Arteinfor-
mado. www.arteinformado.com/
magazine/n/miguel-a-lopez-nece
Sophie Utikal I find it important to rethink common sitamos-curadores-que-consid
methods of curating. Curating is not about me being in my eren-que-su-labor-consiste-
en-implicarse-politicamente-en-
little room, at my computer, deciding hierarchically which
sus-propios-contextos-5308
artist I want to include and why, without the need for

189
 making this process transparent or collective. Being responsible
for the overview means that one must be able to think with regard
to collectivity, and think about how to deal with hierarchies within
the group, especially in situations of conflict.

Imayna To this end, it’s good to engage and to check how the
process is being experienced by everyone involved. And afterwards,
to integrate what works, so that in the end the knowledge gained
becomes a tool. Bringing different positions together might mean
disagreeing about certain aspects. We should establish ways of
avoiding falling out with one another, to continue to discuss and
work toward a common collective goal even if we disagree. Racism
—both as a systematic structure and as individual discrimination—
is violent and mutilating, so naturally it has been countered with
a whole range of responses and human emotions: from rage and
indignation, to vulnerability and self-care. All these responses
and expressions are valid. We need a common sensibility that
allows us to understand that all these positions are needed, and not
hold up one mode of expression as the best and only way, while
de-legitimising other modalities of expression.

8 Kimberlé Crenshaw coined Sophie Regarding anti-racist curatorial practices: anti-racism

the concept of intersectionality to
is part of our decolonial practice as long as there is an un-
describe how systems of oppres-
sion interact on multiple and derstanding of anti-racism as intersectional.8 Since every
simultaneous levels. Kimberlé
sphere of life is touched by coloniality, you cannot just do a
Crenshaw. Mapping the Margins:
Intersectionality, Identity Politics, little bit of anti-racist work and say, “I’m done”.
and Violence Against Women of
Color. Stanford Law Review, 1991.
pp. 1241–1299. Sunanda I find that anti-racism is often practised in ways
that are not decolonial per se. In the context of Austria, anti-
racism is often not approached intersectionally; it doesn't take
other forms of oppression into consideration. The way that white
lecturers and art academia approach coloniality is not decolonial.
Take the Academy of Fine Arts for example: there are professors

190
and lecturers who are considered to be decolonial experts, who
occupy a monopolistic position on the topic, but they don’t reflect
on their own privileges and how this is connected to what they are
teaching; they don’t recognise how they are reproducing the same
hierarchies. They see theory as distinct from practice and lived
experience.

Sophie I think it would be very important to create spaces

for practising how to voice these things, how to apply what we
read, and how to speak up and express the knowledge we have, so
that it becomes a reflex. This takes a lot of practice and courage.
But I also want to talk about the absurdity of curating practices that
understand themselves as anti-racist but can be still be colonial. For
example, there are these festivals that claim to be anti-racist, but
the decision-makers are still all Austrian, middle class, able bodied,
cis male, white people who make no effort at all to challenge the
positions they occupy. How can it be that whiteness is so obviously
dominant in these projects, while critical Black positions or posi-
tions of colour are excluded? What are the motives behind 9 Donna Haraway first pre-
sented the idea of situated knowl-
this decision? I don’t accept the answer that says that it’s
edge in her article Situated
only about expertise, their resume or how many papers Knowledges: The Science Ques-
tion in Feminism and the Privilege
they published, because this ignores the existence of situ-
of Partial Perspective, published in
ated knowledge9 and neglects the idea of an embodied Feminist Studies, 14 no 3 (1988).
pp. 575–599. In it, she writes that
knowledge. So simply ignoring and misrepresenting the
“all eyes, including our own or-
perspectives that are shaped by our society’s racist para- ganic ones, are active perceptual
systems, building on translations
meters makes the whole project one-dimensional and
and specific ways of seeing, that
inevitably flawed. And if such a project still claims to be is, ways of life.”

anti-racist but does not seem interested in including people

10 Here I am referring to a
affected by racism, it also makes me suspicious of the thesis stated in Uma Narayan’s
article The Project of Feminist
motives and the extent of sincerity of the people behind
Epistemology: Perspectives from a
this project. Is their interest alone a warrant for them to Nonwestern Feminist, published in
The Feminist Standpoint Theory
speak for us, as dominant groups throughout history have
Reader: Intellectual and Political
spoken for the dominated?10 Therefore, if I am supposed Controversies, 2004. pp. 213–224.

191
to trust any kind of anti-racist project, it is crucial that people
affected by racism are also included in positions of power. If the
goal is to have a rich dialogue and transformative process for every-
one involved, it is necessary to also invite people from the margins.

Curating From the Margins

Sunanda Having worked politically within art institutions,
I can testify to the fact that it’s very hard, or even impossible, to
criticise discriminatory structures if the institution already claims
to be anti-racist and critical. I see how working from within an
institution has the advantage of being able to access funds to invite
BPoC for lectures and workshops, in order to create spaces. But
what always seems to happen is that discourses find their way into
the heart of the institution, where they get stripped away from all
of their original radical, political power, embodied knowledge and
meaning. I see this happening, for example, with the terms ‘queer’
and ‘decolonial’.
I think it's always going to be this struggle of balancing what
you can get out of an institution on the one hand, and making use
of this access on the other hand—we can't go on forever working
for free. And that's why I also wanted to talk about precarity. I think
working from this position of the margins, doing community
work with theoretical backup, trying to bring different practices
together—who is going to pay us for it? The only opportunities
I see are situations where BPoC artists are invited to self-exoticise.
When I was a first-time curator, trying to exhibit the works of the
artist Amoako Boafo, the answers I got when I was contacting
galleries in Vienna was “try the Weltcafé”, or “try to contact a world
art gallery”. Some even said that they don’t exhibit any African artists.
I was stunned that they were not even ashamed to tell me this so
bluntly. The only gallery we found that wanted to exhibit Amoako’s
paintings was a ‘world art’ gallery owned by an ethnographic

192
filmmaker who collects art he buys at low prices from artists all
over the world, and then sells at a profit. I was like... “OK, so these
are the conditions for us to even enter this space”, and still we felt
like we were selling out. At the opening night, they asked Amoako
if he would also dance as part of the show…
I always think that if I want to continue to curate—and it
will be in a decolonial way, because I can't separate those two
anymore—where will I find spaces in which I can truly 11 WE-DEY.IN is a platform for
contemporary arts, founded by
work with a decolonial approach? And with what funds?
artists Sunanda Mesquita and
Amoako Boafo, with the aim of
showcasing contemporary artists
Sophie This is a good example of what we were talk- based in Austria and to create a
ing about earlier: the possibility that anti-racism can still platform for networking and ex-
change. WE DEY seeks to support
be colonial.
the struggle of artists of colour for
recognition, without the labels
that are often used to justify their
Sunanda Yes, exactly, because the gallery owner exclusion from the mainstream
definitely defines himself as anti-racist, but his behaviour contemporary art discourse. In
2014, the project was awarded the
is so very colonial: his feeling of superiority; his ideas of
kültüř gemma! scholarship of the
being charitable, inviting the ‘poor’ African artist; the exot- city of Vienna.

icisation of the artist and his colonial fantasies of ‘dancing’

Black people. This is also why Amoako and I created WE
DEY11 in 2013. This was the initial starting point of the real-
isation that we need to find and connect to other BPoC
artists who go through the same struggles, curate exhibi-
tions, show works, and take up space within the contem-
porary art discourse.
Imayna Yes. There is a generation of curators from
previously colonised countries who engage with the topic
of coloniality, and lead this conversation by addressing
themes in the field of politics.12 They emphasise holding
artists and curators critically accountable for the production
of meanings. I like to think that, in a way, what we are doing
also shows a path for self-made initiatives13 organised on
12 Cf. Okwui Enwezor’s critique
of the 1996 exhibition Inclusion/
Exclusion: Art in the Age of Global
Migration and Postcolonialism,
curated by Peter Weibel in Graz.
Enwezor points to the failures of
the exhibition to address immigra-
tion and the discomfort felt
towards ‘foreigners’ in Graz and
Austria. In his view, this presented
the idea of inclusion and exclusion
as an imported theoretical fancy,
distant from Austrian and European
Realpolitik, leading to “the question
of whether theoretical sincerity
alone is enough (...) if it evades
some hard, uncomfortable issues
within its own territories” and if it
doesn't manage to show that “to
talk of the post-colonial is to evoke
its Siamese twin: the coloniser”.

193
13 This is what the Cuban cri- our own terms; creating our own spaces; answering to real
tic and curator Gerardo Mosquera
problems and contextual situations; and creating alterna-
describes as the potential of alter-
native self-made initiatives, as tives in terms of production, circulation, and access to but
read in Matar al padre: entrevista
also of creation of senses.
a Gerardo Mosquera, arteycrítica.
org, https://arteycritica.org/entre
vistas/matar-al-padre-entrevista-
a-gerardo-mosquera

194
Kemi Bassene
Catharsis, Healing and
Struggle: The Language
of the Anti-Racist Body

1 Translator's note: “Touche
pas à mon pote!” means “Hands
off my pal!” in French; it is the
iconic slogan of the big French
anti-racist NGO SOS Racisme
(founded in 1984) that stresses
integration and assimilation.
From Nina Simone’s lyrics “between two worlds I do belong”
addressed to oppressed women,
to Ta-Nehisi Coates’s
Between the World and Me,
from the “Touche pas à mon pote”
(Don't touch my friend) pinback button1
to the recent “safety pin”,
to the appointment of racist and
anti-Semitic chief strategists Patrick Buisson and Stephen
Bannon by President Nicolas Sarkozy (2007–2012) and
President Donald Trump (2016),
the challenge remains the same: understanding the specific
characteristics of different types of racism, and liberating any
Republican pact from the capitalist values within it. For how
can anti-racism even be conceived of without anti-capitalism?
How can any form of anti-racism be conceived of without a
simultaneous critique of capitalism, especially when we know
how successful capitalism was in imposing its interpretation
of history and social evolution by misrepresenting national
liberation struggles—and any other freedom struggles—as
anti-democratic? It is unclear whether this diagram of ideology
also holds true for communism. While it seems to me that
racism and anti-Semitism are intrinsic to Nazi ideology, they
do not necessarily logically attend to communism. Nazism and
capitalism cannot cut the umbilical cord that binds them
together. Auschwitz was a product of capitalism pretending
to be unaware of the consequences of its market logic, steam-
rolling over the ideals of democracy and peace.
197
Ludwig Wittgenstein wrote that “philosophy is a battle against
the bewitchment of our understanding by means of language.”2 2 Ludwig Wittgenstein.
Philosophical Investigations.
It is in people’s own interest to re-appropriate their freedom Joachim Schulte (ed). New
by means of their own history that some carry in them, rather Jersey: Blackwell Publishing,
2001. p. 81.
than through the symbols of somebody else’s vision. The body
must be given aesthetic means to fight back against aggression.

Earlier battles do not necessarily have to inspire those who are

active today fighting for freedom in the anti-racist struggle.
Gandhi, for example, despite his brilliant strategy of civil dis-
obedience, was racist and anti-Black. Dr. Martin Luther King
suffered from Stockholm syndrome in relation to Christianity.
Before he died he regretfully stated: “I fear I am integrating my
people into a burning house.”3 3 Harry Belafonte. My
Song: A Memoir of Art, Race, and
Defiance. New York: Vintage
It is important to distinguish anti-racism from racism. How Books, 2012.

can anti-racism be defined without being entirely determined

by racism? Isn't it still a construct within the field of racism?
What does it mean that anti-Semitism can exist even in
places without a significant Jewish presence, such as in Japan
during the Second World War? How can anti-anti-Semitism
be conceived of, practised and promoted?

Human creation can, for example, be depicted without a body

while still being strongly connected to humanity; in the same
way, an anti-anti-Semitic but non-Jewish body can be relevant
in wanting to de-frame the issue. Any anti-racist slogan has
its own frame of reference that controls the lives of minorities.
Racism and anti-Semitism are theories of framing, just like
misogynist propaganda or anti-LGBTQI movements. That’s why
Touche pas à mon pote was a worm in the fruit of anti-racism.
It was damaging first because of it use of negation in the slo-
gan, and second because of its use of ‘friendship’ as a frame.

198

4 ́ Ce
Aime ́saire. Lyric and
Dramatic Poetry, 1946–82. Trans-
lated by Clayton Eshleman and
Annette Smith. Charlottesville:
University Press of Virginia, 1990.
p. 32.
With regard to more recent events, we may ask what part
racism played in the political choice called Brexit, which has
been interpreted as a manifestation of the anger of people who
feel their identity and prosperity was threatened by what they
consider to be useless expenditure. More honestly, what part
did existential anxiety about their own disappearance play?
The strategy of political racism has always been to present
diversity (as in the presence and participation of ‘minorities’)
as a threat to republican unity, for example, when staging an
artificial contrast between the hardships of the rural world and
the diversity of urban masses.
Regardless origin or colour, when people shared a territory,
they would inherit the same territory in legacy. When political
leaders invoke the Marshall Plan to keep young Africans in
Africa, they are enforcing geopolitical borders but disregarding
principles of freedom and democracy. They are courting ambient
nationalism by amplifying its public discourse.
What about the political negotiations that happen behind the
scenes with regard to the western world’s dependency on
Africa’s natural resources? Aimé Césaire reminds us that “to
hate is to still be dependent”.4
In my two artistic works ‘Flexible Unlearning Time’, 2015 and
‘Varna’s Dharma’, 2016, I reiterate my questions about inter-
ference of information, public expressions, information relays,
decoding of propagandas, and struggles against impunity.
I consider that mobilising books, museum productions, and
amphitheatre theories into creating a new ground accessible
by all, is the real key for how to respond to racism.
199
Flexible Unlearning Time, 2015
installation
‘Flexible Unlearning Time’ is an articulation and a social mee-
ting space where objects question aesthetics of unlearning.
Definitions and references follow social and historical curves
through mimicry, confrontations, dialogues, and ultimately
through superimpositions of social elements. The target is a
state of grace as an emergency.

The work places a critique of orientalism and a global Black

aesthetic in dialogue, by juxtaposing Edward Said's theory
that “history is made by men and women, just as it can also
be unmade and rewritten”5 with James Baldwin's reflections 5 Edward Said. Orientalism.
New York: Vintage Books, 1979.
on how humans are made by time, circumstance and history.
The respective weapons are Said’s criticism and dedicated 6 James Baldwin. Preface to
the 1984 edition of Notes of a
consciousness, and Baldwin’s words “I am what time, circum- Native Son. Boston: Beacon Press,
stance, history, have made of me, certainly, but I am also, much 2012.

more than that. So are we all.”6 Their juxtaposition forms an

algorithm that historicises the past and understands know-
ledge as an aesthetic of unlearning.

200
Varna’s Dharma, 2016
chess board installation
In Sanskrit, “Varna’s Dharma” means “philosophy or essence
of colours”. The chessboard represents the history of geography
as much as the geography of history. It recalls an important
aspect of the concept “maaya” in the Bambara language, which
describes how one individual person can hold a plurality of
people within themselves. In the same algorithm, “Varna’s
Dharma” defines colour as being a constellation of several
bodies that themselves are often invisible. This is reflected in
the installation in the choice of three-dimensional transparent
letters used as pawns on this chessboard.

On the one hand, my choice to represent artificial intelligence

(the ‘head-computer’) as the chess figure of the king expresses
that there is no way back, no way to undo our embracing of
an evolutionary system. On the other hand, however, the
invocation to go ‘back to basics’ is magnified by the concept
of royalty. Here, the famous political figure Gandhi is depicted
as ‘feet of clay’ because of his racism against Black people in
South Africa. Misogynist injustice is symbolised by a red gag.
Philosophy was never a meta-language, it was just a medium
to push simulated thoughts towards sustainable action.

203
‘Flexible Unlearning Time’, 2015, and ‘Varna’s Dharma’, 2016.
All photographs courtesy of Kemi Bassene

204
206
207
Verena Melgarejo
Weinandt
A(r)mando Vo(i)ces
The exhibition A(r)mando Vo(i)ces1 presented the results of
various activities (such as workshops, educational concepts
and event formats) that I organised from March to Septem-
ber 2016 with the Latinx community2 of Vienna, in collab-
oration with the association Großes Schiff3. Moreover,
drawings by Gloria Anzaldúa were exhibited, with the sup-
port of the US-American Benson Latin American Founda-
tion and the VBKÖ (Vereinigung bildender Künstlerinnen
Österreichs [Austrian Association of Women Artists]). This
`´ gemma! fellowship4
project was made possible by a kültür
in cooperation with the Vienna Central Library.
In this article I focus on my curatorial decisions
concerning the following questions: how to create bridges
between Gloria Anzaldúa’s diverse knowledge production
(that is situated in a specific cultural, geographic and his-
toric setting) and Vienna and the different self-organised
communities that I am involved in, such as Latinx womxn5,
LGBTQI+, and Latinx children? In using the Vienna Central
Library as an exhibition space, several questions came to
the fore: how to work with a space that produces and legit-
imises hegemonic knowledge? How can I intervene in such
a space? How can I change accessibilities to knowledge? How
211
1 The documentation of the
exhibition can be viewed at
www.armandovoices.wordpress.
com. The exhibition’s title comes
from Spanish: “armar” meaning
“to assemble”, “amar” meaning “to
love”, and “voces” is “voices”,
because I brought together voices
that I love.
2 I use the term ‘Latinx’,
because unlike the term ‘Latin
American’, it is is a self-description
chosen by the community, and also
because in contrast to ‘Latina’,
‘Latino’ or ‘Latin@’, the spelling
‘Latinx’ includes gender-non-con-
forming identities.
3 The association Großes
Schiff realises different art and
culture projects by and for the
Latinx community in Vienna, for
example Creativas, a project that
offered free creative workshops
in Spanish for Latinxs by Latinxs,
A la Rueda Rueda, a programme
for Spanish-speaking or bilingual
children, and Migrativas, a
self-organised magazine project.
www.grosses-schiff.org
4 The initiative kültüř gemma!
promotes migrant positions in art
and culture, and since 2013 has
promoted artistic work by migrants,
as well as critical discourse on the
relationship between culture
and migration. The kültüř gemma!
scholarship programme supports
their fellows in realising artistic
and curatorial projects with an anti-
racist approach from marginalised
perspectives, given that it is
usually not a lack of expertise that
stands in the way of making these
projects happen, but first and can I broaden the definition of what knowledge is, and visi-
foremost a lack of resources.
bilise voices and languages that, in western institutions, are
This is why these kinds of initiatives
are crucial for changing artistic excluded from hegemonic spaces of knowledge production?
and curatorial practice, and grant-
ing greater visibility to migrant art
and cultural production.
http://www.kueltuergemma.at
Bridges to Gloria Anzaldúa
5 Translator’s note: The The work of Gloria Anzaldúa was central to the exhibition
spelling ‘womxn’ explicitly includes
and to the entire project in general. The cooperation with the
womxn who are trans (whereas
the spelling “womyn” has its Benson Latin American Foundation and the VBKÖ allowed
origins in 1970s transphobic cis
me to present a series of drawings by Anzaldúa entitled Zwi-
supremacist feminism) and calls
attention to and disrupts the patri- schen Wort und Bild. Eine Gedankengalerie von Gloria Anzaldúa
archal dimension of the word
[Between Word and Image. A Thought Gallery by Gloria
‘woman’, etymologically rooted in
the word ‘man’, the default word Anzaldúa] in the Vienna Central Library.6 These drawings
for ‘human’ in Old English. Thus,
were used by Anzaldúa in lectures, which she called “gigs”7.
linguistically speaking, ‘woman’ is
just an extension or subcategory With her complex work on multilinguality; her concept of
of ‘man’. The spelling ‘womxn’
autohistoria8; her relation to Indigenous knowledge and
therefore stresses that men are
not the default norm of humanity spirituality; and her identity as a lesbian woman of colour;
and that people who are not men
Anzaldúa—who identified as “Chicana, Tejana, working-
are ontologically independent
entities. class, dyke-feminist poet, writer theorist”—has been an
inspiration to me for a long time, be it in my theoretical,
6 These were originally
compiled by Julianne Gilland artistic or curatorial practice. Given the genealogical context
(head of the Benson Latin Ameri-
of Queer Theory from the United States, it is astounding
can Foundation) and presented
by Nina Hoechtl, Coco Gutiérrez- how little attention Anzaldúa’s work has received in German-
Magallanes and Rían Lozano at
speaking countries, in comparison with her contemporaries
UNAM in Mexico.
Eve Sedgwick or Judith Butler.
7 Cf. the chapter ‘Doing Gigs’
Despite the canonic status of her coalition-building work
in: AnaLouise Keating (ed). Gloria
E. Anzaldúa. Interviews/Entrevistas, with other people of colour (published for example in the
New York/London: Routledge,
classic anthology This Bridge Called My Back), her work
2000.
remains largely overlooked in the German-speaking context.
8 “[…] autohistorias is the con-
I am however convinced that Anzaldúa’s thought is highly
cept that Chicanas and women of
color write not only about abstract relevant in the German-speaking context, as well for giving
ideas, but also bring in their per-
visibility to marginalised positions and articulating their
sonal history, as well as the history
of their community. I call it ‘auto’ lived realities. The notion of ‘border identity’ is at the core

212
 A(r)mando Vo(i)ces, Exhibition in the Vienna Central Library, 2016
Photo courtesy of kunst-dokumentation.com

of her thought, expressed in a multitude of formats (theory, for self-writing, and ‘historia’ for
history—as in collective, personal,
poetry, children's books, short stories, drawings, sketches...).
cultural, and racial history—as well
The ‘border’ is not only a physical one, but one that is as for fiction, a story you make up.
History is fiction because it’s made
manifested in a constant process of change and identity
up, usually made up by the people
construction—which she also describes as a creative process. who rule.” (Anzaldúa 2000,
p. 242.)
She understands identity formation in multiple contexts
(cultural, political, activist...) and positioning in the in-between as
strengths that allow the finding and creating of different forms of
(counter) knowledge, survival, and resistance.
From a curatorial perspective, I had to think about how to
‘translate’ Anzaldúa’s work. I don’t mean just a linguistic translation;
rather, it was the ‘bridges’ between Anzaldúa's work and its signifi-
cance in the context of Vienna that I needed to point out in order
to avoid the risk of her work being looked at in isolation and on a
purely theoretical level.

213
 A(r)mando Vo(i)ces, Exhibition in the Vienna Central Library, 2016
Photo courtesy of kunst-dokumentation.com

This consideration led to the idea for the photography

workshop Nepantleras fotografiando that took place in a non-
academic context. Its aim was to impart Anzaldúa’s work to people
with whom it could resonate with in regards to some aspects of
their identities, languages and lived realities. Presenting Anzaldúa’s
thought through her drawings, rather than through her texts, made
it possible to develop a format of mediation capable of communi-
cating beyond the level of language and theory. The free photo-
graphy workshop was for womxn from the Latinx community
in Vienna. It took Anzaldúa’s drawings as a starting point for the
participants to approach her theory. Based on the drawings, each
participant produced a photographic work that visualised how they
individually related to Anzaldúa’s work, which they had studied
before in the workshop. The photographs created in the workshop
were subsequently also exhibited in the Vienna Main Library. I left

214
it up to the participants to decide which photographs they wanted
to present, and how and whether they wanted to contextualise
them (textually or in other ways).
Short excerpts of audio recordings of her gigs were presented
alongside drawings, in order to contextualise them. The Mexico-
based collective MANU(EL)(LA) had already produced a Spanish
translation of the English version of these audio clips. For the
German version, I invited my friends Imayna Caceres, Monica
Adighibe, Daniela Paredes and Luisa Lobo, compañeras in our
collective TRENZA9, to be the readers for the recording. It 9 TRENZA [the pigtail] is a
Vienna-based collective from
was important to include these voices because the different
Vienna characterised by various
Spanish or Portuguese accents in German are a significant experiences of racialisation, migra-
tion from Latin America, Indige-
aspect of Latinx identity in different migration processes.
nous and Black ancestry, sexual
Anzaldúa also valorises these unacknowledged aspects of orientation and gender definitions.
Based on our differences, we are
speech in her work. She herself spoke Spanish at home and
looking for ways to decolonise our
with her family, and only learned English at school. While thoughts, our bodies, languages
and relationships, and to com-
she wrote both in English and Spanish, there are some
memorate and honour the know-
terms that she only used in Spanish or Nahuatl. For Anzaldúa, ledge of our ancestors from Abya
Yala. www.facebook.com/Trenza-
using languages that were completely ignored during her
1573626682923048
schooling, and later in academic contexts, is a form of em-
powerment in itself. It illustrates how she conceived of the
interweaving of her identity and her knowledge production.

The Premises—Where is the Resistance?

Like in my previous exhibition project Wer hat Angst vor
dem Museum? Una Excavación de las Heridas Coloniales [Who Is Afraid
of the Museum? An Excavacion of Colonial Wounds]10, the choice
of exhibition space was also the starting point for many 10 The exhibition and perform-
ance series took place from 25-27
`´ gemma! fellowship pro-
curatorial decisions. The kültür
September 2015, in the Weltmu-
gramme encouraged me to find and suggest an institution seum Wien, as part of the festival
Wienwoche. http://werhatangst
in Vienna with which I wanted to cooperate and realise my
vordemmuseum.tumblr.com
project.

215
11 Grimassen ziehen—Masken I chose the Vienna Central Library on Urban-Loritz-Platz, a
aufbrechen—Strukturen freilegen.
place that I had become very familiar with, as I had worked
Fragmentarische Analyse einer
Fotocollage [Make a Face—Break there for a year and a half while writing my diploma thesis11.
Up Masks—Expose Structures.
Vienna Central Library is a public municipal library, not a
Fragmentary Analysis of a Photo
Collage], diploma thesis, Academy university library. It follows that it is different also in terms
of Fine Arts Vienna 2016.
of its clientele. Even though every institution reproduces
12 www.remappingmozart. exclusionary mechanisms, the Vienna Central Library is
mur.at
frequented by people of different age groups, with different
13 PAMOJA (Movement of the cultural backgrounds and heterogeneous educational bio-
Young African Diaspora in Austria)
graphies. Moreover, I also knew the library as a space that
was founded in Vienna in 1996 as
an association and self-organisation had already hosted collaborative practices and interventions
of people of African descent based
by cultural workers and artists, such as the project Remap-
in Austria. PAMOJA understands
itself as a pan-African movement ping Mozart12 in 2006. New books were acquired by the
that connects and networks in the
library as part of a project by PAMOJA13 and are still part of
diaspora as well as with the
African continent. the library today. One of the curators of Remapping Mozart,
Araba Evelyn Johnston-Arthur, Black activist and cultural
theorist, pointed these out to me.
Places of knowledge production and where knowledge is
communicated to an audience are also always places of power, given
that they can determine the narratives that are accessible to their
audience, and thereby legitimise them. The municipal library is by
no means a romantic multicultural temple, but, like any institution,
it is also engineered into an apparatus of power that can decide
what is relevant, legitimate knowledge, who may access it, and how.
I was interested in how the library’s holdings were also a manifest-
ation of this power. At the beginning of my project, this interest
turned into a concrete literature research in its own right.
An intensive screening of the library's hundred-page system
gave me a first overview and allowed me to identify the areas of the
library that Latin-American authors and knowledge from (not
about) Latin America were kept in; how they were represented; and
in which diversity. At first, I developed an artistic format for this
research. I examined the holdings of the ethnographic department,

216
made a selection of books, and took pictures of them. Not 14 Cf. Trinh T. Minh-ha. The
Language of Nativism: Anthro-
surprisingly, the central figure of these ethnographic re-
pology as a Scientific Conversa-
search books is usually the white, male, western researcher tion of Man with Man. Woman,
Native, Other. Bloomington:
and his knowledge about so-called ‘others’, which actually
Indiana University Press, 1989.
says far more about him. The books are primarily about the
15 By using the term
researcher’s journey of self-discovery, his posturing self-
‘descolonial theory’, I want to
dramatisation, as well as his process of data-gathering and clarify that I am referring to
knowledge production from Latin
development in a ‘foreign’ culture and environment.
America. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui
Several aspects led me to interrupt my study of ex- and other researchers identified
Waman Puma de Ayala as the first
amples of ethnographic research on different cultures and
to practice descolonial analysis.
people in Latin America. He was an Indigenous Peruvian
who in 1616 wrote a chronicle for
The colonial gesture and discourse inherent in many
the Spanish king in which he
of these research projects and expeditions has been exten- described abuse of and crimes
against the Indigenous population.
sively criticised, discussed, and demonstrated14 in the field
One of the most important
of post-, de- and descolonial15 theory that critically exam- representatives is the Peruvian
sociologist Aníbal Quijano, who is
ines representation.
also a member of the research
I was more interested in representations that em- group Colonialidad/Modernidad
(Coloniality/Modernity), which also
power Indigenous, feminist and descolonial positions from
counts Edgardo Lander, Enrique
Latin America (and impart knowledge about them) through Dussel, Arturo Escobar, Ramón
Grosfoguel, Walter Mignolo and
various narratives, perspectives and images, as well as in
more among its members. María
calling attention to different formats of knowledge pro- Lugones picks up on Aníbal Quijano’s
concept of the ‘colonialidad de
duction that fall outside the categories of academia or
poder’ (coloniality of power), e.g.
theory (such as poems, novels and children's books) but in her text Colonialidad y género
[Coloniality and Gender] (cf. note
that nonetheless address crucial topics and important
18 on descolonial feminism).
aspects that are missing in existing theoretical work. However, the descolonial discourse
must not be reduced to a scientific
This is why I decided to change the focus of my
branch, but is articulated in
research. I started to look at the area of Spanish-language various forms, such as activism;
social movements and struggles;
literature in the children's department. My love of chil-
and non-western life forms.
dren's books has not left me since my own childhood, and Knowledge production also keeps
on referring to these, which it also
I suspect that the influence of my mother—who is an edu-
participates in or is involved in.
cator, elementary school teacher and also loves children's
books—might still be at play here. The books I found there
covered many essential aspects that are often not found in

217
 literature for adults. In them I found empowering stories about the
experiences of children and adults with a history of migration; in-
spiring and multi-faceted representations of Indigenous and Black
people from Latin America; and a nuanced approach to language,
such as in books written in US-American Spanglish, in bilingual
books written in German and Spanish, or in K'iche and Spanish.
The few books written by Indigenous authors that I found in the
library were in fact children's books that imparted Indigenous
knowledge and world views. Since this knowledge has been under
attack for centuries and has consistently faced the threat of being
entirely destroyed, passing it on to children is a form of resistance
in and of itself. Once again, I was reminded of the long history and
persistence of resistance against European colonial dominance,
that this resistance has always existed—only that it has usually not
been recognised as such, given that the very definition of resistance
is often colonial, or at least Eurocentric/western16.
16 Depending on perspective How these books have been named and categorised is also
and position, resistance can begin
very telling: labelling them ‘myths and legends’, as is very
with very immediate, everyday
and almost banal things. Getting common, disqualifies these acts of narrative resistance and
up every day can be resistance,
misrepresents them as fictional, dramatic, romanticised and
preparing certain foods, or forms
of non-western hair culture can non-violent made-up stories, even though they provide con-
also be articulations of resistance.
textual information about present struggles, such as territorial
On the level of artistic works,
I became aware of this in the conflicts between Indigenous groups and the economic
exhibition that I co-organised at
interests of nation states.
the Weltmuseum Wien (cf. foot-
note 10) with my colleagues. We My research and engagement led to the idea of making a list
invited different artists from Latin
of selected children's books to buy for the library, as well as
America and Europe to artistically
engage with the space and wanting to include participation by children in my project.
the holdings of the former ethno-
The case of the children's books reiterated very clearly once
graphic museum. The artist
Ayrson Heraclito’s response to the again the importance of children and old people as producers
institution’s violent history, for
of knowledge, and how crucial their role is in transferring
example. was to perform various
Afro-Brazilian cultural rituals such knowledge. My quest in looking specifically for children's
as purifying the premises with
literature, and my further research in the library's holdings,
cow dung, which the artist applied
to the floor of the museum. produced a small selection with the following parameters:

218
children's books, mainly about Indigenous knowledge; Chicanx
literature from the USA in the form of novels and graphic novels;
descolonial feminist theory from Latin America in Spanish; and
literature by and about Gloria Anzaldúa.
I collaborated with the library to develop a system that would
clearly communicate my selection of books and its configuration
(the results of my research and the new acquisitions) to the library
users. Given that, as I mentioned above, selecting books for a library
is a matter of power, I found it important to have transparency
about how these books got into the library. A brief description of
the project was added to each book, along with a link to the online
catalogue, in which the bibliography (with complete descriptions)
was permanently integrated in its entirety.

Disseminations and Networks

All activities that were part of A(r)mando Vo(i)ces took place
in cooperation with Großes Schiff, a non-profit association of which
I have been an active member for about five years. As a member of
Großes Schiff, I have held photography workshops with
young people and adults, as well as done creative work
with children. Building on this longtime connection, I wan-
ted to highlight a small slice of the much larger network
of Latinx migrants and their political self-organisation in
Vienna. There are some overlaps between A(r)mando Vo(i)ces
and the work of Großes Schiff, since the latter is a self-
organised association of Latina women working with Latinx
womxn and children, focusing on feminist and migrant
issues; learning new artistic expressions; and appreciating
and articulating experiences as legitimate knowledge.
Through the support of the project Bodies of Know-
ledge17, I was able to invite Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso, an
anti-racist, descolonial feminist of Afro-Dominican descent.
17 The focus of the project
Bodies of Knowledge—Multiplizieren
von marginalisierten Subjektivi-
täten der Utopie durch Kunst und
Storytelling [Bodies of Knowledge—
Multiplying Marginalised
Subjectivities of Utopia Through
Art and Storytelling] was to use
art to raise questions; awaken
souls; connect people, ideas, and
political struggles; to remember;
and to exhort. The collaborative
project started in November 2015
and ended in June 2016. It used
tools of artistic and collaborative
production, activism and story-
telling to visualise decolonial work,
strategies and Afrofuturist per-
spectives. https://www.facebook.
com/bodiesofknowledgevienna/

219
 She is a theorist, activist, and doctoral student at the University of
Buenos Aires, where her research supervisor is María Lugones,
founding member of GLEFAS (Grupo Latinoamericano de Estudio,
18 www.glefas.org. Formación y Acción Feminista)18 and one of the most im-
portant representatives of a descolonial feminism in Latin
19 As an introductory reading,
I recommend the introduction of America.
the anthology Tejiendo de otro
Espinosa Miñoso is a knowledge producer, a Black lesbian
modo: Feminismo, epistemología y
apuestas descoloniales en Abya theoretician, and an activist who has critiqued the kind of
Yala, edited by Yuderkys Espinosa
feminism that—given its Eurocentric approach and bias—
Miñoso, Diana Gómez Correal and
Karina Ochoa Muñoz, Popayán: has been operating as part of the colonial project in Latin
Editorial Universidad del Cauca,
America primarily run by a white elite. She is currently devel-
2014. The explicit aim of the edi-
tors was not only to gather con- oping her theoretical work about the realities and struggles
temporary perspectives, but also
of marginalised Black and Indigenous people in Latin Amer-
contributions with a genealogical
approach. Therefore they selected ica. She highlights feminist movements in these geographic
texts that influenced feminist
contexts that are intersectional and that include an active
movements and women’s move-
ments in Latin America. The engagement with the concept of coloniality/modernity, and
contributions from descolonial
that emerged alongside of and out of Indigenous and Black
and anti-racist perspectives are
therefore not exclusively from social struggles.19
academia, but also from activist
Espinosa Miñoso’s talk in Vienna was held in a space already
contexts, social movements and
more. frequented by the Latinx community, given that this was the
public it was for: the Austrian Latin American Institute of Vienna
(LAI). The talk was in Spanish, without German translation. We con-
sciously decided to organise the lecture exclusively for the Latinx
community, and to cater to an audience who are not necessarily
native German speakers and who therefore might have a harder time
accessing scientific lectures (since in the Austrian context, very few
lectures are held in Spanish or offer Spanish interpretation). The
community showed a great deal of interest in the lecture, as evi-
denced by the heterogeneity of the audience, their lively participa-
tion in the discussion held in Spanish, and the number of people
who signed up for the email list to be informed about future events.
Espinosa Miñoso’s lecture was about the genealogy of
descolonial feminism in Latin America. To make it accessible to as

220
many people as possible, the video recording of the talk was shown
in the exhibition and posted on YouTube.20 20 Yuderkys Espinosa Miñoso:
Feminismos en América Latina y
Moreover, Espinosa Miñoso and I jointly organised
las apuestas antirracista y des-
a children's workshop on Indigenous and Black poetry colonial. October 2016. 1:05:29.
www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgB
from Latin America, which we conducted together with
PbflIolQ.
Ivana Reyero and the children's group A la Rueda Rueda, a
group for Spanish-German bilingual children. In the workshop, the
children read the poems and painted pictures inspired by them,
which were later exhibited in the library. The purpose of this work-
shop was twofold: to impart knowledge and images to children
with Latin American heritage, as well as to address topics that are
essential to them as second-generation-Latinx people who also
characterised by their Latin American heritage, knowledge and
images that are not usually present in their educational contexts.
In any case, the goal was to convey a different image of and a dif-
ferent kind of knowledge about Latin America, to counter the usual
discourse about development, ‘Third-World’-ness, exoti- 21 Karl May's fictive character
Winnetou, for example, continues
cism, racisms and other narratives that are still very present
to reproduce racist stereotypes in
in German-speaking countries.21 This is why we found the form of narratives and images
of indigenous people in children’s
it very important to visualise the children’s images and
media.
knowledge in an official context such as the library.
For both Espinosa Miñoso and me, poetry has been a source
of knowledge and power, as an extension of a variety of forms of
knowledge production. It is a non-academic, artistic form of know-
ledge production that is often used as a tool for resistant practices.
For the children's workshop, we produced a book of poetry that
included only Black and Indigenous poets. In 2018 it will be publis-
hed in en la frontera from the collective GLEFAS, along with a guide
for educational work with children that includes suggestions for
further reading and further activities.
For the opening evening, I invited the association Großes
Schiff to present their magazine Migrativas by doing a reading.
Migrativas is a magazine produced by Latina migrants living in

221
Vienna, with texts in Spanish and German; one issue has been
published so far. All texts, photographs, the magazine’s layout,
the translations and copy-editing were created, carried out and
produced in collective, self-organised, collaborative work, partly in
workshops within the Latinx community. The contributors’ texts,
interviews, poems, proverbs, recipes, and photos are negotiations
of their own stories, perspectives, political demands, identifying
and reflecting on structural injustices. But the contributors also
speak of enriching experiences that they and other Latinx migrants
have had in Vienna.
I found the exhibition opening in the library to be an apt
context to give visibility to the magazine and to connect it with the
other positions and participants in the project. The breadth of its
aforementioned various text formats expands representations of
different formats of knowledge production within the project.
Migrativas also benefited from the cooperation, insofar as
we were able to print an extra fifty copies of the magazine. These
were then laid out in the library, free for the taking. In this way the
magazine could be distributed in a place frequented by its target
readership. It was also advantageous for the association to present
its work in an important municipal institution, since it only receives
very limited funding and is thus forced to operate under precarious
conditions. This cooperation with the Vienna Central Library
might be a helpful asset for future funding applications.

Review
With regard to curatorial decisions, the project drew a great
deal of strength from a multitude of heterogeneous voices and
formats. The curatorial strategies I adopted allowed for the connec-
tions between different positions to be made visible.
The modalities of my cooperation with the library were also
significant for the project’s success: Besides the organisational

222
support I was given and the resources I had access to, I was able to
work without any intervention in the level of content, which I had
rarely experienced before. This is also because the institution saw
me as an expert and not as a disruption—despite my critical stance—
and allowed me to intervene in its structures.
From a genealogical perspective it was important that Gloria
Anzaldúa’s drawings, shown for the first time in Austria, could
be presented and experienced in a wide range of non-academic
contextualisations. In this way we were able to highlight bridges
between her work and the lived reality of different perspectives in
Vienna—be it children drawing pictures of their dreams, or the
photos of a queer second-generation Latinx person of colour who
grew up in the Austrian countryside and wants to see themselves
represented there.
Overall, I understand the exhibition to be part of a longer
process that was necessary and important in order to generate
publicity and visibility, and to be able to connect different positions.
I am particularly pleased that the various processes are still
ongoing. For example, Gloria Anzaldúa’s drawings will be exhibited
again at the VBKÖ in the coming year. The questions and aspects
that arose in the poetry workshop are still being discussed in the
context of the children's group A la Rueda Rueda, since it still meets
regularly. The poetry booklet that was produced for this workshop
will soon be made available online for free, and the participants
of the workshop Nepantleras fotografiando expressed interest in
continuing to organise meetings.

223
Appropriat
tions:

Carrying On
Despite it All
Thomas J. Lax
How Do Black Lives Matter
in MoMA’s Collection?1

Less than a month after 49 people were killed and 53 1 This text was posted on
Saturday, 9 July 2016, a few days
wounded by a single gunman at a queer Latinx party in
after the killings of Alton Sterling
Orlando, Florida, Alton Sterling and Philando Castile’s and Philando Castile in Baton
Rouge, Louisiana, and in a suburb
gruesome murders by police officers were captured on video
of St. Paul, Minnesota. It was
and widely circulated. The two recordings of Sterling’s published on the Museum of
Modern Art (MoMA)’s blog Inside/
death were made by Abdullah Muflahi, a local store owner,
Outside. This text is published here
and Arthur Reed, an activist, while Castile’s was made in a in its entirety with additions by
the author and the editors.
lucid, terrifying account by his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds,
under police duress, as he died next to her. At least 5.4 mil- 2 Alton Sterling was shot
and killed by two Baton Rouge
lion people have seen Reynolds’s video as of Saturday
Police Department officers,
morning.2 on Tuesday, 5 July 2016. Philando
Castile was shot and killed by a
Documentation of violence against Black people is
St. Anthony, Minnesota,
nothing new: it has been disseminated through photo- police officer on Wednesday,
6 July 2016.
graphy and video since the beginnings of both media. But
the fact that the recent events were streamed instantaneously and
made available for mass distribution on our handheld devices has
galvanised a mass response, prompting protests throughout the
country as Louisiana and Minnesota’s governors have sought a civil
rights investigation from the Justice Department, and President
Obama reminded the nation that “we’ve got some tough history
and we haven’t gotten through all of that history yet.” And then on
Thursday evening a sniper, who served in Afghanistan in the U.S.

229
 Army Reserve, killed five members of law enforcement during a
Black Lives Matter protest in Dallas.
3 The Counted. The Guardian. While The Guardian has documented 136 Black victims of
www.theguardian.com/us-
U.S. police killings since the beginning of 2016 alone,3 the
news/series/counted-us-police-
killings recent fraught images have become a rallying cry for politi-
cians, activists, and artists. Some have responded via social
4 NAACP, the National
Association for the Advancement media and Instagram, posting images of the 1930s flag the
of Colored People, is one of the
NAACP4 would fly outside of its New York City office to
oldest and most influential Black
civil rights organisations in the US. publicly announce a lynching. These posts not only make a
It was founded in 1909; W.E.B.
connection between this moment and the history of state
Du Bois and Ida B. Wells-Barnett
were among its founding members. violence against Black people in the U.S., but are also meant
to remind us of the organisation’s anti-lynching pamphlet cam-
paign that often redeployed lynching photographs to reclaim the
power of image-making as a tool to intervene against state violence.
Others have posted the black monochrome square that has ap-
peared repeatedly after police killings, as if to say there are in fact
no images that can capture the scale of this crisis, and that the
image of the Black body in pain is part and parcel of how Black
people are policed. In other words: can images do anything but
aggravate the problem?
My work as a curator is motivated by an analysis of the ways
social contexts—be they racial, geographic or interpersonal—are
embedded in how we read and interpret formal categories of art
such as composition, support, and modes of spectatorship. Con-
ceiving of cultural information and materials in this way allows for
both a sense of reverence to the place and time in which work is
made, as well as a sense of play as artists and curators create new
contexts in the present for things made in the past. I’m also motiv-
ated by a deep dissatisfaction with the concept of ‘the political’
in contemporary art. It’s a word that is often used to describe
content instead of relationships. It's overused to the point of being
evacuated of meaning. Yet our dependence on it points to its rele-
vance to all important cultural acts, and so if I were to define it,

230
I would say that political work embraces uncertainty, contradiction
and a lack of established form. In this way, it is truly contestable
and imagines a future in formation.
At their best, pictures—on Instagram or at a museum—can
offer a space of both meditation and change where anger, fear, and
ambivalence can coexist. Sometimes artists respond to documents
of death by giving you another option than either looking away or
staring at the gore in your news feed. At other times, the signifi-
cance of an artwork itself can change, especially when it enters a
collection or institution. As it moves from the original place it was
made, it takes on added meanings, rubbing up against other art-
works and adding to our public image bank as new events occur
and time passes. Here are three works—all recent additions to
MoMA’s collection—by contemporary artists who have responded
to anti-Black racism over the past 50-plus years.
In Steffani Jemison’s 2010–11 video, ‘Escaped Lunatic’, a steady
stream of Black people run across the screen, sprinting, jumping
and rolling through the streets of Houston. The video borrows its
narrative structure from early 20th-century cinema—the chase
genre in particular—which often depicted African Americans in
scenes of flight from various forms of authority. Shooting the work
with a Houston-based parkour team when she was living in that
city, Jemison links a structure borrowed from early cinema to a
contemporary scene, boldly linking the unjust conditions of urban
life for Black folks across time. Put simply: Jemison’s work reminds
this viewer that Black folks are perceived as fugitives, whether they
are running or just have their hands up.
As I recently rewatched the figures move across the pixelated
image, it newly reminded me of the death of Israel Leija, the subject
of another high-speed chase the year Jemison began her video.
When Leija, the subject of a warrant for a misdemeanor probation
violation, evaded arrest by car, authorities set up a spike strip to dis-
able his highway escape. Despite the certainty of thwarting Leija,

231
 Steffani Jemison, ‘Escaped Lunatic’, 2010-11 © Steffani Jemison

Steffani Jemison, ‘Escaped Lunatic’, 2010-11 © Steffani Jemison

Texas state trooper Chadrin Mullenix nevertheless fired six shots,

killing him, and afterwards proudly boasted “How’s that for proact-
ive?” (Last month, in an unsigned opinion, the U.S. Supreme Court
decided to overturn a circuit opinion, giving Mullenix immunity;

232
 Faith Ringgold, ‘American People Series #20: Die’, 1967,
Oil on canvas, two panels, (182.9 × 365.8 cm). Purchase and gift of the Modern Women's Fund.
Installation view of the exhibition Public Spaces Changes 2016,
1 January—31 December 2016, New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Photo: John Wronn (copyright: The Museum of Modern Art, New York). Cat. no.: IN2345A.52.
© 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

Justice Sonia Sotomayor dissented in a statement that chastised the

court.) While Jemison’s video depicts another Black chase scene
that seems inevitable, in her work one can imagine her figures’
flights as small escapes to a place out of view but no less real.
At 6 x 12 feet, Faith Ringgold’s 1967 ‘American People Series
#20: Die’ is a monumental painting—a document of its time, as
well as the long stay of the issues it depicts. The final work in a
series inspired by a range of modern icons, including Pablo Picasso’s
‘Guernica’, Josef Albers’s abstract geometric murals, and Ad 5 Cf. Michele Wallace,
America Black: Faith Ringgold's
Reinhardt’s black monochrome paintings, ‘Die’ represents
Paintings of the Late 1960s. Nka.
a culmination in the artist’s search for what she called “a Journal of Contemporary African
Art. No. 29, 2011. pp. 50–61.
Black aesthetic”.5

233
 A crimson bloodbath on a black-and-white checkered ground,
the canvas depicts a riotous scene in which a slew of archetypical
white and Black men, women, and children are entangled in rela-
tionships built at once out of conflict and care. Curiously, only two
subjects (one Black, one white) hold weapons, yet everyone appears
to be injured, implying that people on all sides of the colour line
are the potential victims of racial violence, which itself can take
many forms. Outfitting her subjects in the business attire of the
time, Ringgold’s picture suggests that racial tensions are not only
the stuff of street warfare, but what we would today call micro-
aggressions—those daily, seemingly fleeting forms of verbal and
behavioral discriminations that add up to create violent environ-
ments for people of colour across all classes and segments of
society. While the artist worried that ‘Die’ would be a prophesy of
her times, the work has proven to anticipate a far longer arc.
Let’s be clear about how Ringgold’s work resonates today:
just as the painting indicts all of the suit-and-dress-wearing, white-
collar workers in her picture, we must implicate the professional
institutions in which we find ourselves as part of a broader anti-
Black culture.
Kerry James Marshall, known for his large-scale paintings
of coal-coloured Black subjects at the club, in love, and enjoying
some of the creature comforts of African American life, completed
his ‘Untitled (policeman)’ last year. In it, a Black cop with a Chicago
insignia on his hat sits on his squad car’s hood, underneath the
nighttime lights of a parking lot. He stares into his own space and
away from the viewer, with one hand on his hip and the other
in his lap. At once authoritative and contemplative, resolute and
undecided, he is not simply a type—for example, the Black police-
man as a contradictory symbol of power and powerlessness. Rather,
Marshall portrays this policeman as an individual whose reflective
countenance reveals a subject the artist describes as in the middle
ofthinking of the circumstances that he is in.

234
 Kerry James Marshall, ‘Untitled (policeman)’, 2015,
Synthetic polymer paint on PVC panel with plexi frame, (152.4 x 152.4 cm).
New York, Museum of Modern Art (MoMA).
Gift of Mimi Haas in honor of Marie-Josée Kravis. Acc. no.: 8.2016.
© 2017. Digital image, The Museum of Modern Art, New York/Scala, Florence

In watching the images of Dallas Police Chief David O.

Brown holding his head in his hand during a prayer vigil on Friday,
it was hard for me not to think of him as an avatar of Marshall’s
rendering of a Black man trying to fix an institution seen by many
in this country to be structured by racism. Indeed, Brown—an

235
African American and fourth-generation Dallas native who cham-
pioned greater transparency by Dallas law enforcement before
Michael Brown’s 2014 death—has his own complex personal
history of police violence: he lost his former partner in the line of
duty, his brother in a violent crime, and his son after he killed a
police officer and another man.
But what do we do that goes beyond Brown’s public grief?
What happens after Marshall’s policeman’s self-reflection? What is
greater than the effects of this museum’s acquisitions? I have a
certain faith that Jemison’s image of flight and fugitivity, Ringgold’s
sense of the banal pervasiveness of racial violence, and Marshall’s
portrait of a vexed authority figure are not just scenes of contem-
plation. Maybe they will intervene into our visual languages, spawn-
ing our sense of social imagination. For example: will Marshall’s
officer get up from his car to unholster and give up the gun to
which his right hand points—another black rectilinear mono-
chrome at the horizon line of the car’s hood? Can we arrive at the
nearby place to which Jemison’s subjects are fleeing one after the
next? If these works offer anything in this moment of crisis, it is
space in which we might be undone and welcome the unknown.
Analysing and acting beside one another, perhaps we’ll continue
the good fight and pursue the hard love we need right now.

236
Thanks to Elizabeth Alexander, Morgan Bassichis, Naomi Beckwith,
Jocelyn Brown, Stuart Comer, Leah Dickerman, Adrienne Edwards,
Darby English, Thelma Golden, Che Gossett, Kathy Halbreich, Saidiya
Hartman, Rujeko Hockley, Laura Hoptman, Ana Janevski, Steffani
Jemison, Kellie Jones, Carolyn Kelly, Glenn Lowry, Kerry James
Marshall, Helen Molesworth, Faith Ringgold, Lanka Tattersall, Ann
Temkin, Akili Tommasino, and Andrew Wallace for their prompts,
ongoing conversations, or writing about related topics. In particular,
Elizabeth Alexander. Can You be BLACK and Look at This? in Thelma
Golden (ed). Black Male: Representations of Masculinity in Contemporary
American Art. New York: Whitney Museum of American Art, 1994.
And Helen Molesworth (ed). Kerry James Marshall: Mastry. New York:
Skira Rizzoli, 2016.

237
Notes by Natalie Bayer
Silvina Der-Meguerditchian
Made in Turkey II and
Fluchtteppich, 2000–2005
In the two works ‘Made in Turkey II’ and ‘Fluchtteppich’ [Escape
Carpet], Silvina Der-Meguerditchian weaves various pictorial
and formal elements into large-scale collages of different
materials. These works are part of a series about the culture
of remembrance of Armenian history, and its legacy among
the global Armenian diaspora up to the present day.

‘Made in Turkey II’ is about missing memories of Armenian life

in the Istanbul cityscape. The work is divided into different
‘zones’. The zone in the middle depicts a tiled satellite image
of today’s Istanbul and the Bosphorus. The surface is dotted
with holes, placed at regular intervals between the sewn-to-
gether elements. The pattern of holes takes on an ornamental
quality itself. The tiled cityscape is framed by a frieze of inter-
woven images that incorporates replicas of actual historical
postcards, showing locations and city squares in Istanbul that
during the Ottoman Empire—before the mass expulsions in
urban areas—used to be home to an Armenian presence, and
used to be animated by Armenian everyday life. The sequence
of images is interrupted by many identical images of an eraser
bearing the words “Made in Turkey”. The image tiles are each
girdled by a coloured crochet border and sewn together into a
tiled image. The arrangement, shape and types of interweav-
ing create an ornamental structure with open spaces through
which—like in macramé—the background remains visible.

241
The second work, ‘Fluchtteppich’, is based on Silvina Der-
Meguerditchian’s family history. It is a collage of historical
portraits, work and ID documents, arranged in uniform picture
tiles that are crocheted together. Various national symbols
and emblems, stamps, and handwritten entries in different
languages are shown. This reveals the journey and locations
of the migration history of a family on the run, running from
the Armenian genocide in the early 20th century. The stamps
on work permit papers are traces of national administrative
procedures: they document the precarious status to which
national labour laws condemned people who came to the
country as migrants.

While ‘Made in Turkey II’ focuses on a historical-urban per-

spective, ‘Fluchtteppich’ illustrates the effects of migration
that shaped Silvina Der-Meguerditchian’s family history, and
that of an estimated ten million Armenians worldwide. The
expulsion of Armenians in the early 20th century created the
global Armenian diaspora, as well as social separations and
national de-territorialisation and re-territorialisation.

Silvina Der-Meguerditchian’s approach is reminiscent of

archaeological research, in the way in which it looks for an
artistic way of dealing with gaps, lost connections and missing
knowledge about diasporic family histories. This way of working
also shapes her other artistic projects. In 2010, she co-founded
the transnational network Houshamadyan,1 which collectively 1 http://www.houshama
dyan.org
develops and examines, on the one hand, a reconstruction of
Armenian everyday life in the Ottoman Empire, and on the
other, artistic paths for a transnational positioning of Armenian
identity. The curatorial approach she developed as a member
of the collective project underconstructionhome.net, presented
in the exhibition Talking About Identities in the Armenian

246
‘Made in Turkey II’ and ‘Fluchtteppich’, Exhibition Fokus Istanbul,
Martin-Gropius-Bau, Berlin, 2005.
All photographs courtesy of Silvina Der-Meguerditchian

248
Transnation, challenges national structures and logics. The
exhibition took place during the 52nd Venice Biennale 2007
as an unofficial parallel event; it was the first ever representa-
tion of the Armenian diaspora at the Biennale. The notion of
transnationality was also central to the concept of Armenity,
the official Armenian pavilion at the 56th Venice Biennale
2015, to which Silvina Der-Meguerditchian was a contributing
artist. The curator Adelina Cüberyan von Fürstenberg con-
ceived of the exhibition as a gathering of artists whose being
Armenian provides them with a global citizenship that is both
anchored in history and in the contemporary. The exhibition
was awarded the Golden Lion for best national pavilion—
one hundred years after the expulsion and genocide of the
Armenian people from the Ottoman Empire.

Silvina Der-Meguerditchian thus raises political questions

about justice, reparation, cultures of remembrance, and the
struggle of negotiating national belonging, engaging with
these questions artistically by offering a collective framework.

249
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng
Ndikung
‘On est ensemble’ and
‘Ça va waka’. A Few
Reflections on Navigating
the Xenopolis

“Some people want to run things, other things want to run. If they ask
you, tell them we were flying. Knowledge of freedom is (in) the invention
of escape, stealing away in the confines, in the form of a break. This is
held close in the open song of the ones who are supposed to be silent.”1
Stefano Harney and Fred Moten 1 Stefano Harney and Fred
Moten. The Undercommons:
Fugitive Planning & Black Study.
How can we understand concepts and spaces of flight, Wivenhoe: Minor Compositions,
2013. p. 51.
concepts and spaces of escape, as spaces and concepts of
creativity and artistic expression? And conversely, how can we think
of exhibition-making as an act of assembly of notions, peoples and
histories? I would like to invoke two concepts of motion, ‘Ça va
waka’ and ‘On est ensemble’, to reflect on notions of togetherness.
‘Ça va waka’ takes its cue from a Cameroonian pidgin and Franglais
expression that means ‘all will be good’. ‘Waka’ in itself means ‘to
walk’, ‘to journey’, ‘to be in motion’. Coming from that same context,

255
 a popular phrase upon farewell is ‘On est ensemble’, meaning
‘We are together’: an almost frantic invocation and incantation of
an imminent (re-) assembly. On the one hand, an outward move-
ment, a divergence, a kind of detachment and dissent in the form
of waka that at the same time also stands for an affirmation, ‘Ça va
waka’, and on the other hand an inward movement, an assembly
and a getting together in ‘On est ensemble’, in order to reflect on
what exhibition-making could also be—with an emphasis on also.
2 Xenopolis was an exhibition This text will take you on a few detours around Simon
curated by Simon Njami at the
Njami’s concept of the xenopolis2, Fred Moten and Stefano
Deutsche Bank Kunsthalle in
2015. City of Foreigners. ArtMag Harney’s undercommons/fugitivity, Henri Lefebvre’s and
by Deutsche Bank. http://db-
Edward Soja’s concept of the Thirdspace, and James Baldwin’s
artmag.com/en/90/on-view/city-
of-foreigners-xenopolis-at-the- essay ‘The Creative Process’, all in a bid to elaborate on the
deutsche-bank-kunsthalle
exhibition of and in the everyday; the exhibition of and in
precarity; the exhibition in the state of flux; and the exhibi-
tion as we know it.
It is appropriate to use the photographic works of Algerian
artist Nassim Rouchiche (born 1977) from the series ‘Ça va waka’ to
substantiate the ideas that will unfold in this paper. In ghostly
double exposure, ‘Ça va waka’ peeps into a settlement of illegal mi-
grants who made their way through the Sahara desert, found an
oasis in Algiers, and prepared to leap into that unknown jungle or
paradise called ‘Europe’. What I call an oasis here is actually a hole,
that place each guerrilla fighter needs to retreat to in order to plan
the next steps. It is oblique, opaque, gloomy and dodgy. The settle-
ment evidently becomes a resting spot; a place of assembly; a place
for people to revitalise and rejuvenate on their journey; to re-
organise and reconsider—a state of pre-refuge. Interestingly, in
Rouchiche’s images, the inhabitants of this space, the fugitives,
are almost always either absent or condemned to that state of un-
decidability between the living and the dead, as Derrida would
have put it. A space of uncertainty, fragility, precarity, but also of
strength and determination, animated by life. Rouchiche’s work

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 Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

becomes important here not only as an art piece, but as a revelation

of the layers that such spaces embody, and the performativity
within such spaces. The state of fugitivity is a state of utter perfor-
mativity—a denial of non-performativity and stagnation. It is a
state of an extended penultimumness. An etymological examina-
tion of ‘ex’ and ‘habere’ (which literally means ‘to hold out’ or ‘to
hold forth’) suggests that Rouchiche’s work—like this paper—is
about re-examining the crux of the exhibition, which could be
the holding out, forth or bare of being, as well as their condition,
demeanor and appearance, which is what makes up both the
habitus and the habitat. That is to say that the aero-habitat in
Rouchiche’s ‘Ça va waka’ will serve here as the undefined assem-
bly—sometimes of only one person—that makes a xenopolis and
conceptualises the fugitivity of the undercommons.

257
 Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

258
 The Performativity of Evanescence

One of the possibilities of reading Njami’s concept of the

xenopolis is through the prism of the non-inhabitant: those who
are on the run, who have no chance to settle or have decided not
to, who embody, live or are in the state of fugitivity. The proposal
being that every place has its own xenopolis, made up of those that
are not seen or made invisible by society, those whose vibrant ex-
istence is underneath the third layer of shells, or those that exist
within the Thirdspace, those who assemble not because they are
told to come together, but whose assembly is a matter of survival,
emergency, or conviviality in states of emergency and precarious-
ness. This position (it might be taken voluntarily or enforced from
outside) is simultaneously one of great constraint and one of great
liberty, and has therefore always been one that enabled radical and
independent thought, most poignantly encapsulated in the notion
and world-making practice of fugitivity.
Therefore, the xenopolis might be that space vividly de-
scribed by Moten and Harney when they write: “To enter this space
is to inhabit the ruptural and enraptured disclosure of the commons that
fugitive enlightenment enacts, the criminal, matricidal, queer, in the
cistern, on the stroll of the stolen life, the life stolen by enlightenment
and stolen back, where the commons give refuge, where the refuge gives
commons.”3 3 Ibid, p. 28.

An appropriate way of understanding the concept

of xenopolis and thereby the concept of fugitivity, will thus
be to look at all those that lead an off-beat, arrhythmic life
in relation to the ‘norm’, as in the concept of the refugee, 4 Marco Rabinowitz. Rise
of the Shadow Economy: Second
the dishwasher, the squatter or the Système D (D for dé-
Largest Economy in the World.
brouillard), which is essentially the ingenuity economy, the Forbes Magazine. www.forbes.
com/sites/benzingainsights/
economy of improvisation and self-reliance, and one that
2011/11/07/rise-of-the-shadow-
apparently accounts for $10 trillion of the planet’s GDP and economy-secondlargest-
economy-in-the-world
employs millions of people around the world4 as citizens

259
 of the xenopolis. Cogitating on the idea of the fugitive, Jack
Halberstam talks of those spaces and modalities that exist separ-
ately from the logical, logistical, the housed and the positioned,
which Moten and Harney call “being together in homelessness”—
a sought-after state of dispossession, a state wherein the refusal of
what has been refused reigns.
The idea is to imagine fugitivity as an act of radical thought
that departs from the societal context it is fugitive towards—and
as a framework in and from which to imagine conviviality, mutu-
ality and creativity beyond well-trodden paths. One could think
here of a space where the tempo and the sense of context are not
determined by a norm, but by the dynamism of the ‘fugitive pub-
lic’. For every society there exists a reflection or a parallel xenopolis,
whereby if the xenopolis is the ungovernable, then the society in
question is the governable or the governor. It is in this xenopolis
that the fugitive enlightenment is enacted, and where the shots
are actually called, as “knowledge of freedom is (in) the invention
of escape, stealing away in the confines, in the form, of a break.”5
5 Ibid, p. 51. Fugitivity is time-warping, proliferating and erasing, break-
ing temporal and geographical bounds. It is Haiti’s slave revolt, it
is the 2012 London riots, it is the millions of refugees from Syria to
Europe, it is the thousands of Icelanders demonstrating against
their leader after the publishing of the Panama Papers, but it is also
the man talking to himself on the street—the very notion of insan-
ity—and many more.
It is in the divergence, in the waka, that the fugitives con-
verge. It is in the motion of assembling that the Thirdspace is cre-
ated. It is in such spaces, public and private alike, that art finds its
meaning and in which art manifests itself. It is in such spaces—
more than in galleries and museums—that actions, operations, and
other iterations reveal or feed art. I guess what I am trying to say
here is that at least in my practice as an exhibition maker, I am in-
terested in the complicated manifestations of evanescence, the

260
Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

261
 Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

subliminal and ephemerality within the quotidian… especially the

quotidian of those that inhabit those spaces under the radar, behind
the curtains. Those dwellers of the xenopolis and other Thirdspaces.

Accommodating Social Space and Lived Space

A friend of mine was doing research for an art project on
food and eating habits of African migrants in Berlin. In his inves-
tigation, he immediately noticed that he could only plumb to a
certain depth but no further. There was a certain way people would
talk to him in the restaurant if he presented himself as an artist, as
opposed to if he presented himself just as a Nigerian seeking to be
part of his community in the diaspora. But what also became evi-
dent was that the restaurants he visited were often merely the first
layer, and that many other practices, societies, and businesses existed

262
beneath it. Interestingly, if I were to ask a Cameroonian in Berlin
to recommend a Cameroonian restaurant in Berlin, they would
most likely give me the name and address of a barbershop—the
idea being that the barbershop I would go to actually functions as
a barber shop, but the layers that exist underneath the barbershop
might include a church and then a restaurant. Needless to say, not
everyone can access these different layers.
This analogy I am using points towards spaces in flux, spaces
that are continually and rapidly changing—not only in their
physicality and conceptualisation as space, but also the way they
are accommodated and experienced as spaces of assembly and also
dissonances. From a Lefebvrian perspective, as elaborated upon in
his Production of Space6, (social) space is a product of many 6 Henri Lefebvre. The
Production of Space. Translated by
a complex social construction which have an impact on the
Donald Nicholson-Smith. Oxford:
way spaces are perceived and accommodated, and how Blackwell, 1991.

practices unfold within these spaces. My interest and reflections

about the concept of exhibitions have always been to see how such
spaces—like the restaurant behind the church and behind the
barber’s shop—are produced; the nature of the social intersec-
tions within them; and to what degree these need to relate to
one another, in order to produce and maintain such spaces. I am
interested in the fragility and temporality of these spaces. The
complexity of the spatial existence of these spaces can be seen in
what one might call pop-up restaurants. With ‘pop-up’ I do not
mean something like the fancifulness and the economy of pop-up
design stores, but rather the pop-up-ness of fugitivity. That is to say,
the restaurant that opens up, runs for a few months, is the cultural
centre and social hub of a group of people, until the police or Ord-
nungsamt7 discovers its existence. As soon as the restaurant 7 Ordnungsamt: municipal or
communal public order office and
is closed down, it pops up like a mushroom in another
authority for code enforcement in
place. Even without any public advertisement on the inter- Germany.

net, radio or otherwise, people who have access to and

inhabit such spaces of fugitivity know where to head.

263
 In his reflections on space theory, Lefebvre described the
triad of spatial existence which Edward Soja expatiated upon in his
theory of spatial trialectics in Thirdspace: Journeys to Los Angeles
8 Edward Soja. Thirdspace: and Other Real-and-Imagined Places8. According to Soja, First-
Journeys to Los Angeles and Other
spaces are physical spaces that are measurable, plottable and
Real-and-Imagined Places. Oxford:
Blackwell, 1996. mappable: spaces of a cartographic nature. They are spaces
one sees from a bird’s eye view, which is a wide and compartmen-
talised view of space. Secondspaces, on the other hand, are spaces
one creates to conceptualise the Firstspace. The Secondspace is
where we would normally situate our art world, as it is that space
of representation, be it through art or advertisement. It is that
space we conceive of on a daily basis in our thoughts and ideas.
But what has become extremely important for me in terms
of thinking about exhibitions is what Soja termed his Thirdspace,
i.e. a social and lived space. The Thirdspace to me is a space that
evolves from the subversive, a space that pops up out of agency
and urgency. It is a space that gives refuge to the marginalised and
power to the sidelined. It is a space of whisper, and in this whisper
is knowledge. The Thirdspace is not the centre, but the corner of
the room from which energy is generated but overlooked. It is that
kind of space, both physically and conceptually, that we see in
Nassim Rouchiche’s work ‘Ça va waka’, and it is also the xenopolis.
To me the Thirdspace is that space where other epistemologies are
negotiated and disseminated, where hierarchies are questioned,
where histories intersect with the various assemblies of peoples. It
is a space of and for art rather than a representation of anything.
This is also to say that for me an exhibition should be or
have that potential of a Thirdspace. If one were to read this from
Soja’s perspective, the Firstspace would be the museum or artspace,
the Secondspace would be the fact that in museums, artworks are
shown primarily for people’s entertainment, or something along
those lines. The Thirdspace then would be the assembly of people;
the social relations that emanate between the people and the

264
artworks; the political discourse that arises within such contexts;
the way in which hierarchies might be reversed in such a context;
and especially how power structures could be subverted within
such frameworks.

If Baldwin Was Right

If, in his seminal essay The Creative Process9, Bald- 9 James Baldwin. The Creative
Process. Creative America. New
win was right that the primary distinction of the artist is
York: Ridge Press, 1962.
that they must actively cultivate that state of being alone,
then I think an exhibition should be the place where an assembly
of aloneness could be staged and interrogated in relation to the
situation of our socio-political realities.
If Baldwin was right that besides the fact that there are for-
ever cities to be created, mines to be exploited, children to be fed,
but that the conquest of the physical world is not man’s only duty,
as they are also enjoined to conquer the great wilderness of them-
selves, then an exhibition should be that place where the wilderness
of humanity can be put forth for others to explore and discover.
If Baldwin was right that the precise role of the artist is to
illuminate darkness, blaze roads through vast forests, and make the
world a more humane dwelling place, then an exhibition should
be a manifestation of these endeavours. A space for elucidation, a
space for struggle—not just to walk the beaten track, but to pave
new ways—and above all, a space for conviviality.
If Baldwin was right that the artist is distinguished from all
other responsible actors in society—the politicians, legislators,
educators, and scientists—by the fact that they are their own test
tube, their own laboratory, working according to very rigorous
rules, however unstated these may be, then an exhibition should
be that space where the laboratory deliberations, the processes and
possibly the results of the experiments could be presented and
discussed.

265
 If Baldwin was right that the artist must always know that
visible reality hides a deeper one, and that all our actions and
achievements rest on things unseen—that a society must assume
that it is stable, but the artist must know, and he must let us know,
that there is nothing stable under heaven. The artist cannot and
must not take anything for granted, but must drive through the
heart of every answer and expose the questions that are hidden by
the answers. Then an exhibition becomes a space where complex
questions can be asked, where parallel realities can be scrutinised,
and where the beauty of the complexity of the world are displayed.
And as Baldwin so aptly put it, the state and the role of the artist
are to correct our delusions and expose to us the beauty of the
states of birth, suffering, love and death, which are extreme states:
extremely universal, and inescapable.

Conclusion
In conclusion I will come back to the issue of the assembly
and art by taking another detour to religion. Matthew’s famous
words, “for where two or three gather in my name, there am I with
them”, could be reformulated as “where two or three are assembled
with the spirit of what Baldwin proclaimed as the epitome of the
creative process, there is a potential exhibition”. And it is irrelevant
if it is within a declared art space, on the street, or in a kitchen.
Exhibition-making is an act of assembling the singular: it is an act
of collecting personal stories and histories, personal struggles
and celebrations, but it is also an act of assembling pluralities and
divergences. It is a space for the multitudes of inhabitant fugitives
of the xenopolis.

266
Nassim Rouchiche, ‘Ça va waka’, 2015 © Nassim Rouchiche

267
Nora Sternfeld
Why Exhibit At All?
An Answer From the
Year 20301

“Everything has been touched by the political backlash… The 1 This text was edited by
Lotte Arndt and translated to
fight is still going on, but the picture is very clear: Brazil is facing
English by Erika Doucette.
a putsch, a coup d’état by the Right and Far-Right forces in the
2 Bob van der Sterre. Invest
country. And, as usual in cases like this, the Left has been unable
Week Interview #18 Marcelo
to be… well, a real Left! I was ‘invited’ to leave the Museum of Rezende. Jegens & Tevens.
http://jegensentevens.nl/2016/06/
Modern Art in Bahia (MAM-BA) in late December, due to the
invest-week-interview-18-
atmosphere—my tenure as the director was described as a marcelo-rezende/

‘political menace’ by the new administration in Bahia. Why?

Because we decided in the last four years to debate about the
hierarchy between the museum, the audience and the state.
MAM-BA is a public museum, you see.”2
From an interview with Marcelo Rezende, former director of the
Museum of Modern Art in Bahia, June 2016.

We collect examples. We organise history. We begin 2030

with a new exhibition. The exhibition on the history of struggles
in museums and art universities opens in only a few weeks. We
want to understand what we can do. At our last meeting, the para-
meters and scope of action for our work had not been entirely
clear. Is our aim to win—although it is highly unlikely given the

269
authoritarian political climate—or just to survive? We are certainly
not alone, but we still have no answer to these questions. Some-
times I am glad that I spend most of my time with the historical
documents. I sort through material and work on interpreting
objects anew. If this history is one of struggle, isn’t conceiving of
history as struggle part of the struggle? And so too the need to
show those struggles? I ask myself these questions as I collect
quotes and try to find the right voice for the texts that will appear
on the exhibition walls. To me, it is as difficult as it is important
that we gain a better understanding of the implications of our
work. I hope to find words of clarity and, as I grapple with the
present, to make useful decisions.
Since we took over the museum, we have asked ourselves
what we want to achieve with our work here. We had been fighting
for years for a different exhibition practice. We have occupied
universities and mobilised voters; taught postcolonial and decolo-
nial theories; shifted the boundaries between art and political
action; intervened in the politics of history writing; and demanded
the government’s resignation. Yet, for over a quarter century, our
core concern has been imagining different possible museums.
We have criticised existing ‘exoticist’ and colonial collections;
worked on the history of the Western museum and its entangle-
ment with the production of racist knowledge; and demanded an
improvement to working conditions and new decision-making
structures. We have addressed, critiqued, infiltrated and even
occupied museums.
Then we decided to get together and do what we could.
We seized a favourable moment and became a museum ourselves.
In 2021, as the institutions were being privatised, we formed an
autonomous collective inside that beautiful old museum, where
our days and often nights were spent.
We are now a para-museum that we run, manage and main-
tain as a collective. Our group consists of activists and organisers.

270
All of us are curators and educators too. Some of us are migrant
historians, Black theorists, artists of colour, poetic technicians,
proletarian educators, rebellious Jews, progressive conservationists,
subversive artisans and emancipatory ethnographers. We are not
“interested in questions about your passport or heritage” but we
“challenge such questions in the first place”.3 That is a motto 3 Kanak Attak and Basta!
Manifesto. http://www.kanak-attak.
we borrowed from Kanak Attak, an initiative that began last
de/ka/down/pdf/manifest_e.pdf
century in Berlin, and to whom we dedicated an exhibition
early on, in the 2020s.
Although the museum does provide a refuge, it is also under
threat. Its continued existence can be attributed to the fact that
large-scale institutions have become less and less desirable, that the
public continues to remain divided, and that other institutions
have became more and more reactionary. Our para-museum has a
budget too, even if it is a small one. It has an exhibition and event
program, impeccable accounting—an absolute necessity because
of the frequent audits—and it takes a stand against fascist and
racist politics from a cosmopolitan standpoint.
For the past ten years we have been trying to understand
the role of the museum in times of authoritarian political change.
My research focus is on the period between 2013 and 2023. It begins
with the 2013 occupation of the Ludwig Museum in Budapest—
which Orban’s government put a stop to—and ends with the 2023
collapse of autonomous institutional structures in France. I am
particularly interested in the processes before and after the turn.
Although my main focus is on Austria, over the past few months
I have made a concerted effort to examine, collect and understand
as much as possible about events internationally. Over the years,
the politics within most museums have changed. New cultural
policies gradually led to the instatement of new directors and staff.
Some changed their stances gradually and others more abruptly.
I am mainly interested in the transitions. Before these changes,
struggles of cultural political actors in many different places

271
had led to funds being allotted to research projects that critically
examined the history of museums and their entanglements in
colonial history and racist discourses. The texts I have chosen for
the exhibition include an excerpt from a funding application from
Germany in 2016:
“The Global Museum is a program of the Federal Cultural
Foundation that aims to create impulses for globally rethinking and
redefining collections from a non-Western perspective, and to establish
this more strongly in German museums, as it is already common among
museums internationally. Because our society is shaped by globalisa-
tion, migration and transculturality, it is of utmost importance that
art museums actively participate in such developments, and that their
collection, research and exhibition practices are on par with museums
internationally.”
Excerpt from the “Global Museum Program. Collections from the 20th
Century in a Global Perspective” by the Federal Cultural Foundation, 2016.

Literature on museums from the second decade of the 21st

century give accounts of many people in many different places
who were concerned with finding ways to unlearn the colonial,
racist and exotifying images that were so constitutive and defini-
tive of museums in both the past and present. Reports from that
era even write about numerous cases where people stood up and
fought inside and for museums. Although these years of anti-racist
struggles and activist demands on museums did bring about some
changes, their structures remained fully intact. The materials I
sifted through and compiled for the exhibition bear evidence
that the activists gained ground, and that they adjusted to a capi-
talist form of organisation that critics at the time called “neoliber-
alism”.
As I read through one of my wall texts, I notice it is full of
language from the 2010s. Today many of the words seem outdated,
pompous and perhaps even a little naive:

272
 In the 2010s, following a so-called “crisis of representation”
the imperative of “participation” entered into the museologists'
vocabulary. There was increasing talk of “agency—the power to
act”. The new discourse around museums and exhibitions
even more frequently declared themselves as “radicals”.4 Forming
cooperations with activists had become part of the everyday
work of curators in the art field,5 in municipal museums, and in
some ethnographic museums. Against the grain of the logic of
representation, exhibitions and museums were more frequently
conceived as zones of agency. Regarding participation from a
curatorial perspective, theorist Irit Rogoff writes: “to participate
is to lay a ground to a claim”.6 In this respect, it is about creating
a space where demands can be formulated; in other words, it is
about a transformative practice that is not preconceived or
perhaps does not yet even exist.

4 Cf. Claire Bishop. Radical

Museology: Or What's Contempo-
Then I ask myself: what is it that makes this text so
rary in Museums of Contemporary
old-fashioned? Maybe it is that the demands have remained Art? London: Koenig, 2014.

the same, but the conditions have changed? Maybe being

5 For instance in Museum
‘radical’ is no longer chic? Synthesising the materials, I Reina Sofia in Madrid, the Van
Abbemuseum in Eindhoven and
look at these new politics of occupation and find evidence
at the 7th Berlin Biennale in 2012,
of rare and brave acts taken by cultural political officials to name only a few debated
examples.
before it was too late. Still, despite the critical discussions
concerning the new directors, the institutional structures 6 Cf. Irit Rogoff. Looking
Away—Participating Singularities,
remained unchanged. I discover amidst the material docu-
Ontological Communities. Research
ments from occupations and collaborations, for instance, project at the International College
for Cultural Techniques and Media
between refugee activists, artists and anti-racist activists
Philosophy, Weimar, 2010-2012.
in Vienna. I should consider using some of them in the
exhibition.

273
 “Art, Activism, Academy” is the title of a discussion held in the hall
of the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna on 9 October 2013, between
activists from the Refugee Protest Movement, staff, and students.
When the event ended, the activists proceeded to occupy the
Academy. Utilising the Academy as a space for action and refuge
seemed a logical consequence, because in their responses to the
political circumstances at the time, the institution and its directors
had sided with the refugees again and again. However, the
Academy's head office responded to the occupation by threatening
to call the police, and demanded they leave the Academy and end
the occupation. The activists did so after being faced with an
ultimatum on 4 November.

I consider using the following letters from the dean's office

of the Academy: Dear Refugees, Please leave the Academy by
Monday 4 November. This means leaving the hall and room M20,
where you have been sleeping, along with all the other rooms in
the academy. Eva Bliminger, Andrea B. Braidt, Karin Riegler

7 Letter from the Academy. These deans later wrote: You are permitted to make use of the
Refugee Protest Camp Vienna.
hall for meetings, discussion events and press conferences. How-
https://refugeecampvienna.noblog
s.org/post/2013/11/04/letter- ever, you are not to make use of any of the other rooms at the
from-the-academy-brief-von-der-
Academy. Attached is the November 2013 schedule for the hall.
akademie/
This offer only stands if you leave the Academy today.7

These documents give insight into the discrepancy between

discourses of critical reflection, and those of institutions adhering
to economic criteria, which was highly common in the years lead-
ing up to the authoritarian turn. This was a time when migrants

274
were invited to speak at conferences and activists appeared in
catalogues. The self-determination with which they spoke about
their everyday struggles set the new rhythm for press releases.
They demanded new archives, the decolonisation of mu-
seums, and asked what an “archive of migration” might be. They
criticised the national archives for functioning as “storage facilities
for artifacts collected based on the logic of state and institutional
discourses that represented the official stance so detrimental to
migrants for decades.”8 8 Ljubomir Bratić. Auf
dem Weg zu einem Archiv der
Regarding the national archive collection, in 2016
Migration. Strategien für
migration sociologist Ljubomir Bratic´ writes: “These ma- Zwischenräume. Verlernen in der
Migrationsgesellschaft. schulheft
terials tell a story of attempts at organising this area; they tell a
1/17-165, Büro trafo.K (ed).
story of government efforts to regulate migration policies and to Vienna: Studienverlag, 2017.
pp. 108–110.
standardise integration policies. I am not saying that this is not
important, on the contrary, these documents are necessary in
order to understand how ascription processes work.”
This excerpt makes me realise the profound belief that Bratić
then had in the subversive potential of working with the archive
as a site of inscription. I decide to use the following excerpt in the
exhibition: “Although an archive can be a site of control, a site of order,
a site of normalisation, it is simultaneously also a site for the others—
the superfluous ones—to gain access to knowledge. An archive is an
instrument. It has no intrinsic use except for that ascribed by the archi-
vist and its users. It all depends on who, how and why collections are
publically and discursively brought to light.”
I feel it is important to include autonomous projects that
had been successful, even if only for a short time. For instance, the
Museum of Impossible Forms (M{if}) was founded by an indepen-
dent group of Helsinki artists and curators in spring 2017 as an anti-
racist and queer-feminist project, a heterogeneous space, and as an
experimental and migrant form of expression. (M{if}) opened up a
broad horizon though its political character, its accessibility and
openness, its multilingual library, and workshops and events. It

275
 Museum of Impossible Forms, 2017 © m{if}

9 The Museum of Impossible certainly served as an inspiration to us and, in a sense, as a

Forms opened in spring 2017 as
sister organisation under different conditions.9
a collectively organised ‘free space’
in Kontula, an outlying district In reality, such critical discourses have ultimately also been
in the east of Helsinki. Aside from
beneficial to actors from bourgeois dominant culture, who
the multilingual library, a printing
facility and a media centre, it have already found a way to live within critical capitalism.
was also a space for hosting
Alternative institutions were hard won—as ‘mission state-
workshops, events and exhibitions,
in constant conversation with its ments’ from before the turn often emphasise—through
immediate surroundings. The
struggles or takeovers, when those struggling became the
program consisted of discursive
and artistic events situated within superfluous ones. Back then, part of activist struggles had
the context of decoloniality,
been to find ways to fight the self-perpetuating, exclusive
postcolonial feminism and queer
theory. hiring structures and exploitative working conditions so
commonplace in museums and universities.
In January 2017, the author of a book entitled Capitalist
Realism had taken his life in London. Mark Fisher worked at the
Institute for Visual Culture at the then renowned Goldsmiths
College at London University, where he found himself wrapped
up in the same contradictions resulting from the capitalisation of
critique, and the simultaneous exploitation of his labor to the
point of exhaustion. He had drawn attention to the fact that the
given living and working conditions no longer allowed us to grasp
the present or articulate a present from which a future could be

276
imagined. A multimedia section in the exhibition will 10 “Yet, perhaps because of all
this, there’s an increasing sense
feature a lecture held in May 2014, where he speaks of how
that culture has lost the ability to
“the slow cancellation of the future has been accompanied grasp and articulate the present.
Or it could be that, in one very
by a deflation of expectations”.10
important sense, there is no present
Fisher's suicide marked a milestone in the creeping to grasp and articulate any more,”
Mark Fisher. Ghosts of My Life:
shift of the coordinates delineating our possibilities of
Writings on Depression, Hauntology
action, which were not always immediately discernible. and Lost Futures. London: Zero
Books, 2013. See also: https://
In the early years following the authoritarian turn, it was
www.youtube.com/watch?v=aCgk
not seen to be contradictory for exhibitions to advocate for LICTskQ

criticality while supported by the capitalist and author-

11 The cultural program Titel
itarian regime they critiqued. A clear example of this comes Thesen Temperamente was aired
by the German regional public
from Istanbul Biennale in 2013. Under the pretense of an
broadcasters association ARD on
attempted coup, Erdogan invalidated his critics' passports 22 September 2013.

and initiated waves of incarceration and jail releases. From

the catalogue and newspaper reports I compose the follow-
ing wall text:

Who does public space belong to? On 14 September 2013, the

day before the press conference announcing the opening of the
Istanbul Biennale, a sudden outburst of protests against capitalism
in Turkey began. An activist in Ankara was killed, sparking protests
in Istanbul that the authorities tried to put an end to using tear gas.
In the midst of all this, the art biennale centered around the
question of “who public space belongs to” was scheduled to open.
Its main theme intersected with the activists' concerns about the
turbo-capitalist gentrification of Istanbul, and the protests against
it, which began with the occupation of Gezi Park in summer 2013.
A public television report summed it up by saying: “Rarely have art
and reality been so closely intertwined as in this year's Istanbul
Biennale.”11

277
Despite the political tone and word choice in the concept for
the Istanbul Biennale—incidentally scheduled to coincide with a
brand new art fair—its entanglement in the city's fast-paced
economisation was far greater than its involvement in the
protests. In that moment, when the burgeoning social movement
was taking place, and before its repression, curator Fulya Erdemci
decided to change the concept and retreat from the public sphere
back into the white cube. This “strategic retreat”, as she called
it in a tour for curators, had been an attempt to refrain from
appropriating the protests. This decision coincidentally made any
interaction with the public completely impossible, as all of the
events, discussions and artworks that were supposed to take
place in public spaces were cancelled.

It took different amounts of time for the effects of the au-

thoritarian structures to manifest in different areas. Critics were
among the first to feel them. Borders were closed, and holding a
passport became more and more of a privilege. Daily deportations
became a fixed part of everyday life; countless people lost their
jobs. Critical voices were first silenced through excessive audits,
and later more openly. Once again, denunciations and spying on
each other was commonplace. Fear was palpable, especially in de-
cision-making. For museums, sometimes the repercussions were
barely noticeable; in the cultural field sometimes several years
passed without incident, while others were immediately affected.
I edited a notice for a newspaper on the situation in Hungary in
May 2013 which reads:
Since Thursday evening, activists and museum staff have been
occupying the Ludwig Museum at the Palace of Arts, the most influential

278
museum of contemporary art in Hungary. The occupation was triggered
by the dismissal of the museum director, a fate that numerous other art
and cultural institutions in Hungary share. According to the Ministry,
the occupation and protests are the “usual hysteria” that is part of a
“political crusade” aimed to tarnish “the image of Hungary” […] The
Ministry has removed a great number of entitled functions from state
institutions, and placed them in the hands of the formerly private
Hungarian Art Academy. Generously endowed with official funds for
arts and culture, this organisation has a strong nationalist leaning, and
even includes “nationalist sentiment” as a criterion for hire. President
Fekete has hurled anti-semitic insults at authors György Konrád and
Imre Kertéz, and censured art that does not adhere to its program,
accusing it of “national blasphemy”, nearly all the Academy’s directors
share these ideas.12 12 Excerpt from the German-
language independent newspaper
In the timespan between 2013 and 2023 lie ten years of
Pester Lloyd on 11 May 2013,
the authoritarian turn, which certainly led to developments http://www.pesterlloyd.net/html/1
319besetzungludwig.html
that were specific to each context, although there are still a
number of commonalities.
Our para-museum is a heterotopy in an uncanny world. We
have often been fearful and were glad to find we were not alone.
Over and over again, we discussed all the possible options—or all
those we could imagine. We are sometimes strong and brave.
Sometimes we help each other bear the weight of our fears. Some-
times we caution each other not to be overly exuberant. We have
examined, discussed and made sense of the museum’s constantly
growing collection. We have questioned the hierarchies between
histories and objects. We have researched and identified proveni-
ences and come up with many sad stories. When all of the histories
with all their omissions became tangible and were out on the table,
we saw many things more clearly than we imagined, while others
things became less clear. Oftentimes, we were unable to envision
a solution initially. We set the collections in motion, restituted
works back to those from whom they were stolen, sat together

279
 with numerous colleagues from many different places—who, like
us, are researchers and activists too—and contemplated what we
should do, and how exactly to go about it.
We did not want to simply develop theories, but also to draw
the consequences of our research in our practice. That part was
easy, because nobody had shown much interest in our collection
to begin with. But it had been important to us at the time; it gave
us purpose. We wanted to continue to conduct the “archive of
migration”, founded in the 2010s, in the way that those who had
struggled for it had intended: as an archive of histories of the struc-
tural injustice of racism, of the everyday lives of migrants, and of
13 Cf. Arif Akkılıç, Ljubomir anti-racist struggles.13 The collection afforded us access to a
Bratić. Aufruf für ein Archiv der
great deal of materials. We received numerous donations
Migration. Stimm 84. http://min-
derheiten.at/images/stories/stimm from friends and fellow activists. We spoke to many people,
e84_herbst2012_webs27.pdf and
listened to many stories, remembered many things on our
the Archive of Migration working
group (Arif Akkılıç, Vida Bakondy, own, and learned a great deal.
Ljubomir Bratić, Wladimir Fischer,
We tried to redefine the museum. We found it important to
Li Gerhalter, Belinda Kazeem, Dirk
Rupnow), Brainstorming/working address, work through, and not to forget the history of vi-
paper/concept for an Archive of
olence. It was important that it was not conveyed in abstract
Migration. http://www.archivder-
migration.at/sites/default/files/arc terms, and that we understood that the bodily knowledge
hivdermigration_konzept_0.pdf
gained from these struggles also needs to be part of the
museum. We wanted the museum to be a place for stories and
movements; for history and action; for remembering things past;
and a place where subjugated forms of knowledge could be heard
and have an impact.
We also built spaces inside the museum to house col-
leagues—who, like us, are researchers and activists too—and who,
for various reasons, also found it important and necessary to have
a place to stay. We restored objects and planned programs for ex-
hibitions. Sometimes our advertisements were critical and dis-
sident. Sometimes we just wanted to emphasise that the banal
authority of the situation should not determine intellectual life.
We set up reading circles and read texts with various people in

280
various languages, some of which we learned through reading
together. We learned to translate and think about multiple contexts
at the same time. Time and time again, we asked ourselves why it
was important to fight for other exhibition practices at all. Given
the current situation, this is more or less indisputable—at least
in our small world—that such struggles for different exhibition
practices are necessary; at the same time, we understand that while
so many other struggles are so far from attaining their goals that
they seem unattainable altogether, the question still remains one
that needs to be addressed—urgently.
In our meeting yesterday it was I who was emphatic about
the importance of our work. I said it was important, because the
politics of history is a kind of politics; and because it creates
spaces for remembering which enables other struggles, even if we
do not know what to do with that knowledge, or in what direction
our work might take us. It is especially important because it is a
place where we meet, a place where a new ‘we’ can take shape again
and again, a place where we can transform our practices ourselves.
Yesterday, as so often, my arguments were controversial. Where
do we stand? Do we want to take to the streets or take distance?
Over time many people left the museum, some for a while, others
for good. Most left for good reason, like they were needed more
elsewhere. New people still join the collective. Although our mu-
seum’s history does not foresee a happy end, we do not see any
point in stopping. Bearing all this in mind, I write one more wall
text for the exhibition before I leave for the day. It’s late again.

281
After the coup in Brazil in 2016, six of the former curators of the
Museum of Modern Art of Bahia (MAM-BA) and their families
moved to a nature reserve. Until they were forced to leave, the
museum had carried on in the spirit of the Brazilian architect
Lina Bo Bardi14 and consistently grew to become, in Paulo Freire's
sense, a place of emancipatory education and a democratic
horizon.15 After the then director Marcelo Rezende was forced
to resign and the entire team was fired, without further hesitation
they moved to Mucuge, to property located in the Chapada
Diamantina National Park at the foot of the Sierra Sincorá in Bahia.
There, they founded the Museu do Mato, an experimental lab for
art and museology, which continues on with the same intentions:
to research the region through the use of collective, experimental
modes of research; cartography; collection of data and interviews;
through lectures, workshops, land-based practices, residencies,
film series and other actions that give insight into the
“natural, cultural, material and immaterial legacy” of the region.
The collection consists of materialising the research work—of
reports, photographs, objects, documents and poetic
constructions—which people are invited to visit in person or
digitally. Until today, the curators live and work in Bahia as a
constantly growing experimental group, with moments of
frustration, scientific breakthroughs, experiences of commonality
and community, and under precarious conditions; every day they
rediscover the idea behind the museum anew.16

282
 14 Roger M. Buergel. “This
Exhibition Is an Accusation”:
The Grammar of Display Accord-
ing to Lina Bo Bardi. Afterall.
http://www.afterall.org/journal/
issue.26/this-exhibition-is-an-
accusation-the-grammar-of-dis
play-according-to-lina-bo-bardi1

15 Cf. Marcelo Rezende.

Staging the School at the Museum.
Lecture, Wem gehört das Mu-
seum? Fragen und Bedingungen
musealer Vermittlung im globalen
Kontext, Dusseldorf, 19 January
2017. https://www.kunstsamm
lung.de/fileadmin/user_upload/
Forschen/museum_global_falt
blatt_symposium_dt.pdf

16 Museu do Mato. https://

www.facebook.com/museu
domato/

283
Naomi Rincón Gallardo
Welcome to The
Formaldehyde Trip1

1 Naomi Rincón Gallardo’s
The Formaldehyde Trip was com-
missioned by SFMOMA, part of its
performance series Performance
in Progress. It was co-curated by
Frank Smigiel, associate curator of
Performance & Film, SFMOMA,
and Ani Rivera, executive director
of Galería de la Raza.
The Formaldehyde Trip forms part
of her research project in the PhD
in Practice Program at the Aca-
demy of Fine Arts Vienna.
I’m trying to bury you
It’s been a long yesterday
since the earth covered you
and I still don’t understand
how come that you left?
having so many pending matters…
Bety Cariño, 2010
This text presents possible entries to fragmented and unfin-
ished narratives and matters that come together in The For-
maldehyde Trip. The Formaldehyde Trip is a speculative fiction
comprising a cycle of songs and videos dedicated to murdered
Mixtec activist Bety Cariño. By deploying suppressed Meso-
american cosmologies and decolonial feminist perspectives;
crafty and ornate props and sets; echoes of Mexican B-movie
sci-fi films from the ‘60s and ‘70s; sounds and voices from the
past lurking into the future; and lyrics addressing women’s
struggles against the dispossession of their lands, bodies and
cultures; The Formaldehyde Trip imagines Bety Cariño’s journey
to the underworld. There, she finds women warriors, witches
and widows, two-sexed deities, and animals preparing her
re-birth celebration.
The storyteller is an axolotl that has been preserved in form-
aldehyde in a glass cylinder in the amphibian section of the
Museum of Natural History in Vienna. The role of the axolotl
in formaldehyde is a hybrid one, between a ghostly artificially
isolated native informant, and a savage educated time traveller
who agitates fact, fiction and friction.
287
Bety
One does not enter into the ghostly realm
out of curiosity or voluntarily.
Ultimately, a tragedy, indeed a loss, is at
the origin of everything.
Achille Mbembe, 2013

On April 2010, Alberta Bety Cariño (1976–2010) was killed in

a paramilitary ambush in Oaxaca, Mexico, while she was part
of a humanitarian caravan trying to break the blockade that
pro-government paramilitaries had imposed on the indigenous
community of San Juan Copala. She participated in organised
struggles denouncing the contamination of water caused by
industrial farms and denim factories; facilitated the organi-
sation of women tortilla sellers by fostering different solidarity
economy initiatives; founded centres that supported migrants;
and ran programmes on reproductive health. She also fought
against dams, mining and electricity company abuses that
harmed indigenous populations, and campaigned for the ar-
ticulation of self-determination of indigenous communities, as
well as for the formation of communitarian radio programmes
(Hernández, 2016). After Bety Cariño’s murder, her people
stated that her seed had been planted in their fiery dignified
hearts—a metaphor rooted in Mesoamerican cosmologies.
These connections with ancient suppressed cosmologies,
carry a source of hope and empowerment despite the violent
colonial heteropatriarchal attempts to supress them. Bety
Cariño wrote in a poem that “poetry is a form of resistance,
another way of keeping us alive” (Cariño, 2010). In The Formal-
dehyde Trip, she speaks from among the dead. She returns
from the silence (Holland, 2000) of her tomb in order to articu-
late a different, future-oriented narrative.

288
 The last thing that my eyes saw
was an ambush of assassins with shrapnel.
We went out fighting for land and light,
nourishment, water and path to take care
of our destiny.
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

Bety’s story is a repetition of past stories, and of stories that

carry on after hers. Fidelia, Esther, Tere, Italia, Mariana, Georgina,
Maria Patricia, Yolanda, Norma, Claudia, Cristina, Bertha: an
endless list of atrocities against indigenous women defending
their lands, cultures and bodies. Despite the structural racist
capitalist patriarchal power that aims to make indigenous
women disposable, a new female indigenous subject has been
emerging through inventive social struggles and uprisings,
in order to contest dispossession in the Global South. Rebel
indigenous women have dared to fight their status as a passive
resource to be raped and exploited, while challenging their
roles within their communities, as well as the patriarchal and
racist configurations of the political sphere itself (Hernández,
2015). Such a disobedient heresy has been violently stifled and
suppressed with an onrush of entangled systems of terror and
repression, alongside ongoing neo-colonial extraction, state
violence, forced displacement, new laws that legalised pillage,
criminalised protest, intensified formal and informal militari-
sation, while producing geographies of fear (Segato, 2014)
among entire populations—measures that all together ensure
the control of territories. In the case of Mexico, such proces-
ses are brutally interwoven with explicit violence involving
femicides; mutilated corpses found in clandestine graves; the
disappearances and murders of thousands of people, as well
as the construction of an ‘inner enemy’ that sustains a state

289
of exception as the rule that justifies further militarisation.
Capitalist and neo-colonial expropriation entails forms of
appropriation/violence (Sousa Santos, 2010) that are “endemic
to historically entrenched, racially stratified labor markets”
(Bhandar, 2016). The reloaded onrush for extraction and
expropriation follows a patriarchal, racist and capitalist logic
of domination, misrecognition, occupation and exploitation of
indigenous territories that are coded as feminine (Belauste-
guigtia/Saldaña, 2015). Marginal lives in these geographies of
fear are bound to be forgotten, and are excluded from official
historical records. That such lives matter is not a given: rather
it is something that must be fought for (Holland, 2000).
Morrill, Tuck and The Super Futures Haunt Qollective (2016)
claim that the opposite of dispossession is not possession but
mattering: a mattering that is against both oblivion and the
paralysing forces of terror.

292
Axolotl

Who is the atrocious larva

In suspended animation
Whose suffocated identity
Did not get burned by the sun?
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

The axolotl is an amphibian endemic to Mexico that appears

in many myths, research projects and metaphors (Bartra,
2011). One of its peculiar singularities is that it retains its larval
features throughout its adult life. It can reproduce in its larval
state, and has the ability to regenerate its limbs if they are
torn off. This retention of juvenile features and stubborn pae-
domorphosis is called neoteny. Neoteny is a possible way of
slipping away from adulthood and resisting normalisation.
Neoteny can be a condition of being, remaining or becoming
underdeveloped, infantile and monstrous. Neoteny is a form
of refusal of the binomial logics of being advanced or back-
ward. Neoteny can be a queer strategy for rejecting serious-
ness and propriety.

In its Mexican mythical dimension, the axolotl is an aquatic

transmuted version of the deformed god Xólotl, who hid away
from a sacrificial ceremony in which gods were throwing
themselves in a bonfire in order to keep the fifth sun alive.
When trying to hide away, to escape being sacrificed, Xólotl
first turned himself into a maize plant, then into an agave, and
finally, having been found on land, dove into the lake, where
he took the axolotl form (Bartra, 2011).

293
All images from Naomi Rincón Gallardo,
The Formaldehyde Trip, 2017.
Photo documentation courtesy of:
page 290-291: Claudia López Terroso
up: Marie Strauss

294
A spiral of time spins whilst mud, colonial blood and polluted
water blur the axolotl’s status as a shape-shifting deity. The
Christianisation of the New World comprised brutal anti-
idolatry campaigns that used torture and cruel punishments
in order to spread terror among indigenous peoples (Frederici,
2004). The colonial mindset needs to dehumanise entire
populations in order to justify their subjugation and destruc-
tion. Spanish conquerors depicted the indigenous peoples
of the New World as monstrous races and evil beings living in
an animal-like state. The converting mission towards the
Amerindians involved both an assault on their deities, and the
consolidation of a systemic plunder economy. It was both epis-
temicide (Sousa Santos, 2010) and large-scale appropriation.

The Prussian scientist and explorer, Alexander von Humboldt,

‘discovered’ the axolotl in his expedition of the Spanish colo-
nies. Fascinated by its radical strangeness, he took it to Europe
and gave it to French naturalist George Cuvier for further
research. The mud of the Mexican lake was finally cleared
away: the axolotl had finally entered the realm of reason and
enlightenment. No more animals were taken for gods, just
‘human’ vs. ‘animal’, ‘subject’ vs. ‘object’: universal knowledge
and its inherent dualisms. The axolotl became raw matter for
scientific inquiry; it was an object to be classified, described
and categorised with necrophiliac accuracy.

295
Formaldehyde Ghosts
Formaldehyde prevents living beings from completing the
cycle of life and death. What if such suspension shifted into
sudden awakening? Not to come fully back to life, but to wake
up as a ghost. Organic matter remains endlessly in a frozen
not-yet-completely-dead state. Its artificial necrophiliac iso-
lation alters the experience of time by blending together past,
present and future.

When I looked at the axolotl in formaldehyde behind the glass

cabinet in the Natural History Museum in Vienna, I see my own
face reflected in the glass of the vitrine. The display triggered
an imagining of the abduction this larva experienced, the harm
that was inflicted on it, and the stories that might have pre-
ceded its presence in such a cabinet in the first place. What if
this axolotl was not a speechless object of scientific study but
a ghostly storyteller? It would have something to say about
colonialism, racism, possession, appropriation, and about
nature’s constitution as the Other (Haraway, 2008). It might
demand another future in which it could become unavailable
(Gordon, 2011) as a mere object of knowledge production.

Humboldt’s Love Song

A queered Humboldt sings a love song to the axolotl; this
resembles an eroticised interracial encounter of a queer native
with a queer white master. The axolotl is positioned both as
a racialised sexual object, and as the Other (Muñoz, 2006)
who desires being wanted by a white subject out of a longing
to belong. This small wink points to a fugitive reading of an
encounter in which racial difference might not imply asymme-
try of power or denigration, but a mutual giving of pleasure,

296
while opening up the (im)possibility for something different to
occur “beyond pure submission or domination” (Muñoz, 2013).
Humboldt’s love song comprises the will to possess and define
the Other.

Zwischen der erschreckenden

Erbärmlichkeit
der schwimmenden Gärten Mexikos
Vernehm’ ich die geheimnisvollen Klänge
eines rätselhaften Wesens.

Welch Glückseligkeit und Rätsel

dieser fesselnde Gesang,
Für dich durchquerte ich die Meere,
dich will ich besitzen!
(…)
Ich werde dich studieren, ich werde dich
klassifizieren und für die Ewigkeit
konservieren,
ich werde verhindern, dass die Zeit dich
verschleißt
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

297
 Amidst the appalling wretchedness
of Mexico’s Floating Gardens,
I catch the enigmatic sounds
of a puzzling creature.

What bliss and mystery

in its captivating song;
For you I crossed the seas,
You, I must possess!
(...)
I will study you, I will classify you,
And I will conserve you for perpetuity;
I will prevent time from wearing you down
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

On the scent of his expedition, Humboldt visited the United

States where he was hosted by President Thomas Jefferson,
with whom he shared his detailed description and maps of
nat-ural resources, as well as his political analysis of the colo-
nies—a white male enlightened western platform in which
there is a decisive conversation between “us” about “them”,
and in which “they” have no agency at all (Minh-Ha, 1989) but
rather become an object to be possessed. The production of
modern western knowledge is the philosophical justification
for research complicit with further appropriation of lands,
cultures and bodies (Tuck/Yang, 2014). The accumulation of
information and documents is tightly intertwined with explora-
tion (Ahmed, 2000) and the control of colonial territories. In
his song, Humboldt delivers the findings of his exploration to
his dearest friend Thomas Jefferson, whom he calls “Tommy
der Ami”.

298
Photo documentation courtesy of:
up: Kathrin Sonntag
page 302-304: Naomi Rincón Gallardo (video still)
page 306-307: Fabiola Torres Alzaga
page 310-311: Eliana Cetto

299
Im Namen der Anthropologie,
der Physik, der Klimatologie,
der Astronomie, der Gesteinskunde
und Mineralogie, der Botanik,
der Vulkanologie und des Humanismus
durchkreuzte ich diese Länder.
Hier überreiche ich dir die Karte der
südlichen Ländereien.
So ein Überfluss an natürlichen
Ressourcen
und so eine geschwächte Politik

In the name of Anthropology

of Physics, of Climatology,
of Astronomy, of Geology and Mineralogy,
of Botany, of Volcanology,
Did I traverse these lands!
Here I present you with a map of the
Southern Territories.
Such an abundance of natural resources,
And yet such a feeble politics!
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

300
Accumulation!
A faceless character dressed in a white suit and sneakers
enters a video-game-like hybrid space, something between a
mall and a prison complex. The character jogs and shows off
his quiff while he multiplies himself in a dystopian pixel reality
where a military jingle is being played out loud.

The catchy, annoying jingle recalls a ringtone-like melody,

a silly military video-game tune. The motto of the song is
borrowed from David Harvey’s (2003) concept of “accumula-
tion by dispossession”, describing a new stage of capitalism
in which “primitive accumulation” becomes an ongoing ever
fiercer predatory system that entails extensive privatisation;
orchestrated crises destroying social well-being; financial
speculation and the coercive liberalisation of the market; neo-
colonial and imperial processes of violent appropriation; the
commodification of nature; and the co-opting of cultural forms.
These systematically imposed dispossession structures ensure
the condition of “becoming precarious”, i.e. of being exposed
to injury, violence, indebtedness, toxicity and death (Butler/
Athanasious, 2013). Dispossession is therefore not only a
matter of land expropriation, but also a process of determining
whose bodies matter and whose bodies are disposable (Morril/
Tuck 2013). In the case of Mexico, neoliberal plundering is
closely intertwined with state corruption and military occupa-
tion together with paramilitary forces that are complicit with
transnational corporations (Belausteguigoitia/Saldaña). The
jingle outlines a cartography of material and physical living
conditions, in a context continuously exposed to the normalised
violence of neocolonial and neoliberal forms of appropriation.

301
302
303
Storage in the Underworld
According to the Mesoamerican Perceptual Dispositive (Marcos,
2011), which traces back and prepares a foundation for a variety
of cosmologies from Mesoamerican pre-colonial cultures,
the underworld is a cold and dark but nonetheless lush place
where many dead bodies blend into a nourishing clay made
out of bones and ashes. A rooster and a dog guide the journey
of spirits through the nine floors of the underworld. Dead
people lose their individuality and their hearts become seeds
underneath the earth. The underworld is described as a sto-
rage for a great variety of materials: seeds of hearts, animals
and flora of every kind, and all the substances that form the
cosmos (López, 2015).

Bety’s seed was planted “out of a concern for justice” (Gordon,

2008). Holland claims that marginalised communities of
colour might feel empowered by the possibility of coming back
from the dead, and silence as an existential challenge. What if
interweaving mattering, dream-work and memory were means
to rekindle suppressed cosmologies of the (Mesoamerican)
underworld? What if the journey between death and the ap-
parition of ghosts was a pedagogical experience that allowed
the articulation of silenced stories, recapitulating interrupted
(or suspended) moments of struggle? The underworld could be
imagined as a utopian subterranean reserve of dignified seeds,
germinating, nurturing and sprouting into a burning revelation/
revolution, making cracks in the world as we know it.

The Formaldehyde Trip depicts the underworld as a dark DIY

paper cave, populated by genderqueer guide animals and
sacred monsters/deities who spatter their bodies with mud
in order to create a new kind of clay for beings of the future.

304
A goddess of death and filth beats her drums, while the orgiastic
gang dance and chant together:

Shoulder to shoulder!
Mud mud mud mud
Elbow to elbow!
Mud mud mud mud
Bones and ashes!
Mud mud mud mud
Stubborn and reluctant!
Mud mud mud mud
The tomb doesn’t stop us!
Mud mud mud mud
We are not tired!
Mud mud mud mud
Neither disheartened!
Mud mud mud mud
Again and again dead!
Mud mud mud mud
Forever indomitable!
Mud mud mud mud
Illegible monsters!
Mud mud mud mud
Coyolxauhqui imperative!
Mud mud mud mud
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

305
Healing capsule

Flourishing planet
Oppositional ecologies
Global South
Scavengers of subjected knowledges!
Naomi Rincón Gallardo, 2017

Axolotls have the ability to regenerate their limbs. An axolotl

ship dwells in a lake, led by Bety. The ship is a healing cap-
sule for a new mestiza (Anzaldúa, 2009) companion. The new
mestizas travel between crossroads, races, genders and cul-
tures. They (un)bridge worlds of meaning while creating bonds
of affinity based on difference rather than identity (Sandoval,
2000). Bety resembles the Mexica goddess of the moon,
Coyolxauhqui. In Mexica mythology, Coyolxauhqui was killed
by her bellicose brother Huitzilopochtli, god of the Sun.
Coyolxauhqui’s mutilated body is fragmented and contorted.
I borrow Gloria Anzaldúa’s (2009) notion of “the Coyolxauhqui
Imperative”: a healing process that attempts to repair the
wounds produced by both personal and social violent experi-
ences. Putting the Coyolxauhqui together is a process that
moves from a state of fragmentation and dis-association to
a sense of wholeness and reconstruction. After the axolotl
healing capsule reaches the earth, the companion carries the
axolotl out, puts it on the ground, and explodes it with fire-
works, so as to create a burning sign of a revelation to come:
a revelation that conjures up the silenced and subjugated
voices of marginal lives that sketched the world differently.

May their ghosts multiply and demand justice. May their seeds
be reborn and bring about healing and a range of yet inexistent

308
possibilities. May the ‘I’ turn into a ‘we’, may ‘she’ turn also into
a ‘we’, crying the terror out of its lungs while chanting a fu-
turistic spell summoning rare and precious visionary horizons
that, despite the pain and violence, make room for desire, plea-
sure, exuberance and play. Otherwise the ghosts we love will
not want to be reborn, and only fear and despair will remain
among us.

309
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313
Biographies

315
Kemi Bassene is an artist, photogra-
pher, musicologist and cultural critic.
He lives and works in Paris. His work
focuses on fragments of African cultures
as natural and synthetic African inter-
sections. He learned photography at the
age of seven with his grandfather Mama
Casset, who was the first photographer
to open a studio in what was then called
French West Africa, in 1946. He works
on abstract bodies and architectural
sonorities in music. In his work, objects
are personified, as are the aesthetics of
bodies in movement. He works on sounds
displaced from their natural places of
echo, and on the relationship between
philosophical thoughts and music. His
work questions the complex reading
of harmony and melody in music, con-
sidering that in African Black music,
only the rhythmic has remained as a re-
newing algorithm. He applies the same
investigative impulse that he developed
in regard to music to literature, tracing
the pace of Africa and the intersections
of African cultures in foreign grammars.
Natalie Bayer is the director of Fried-
richshain-Kreuzberg Museum in Berlin
since 2018. Previously she was a re-
search associate at the Münchner
Stadtmuseum [City Museum Munich],
focussing on migration, new methods
and new formats. As an independent
curator, she co-curated exhibition pro-
jects such as Crossing Munich. Orte,
Bilder und Debatten der Migration [Cros-
sing Munich. Places, Images and De-
bates Of and About Migration] in 2009
316
in Munich, and worked for the exhibition
Movements of Migration. Neue Per-
spektiven auf Migration in Göttingen
[Movements of Migration. New Per-
spectives on Migration in Göttingen]
in Göttingen in 2013, as well as for the
Stadtmuseum Kaufbeuren. She has
also developed her own projects as the
lecture series POLYCITY. She is a mem-
ber of kritnet–Netzwerk für kritische
Migrations- und Grenzregimeforschung
[kritnet—Network for Critical Research
on Migration and Border Regimes].
Furthermore she is on numerous con-
sulting advisory boards for cultural pro-
jects. She studied European Ethnology,
History of Art and Ethnology at the
University of Munich and is currently
finishing her PhD thesis on cultural
policies concerning migration in muse-
ums. The foci of her research and work
are the politics of historiography, ra-
cism, migration, and urbanity.
Imayna Caceres is a Peruvian artist and
researcher whose work focuses on the
effects of systemic racism; ‘Third World’
feminism and the Latin American dias-
pora in Europe; deconstructing colo-
niality in being, power, knowledge, and
the arts; and the effects of systemic
racism. She holds a degree in Socio-
logy and Media Communication, and
is currently finishing her MA in Post-
Conceptual Art Practices at the Aca-
demy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Nuray Demir (b. 1983) studied at the
Hamburg University of Fine Arts, the
École Supérieure des Beaux-Arts Mar-
seille, and the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna. As a visual artist and curator,
her work has been presented in inter-
disciplinary contexts such as Berlin’s
Julius Hans Spiegel Centre at Sophien-
saele and Hebbel am Ufer, and Kamp-
nagel in Hamburg. In 2017 she curated
the project Hamamness at the Wiener
Festwochen. She lives in Berlin, is a fan
of Kanak Attak, and is very fond of play-
ing the strategy board game Malefiz.
Silvina Der-Meguerditchian (b. 1967)
is an artist born in Buenos Aires who
now lives and works in Berlin. Her work
explores topics such as belonging, the
role of minorities in society, and the
potential of an ‘interstitial space’. The
notion of remembrance is central to her
artistic examination, as is working with
and in archives. During the past five
years, she has produced several pro-
jects in Istanbul and several successful
collaborations with Berlin’s Ballhaus
Naunynstrasse Theatre and Maxim
Gorki Theatre, as well as with Anadolu
Kültür Foundation (Istanbul). Her work
is represented in international private
and public collections. She is the artistic
director of the project Houshamadyan,
a multimedia memoir of Armenian-
Ottoman history (www.houshamady
an.org). In 2014-15, Der-Meguerdit-
chian was the recipient of the Cultural
Academy Tarabya scholarship (Istan-
bul). In 2015 her work was presented as
part of Armenity, the Armenian pavilion
at the 56th Venice Biennale, which was
awarded the Golden Lion for best nati-
onal pavilion. She also curated the 2015
exhibition ENKEL, neue Geographien der
Zugehörigkeit in Istanbul [New Geogra-
phies of Belonging in Istanbul].
Nanna Heidenreich (b. 1970) is profes-
sor of Digital Narratives—Theory at the
ifs International Film School Cologne.
Since 2009, she has been co-curator
of the Forum Expanded programme
at the Berlinale. In 2016-17 she was
involved in three projects at Haus der
Kulturen der Welt that deal with the
topics of the nation state, migration
and schools. She is a member of the
Network of Critical Migration and Bor-
der Regime Research, and actively took
part in preparing the tribunal NSU-
Komplex auflösen [Dissolving the NSU
Complex] in May 2017. She lives in Ber-
lin. Every now and then someone helps
her to update nannaheidenreich.net.
Minna Henriksson is a visual artist cur-
rently living in Helsinki. She studied art
in Brighton, Helsinki and Malmö. Her
research-based work includes a wide
range of tools including text, drawing,
linocut and photography. Her work is
often collaborative and relates to dis-
cussions stemming from anti-racist,
leftist and feminist struggles. Since
2006, she has been engaged in an
ongoing theoretical engagement with
Sezgin Boynik on the topic of nation-
alism. Henriksson co-edited the book
Art Workers—Material Conditions and
Labour Struggles in Contemporary Art
317
Practice, focusing on art workers' la-
bour conditions in Finland, Sweden and
Estonia. Henriksson is member of the
group Helsingin Nuorisofestivaali 1962
—Muistityöryhmä. Together they pro-
duced the radio play Festival 62 that
focuses on mechanisms of silencing.
Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s interdisci-
plinary approach combines visual prac-
tice and decolonial, postcolonial and
Black feminist theory. She is interested
in remembrance, grief work, and Black
radical imagination. Presently she is
working on the project The Non-Human.
The Believer. The Alien—Unsettling In-
nocence, as part of the PhD-In-Practice
programme of the Academy of Fine Arts
Vienna. She is a former Senior Lecturer
at the Institute for Artistic Education at
the Academy of Fine Arts in Vienna.
Thomas J. Lax is Associate Curator of
Media and Performance Art at MoMA.
He has organised/co-organised Steffani
Jemison: Promise Machine, Maria Has-
sabi: PLASTIC, Projects: Neïl Beloufa,
and Modern Dance: Ralph Lemon, i.a.
Previously, he worked at the Studio
Museum in Harlem on exhibitions such
as Kalup Linzy: If It Don’t Fit and When
the Stars Begin to Fall: Imagination and
the American South. Lax writes for a
variety of publications and is a faculty
member at the Institute for Curatorial
Practice in Performance at Wesleyan
University’s Centre for the Arts. He is on
the advisory committees of Contem-
porary And, The Laundromat Project,
318
Recess, Vera List Centre for Arts and
Politics, i.a. In 2015, he was awarded
the Walter Hopps Award for Curatorial
Achievement.
Verena Melgarejo Weinandt grew up
in Berlin as the daughter of a Bolivian
father with Quechua heritage and a
German mother. She studied at the
Academy of Fine Arts Vienna after com-
pleting a degree in photography. She is
currently writing her graduate thesis
with Ruth Sonderegger. She is a mem-
ber of the association Großes Schiff
and the TRENZA collective in Vienna.
Last year she worked on several pro-
jects as artist and curator, and received
a scholarship from kültüř gemma!
Sunanda Mesquita is an artist and cu-
rator. Her work focuses on the possibil-
ity of a radical utopian, queer, feminist
collectivity of Black people and people
of colour around the topics of com-
munity, solidarity and belonging. She
is co-founder of WE DEY, a self-organ-
ised art space in Vienna dedicated to
amplifying the art and cultural produc-
tion of queer/trans*/inter/Black people/
people of colour. It was awarded the kül-
tüř gemma! grant in 2014. In 2016 she
curated the exhibitions WE DEY Show
and Anti*Colonial Fantasies together
with Imayna Caceres and Sophie Utikal.
Sandrine Micossé-Aikins has headed
the office of Projektfonds Kulturelle
Bildung [Project Fund for Cultural Edu-
cation] in Berlin since May 2016. She is
an art scholar, curator and cultural ac-
tivist whose work focuses on racism
and empowerment in art; the power and
impact of colonial images; body poli-
tics; representation; and participation in
the German-speaking arts and culture
sector. In 2012 she co-published the
anthology The Little Book of Big Visions:
How to Be an Artist and Revolutionise
The World with Sharon Dodua Otoo. She
is currently working on her PhD thesis
on the topic of hair politics in Ghana.
Katharina Morawek is a co-founder of
the urban policy initiative Wir alle sind
Zürich [We All Are Zurich] and an asso-
ciate at INES—Institut Neue Schweiz
[Institute New Switzerland]. Until 2017,
she was the director of Shedhalle Zu-
rich, where she initiated The Whole
World in Zurich, a project on urban citi-
zenship. She has worked and published
on the issues of democratisation, trans-
formative artistic practice and history
politics. In 2017, she published the an-
thology Urban Citizenship. Democratis-
ing Democracy, co-edited with Martin
Krenn.
Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung PhD
(b. 1977 in Yaoundé, Cameroon) is an
independent curator and biotechnol-
ogist. He is the founder and artistic
director of the art space S AVVY Con-
temporary Berlin and editor-in-chief
of the journal S A V V Y Journal for
Critical Texts on Contemporary African
Art. He was curator at large for Adam
Szymczyk’s Documenta 14.
Naomi Rincón Gallardo (b.1979) is based
in Mexico City and currently lives in
Vienna and Berlin. Understanding re-
search as a transdisciplinary crafty
fabrication, her work addresses initia-
tives concerning the creation of coun-
terworlds within neocolonial settings.
Through the lens of masquerade, she
creates a place between radical alter-
natives, fantasy and crises of beliefs.
Rincón Gallardo integrates her interest
in music, DIY aesthetics, speculative
fiction, theatre games, humour, decolo-
nial feminisms, queer theory and critical
pedagogy into her work. She is a can-
didate in the PhD in Practice program
at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.
Bahareh Sharifi has been in charge of
diversity-oriented organisational de-
velopment at the Projektfonds Kultu-
relle Bildung (Project Fund for Cultural
Education) office since June 2016. She
works as a freelance curator and ac-
tivist on the topics of critique of discrim-
ination, intersectionality and alliances
for Maxim Gorki Theatre, Kulturprojekte
Berlin, the German Hygiene Museum in
Dresden, Festiwalla 2014 at the House
of World Cultures, and more.
Nora Sternfeld was Professor of Cu-
rating and Mediating Art at the Aalto
University in Helsinki from 2012-2018
she and is now documenta Professor at
the Kunsthochschule Kassel, as well as
founding member and board member
of schnittpunkt. She is co-director of
the ecm master's course for Exhibition
319
Theory and Practice at the University of
Applied Arts Vienna, and co-founder
and co-owner of Büro trafo.K. Her wri-
ting focuses on the topics of contem-
porary art, mediation, exhibition theory,
politics of history and anti-racism.
Mark Terkessidis is a freelance writer
and migration researcher. He studied
psychology at the University of Cologne
and did his PhD in pedagogy on the
topic of racism at the University of
Mainz. He has published widely on the
topics of racism, migration, cultural and
social policy, youth and popular culture.
From 1992-94, he worked as editor for
the magazine Spex, and from 2003-11
as radio presenter for WDR Funkhaus
Europa. He was a fellow at the Piet
Zwart Institute of the Willem de Koo-
ning Academy Rotterdam, and taught
classes at the Universities of Cologne
and St Gallen. He has written many
books, such as Psychologie des Rassis-
mus [Psychology of Racism] 1998, Die
Banalität des Rassismus. Migranten
zweiter Generation entwickeln eine neue
Perspektive [The Banality of Racism.
Second-Generation Migrants Develop
a New Perspective] 2004, Interkultur
2010, Kollaboration 2015, Nach der
Flucht. Neue Perspektiven für die Ein-
wanderungsgesellschaft [After the Re-
fuge. New Perspectives for the Society
of Immigration] 2017.
Sophie Utikal (b. 1987 in Tallahassee,
Florida, USA) is a visual artist and
writ er. She studies fine arts in Ashley
320
Scheirl’s class at the Academy of Fine
Arts Vienna. Her works deals with her
body, migration experience, being in-
between several worlds, and constantly
reconfiguring herself www.sophieuti
kal.net.
Jelena Vesić is an independent curator,
writer and editor. She was a co-edi-
tor of Prelom—Journal of Images and
Politics (2001-10) and co-founded the
independent organisation Prelom Kol-
lektiv. Her work in publishing, research,
and exhibition practice links political
theory and contemporary art. She is
also co-editor of Red Thread Magazine
and a member of the editorial board of
Art Margins. Vesić explores relations
between art and ideology in the field of
geopolitical art historiography, focusing
on experimental art and exhibition prac-
tices of the 1960s and 1970s in former
Yugoslavia and Eastern Europe. She
holds a PhD in Interdisciplinary Studies
from the University of the Arts in Bel-
grade, and is currently a researcher and
Goethe Institute fellow at Haus der
Kunst in Munich, working together with
Okwui Enwezor on the topic “Postcolo-
nial 1955-1980”.
Marianne Niemelä, Ahmed Al-Nawas,
Christopher Wessels are founding mem-
bers of the Museum of Impossible
Forms (M{IF}) in Helsinki. Through their
praxis at M{IF}, they constantly seek to
transgress the boundaries between
theory, practice, art, politics, and every-
day life.
Marianne Niemelä is a curator based in
Helsinki. She holds an MA in art history
from the University of Glasgow and an
MA in Curating from Aalto University.
Her main research interests are queer-
ness and feminism in relation to art.

Ahmad Al-Nawas is a curator based

in Helsinki. He holds an MA in Curating
and Visual Culture from Aalto Univer-
sity. His curatorial project Remembering
Silences was presented by Checkpoint
Helsinki from 2015-16.

Christopher Wessels is a cinematog-

rapher and cultural worker who organ-
ises at the intersection of art, culture
and education. He is currently doing his
PhD in Gender Studies at Åbo Akademi
University.

321
Aalto University publication series
Art+Design+Architecture 4/2018

School of Arts, Design and Architecture

Aalto ARTS Books
Helsinki, Finland
shop.aalto.fi

© Editors Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Nora Sternfeld

Proofreading and Editing: Katie Lenanton

Editing and translations: Nine Eglantine Yamamoto-Masson, except Why Exhibit At All?
An Answer From the Year 2030 by Nora Sternfeld, translated by Erika Doucette and
Unearthing. In Conversation written by Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
All websites active as of 26 March, 2018.
Layout and cover design: Renate Höllwart
Typeface: Brix Sans, RemingaOT
Materials: Munken Kristall 120g, Munken Kristall 240g

ISBN 978-952-60-7838-0
ISBN 978-952-60-7839-7 (pdf)
ISSN-L 1799-4853
ISSN 1799-4853
ISSN 1799-4861 (electronic)

This book is a co-publishing project between Aalto University and University of Applied Arts
Vienna. Aalto University is the main publisher of the English version.

Series curating. ausstellungstheorie & praxis [exhibition theory & practice], vol. 2
Edition Angewandte
Edited by Natalie Bayer, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, Nora Sternfeld

The series curating. exhibition theory & practice is edited by Martina Griesser, Christine Haupt-
Stummer, Renate Höllwart, Beatrice Jaschke, Monika Sommer, Nora Sternfeld, Luisa Ziaja.
Together, they form the association schnittpunkt. ausstellungstheorie & praxis [intersection.
exhibition theory & practice], an extra-institutional network for people working in the exhibition
and museum field. They are also the joint directors of the graduate course in exhibition theory
and practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna ecm—educating/curating/managing.
www.ecm.ac.at, www.schnitt.org

Originally published in German as

Kuratieren als antirassistische Praxis ISBN 978-952-60-7839-0
Project management for Edition Angewandte, University of Applied Arts Vienna:
Anja Seipenbusch-Hufschmid

Printed in Austria 2018

Holzhausen Druck GmbH
Cover image: Naomi Rincón Gallardo, The Formaldehyde Trip, 2017.
Photo: Eliana Cetto

325