3.4. Berlin, 7.4. Frankfurt/Main and 12.5. Poznan
Talks
Workshop
Screening
German black and PoC students, and in particular students from Africa, Asia and Latin America who studied at Western German universities in the early 1960s were highly politicized by the civil rights movement in the US, the liberation movements, the process of decolonization or the newly acquired state independence of their countries. They were the first to mobilize protests against state violence and injustice beyond Europe and North America.
As 2018 marks the fiftieth anniversary of 1968, we take this opportunity to engage with the student movement of the 1960s in Germany from decolonial, post-migrant and feminist perspectives. Here, the focus is on the visualization of the role of Black students and students of Color in the Federal Republic at the time, as well as the deconstruction of the white narration of this constitutive moment for the Federal Republic today.
Under the title Decolonizing 68 we realize a series of talks, screenings and encounters together with the District studio grant artist Karina Griffith (artist, curator und filmmaker), who works on this topic. The aim is to question the production of history and to (re)tell the movements of that time from the perspectives of its anti-colonial, diasporic-feminist and black organizations.
For the co-production of artistic research and public debate under the working title Decolonize 68 an intersectional alliance of the project Art of the Revolt // The Revolt of Art, Offenes Haus der Kulturen Frankfurt/Main, the Art Spaces District Berlin, Arsenal Gallery Poznan and alpha nova & galerie futura as well as Peggy Piesche, Gunda-Werner-Institut was founded. Together we want like to counter the ongoing marginalization of these histories -- the resistances and political demands they carry -- within the constantly reproduced narrations of '68'.
UPCOMING EVENTS
District Berlin
Tue, 3 April, 6:30pm
Studio Talk
with Karina Griffith and Joseph N. Clarke
In the studio talk Karina Griffith, District Studio Grant holder 2018, gives insight into her artistic practice as well as into her research on Black German film production around 1968. Inspired by the film "They Call It Love" (1972) by Ghanaian King Ampaw, she follows the footsteps of Black and PoC filmmakers* in order to expand the genealogies of Black-authored cinema in Germany. In her project, she examines the decolonial role of the moving image and investigates how the apparatus itself can be decolonized. The transdisciplinary studio talk should offer an open forum for the reflection, advancement, and interconnection of the artistic practice of Karina Griffith.
Griffith's films and installations explore the themes of fear and fantasy. At the same time, she is interested in the connections between identity and the migrant perspective. In 2017 she curated the festival In 2017 she curatated the festival Republik Repair: Ten Points, Ten Demands, One Festival of Reparatory Imaginings from Black Berlin. She is a PhD candidate at the University of Toronto's Cinema Studies Institute where her research on Black authorship in German cinema interacts with theories of affect, intersectionality and creolization.
With kind support from Berliner Landeszentrale für politische Bildung.
Studierendenhaus Frankfurt
As part of the exhibition Kunst der Revolte // Revolte der Kunst
Sat, 7 April, 11am-3pm
Manifesto of a new camera
Workshop with Karina Griffith (artist, filmmaker and curator)
Starting with investigations on early film camera technology which was explicitly aimed at depicting white skin this workshop asks: What could a postcolonial camera look and feel like? How can we deconstruct the apparatus to enable new ways of seeing and representing? In the workshop, moving picture texts and images are to be read collectively in a film "reading circle". Participants are asked to bring their own photo or video as material for these joint explorations and, ultimately, a decolonisation of their gaze.
Registration until 4 April: info@kunstderrevolterevoltederkunst.de
Arsenal Gallery Poznan
As part of the Festival Workshops of Revolution
May 12, 5-8pm
Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights
Film Screening with subsequent conversation
Some practices of resistance are obscured by in the dominant historiography. The civil rights movement in the United States as well as the liberation movements and the process of decolonization in the former colonies were an inspiration for POC activists in Europe in and around 1968. Black women played a large role in the struggle for Black and women's rights, but were marginalized because of their gender in the former and their class and colour in the latter. In the film screening of Reflections Unheard: Black Women in Civil Rights (2012) by Nevline Nnaji followed by a discussion with Margaret Amaka Ohia (University of Wroclaw, Poland), Karina Griffith (filmmaker, artist and curator, Berlin) and Andrea Caroline Keppler (curator, District Berlin) we would like to address these transnational and intersections conditions of 1968.
DISTRICT Berlin
Kunst+Kultur
Bessemerstraße 2-14
12103 Berlin
www.district-berlin.com
030 710 93 093
post@district-berlin.com