Hubert Fichte : Amour et Ethnologie
All of the wrongs that were in world, I gathered them upRAW MATERIAL COMPANY - Center for Art, Knowledge and Society and Goethe-Institut Senegal
2 October — 15 October
Under the curation of Koyo Kouoh and Dulcie Abrahams Altass
With Papisto Boy, Maïsama, Leonore Mau, Thierno Seydou Sall and Isabelle Thomas
Between the years 1974 and 1985, while working on his text in 19 volumes The History of Sensibility, the late German writer Hubert Fichte made several trips to Dakar. Accompanied by photographer Leonore Mau, he explored the potential of a new way of living and facing a world at the margins. These concerns led him to the psychiatric center at Fann Hospital, in the midst of antipsychiatry experiments, where local healing methods - particularly ndoep and pinth - dominated.
Papisto Boy, who created large-scale mural frescoes in Dakar suburbs, intersected scenes from Senegalese mythology, world pop culture and religious iconography in a complex and profound orchestra of syncretic self-identification. In Fichte's eyes, Papisto Boy's work was the creative example par excellence of the intertextual palimpsest that he considered necessary to become truly postcolonial; where otherness and marginality are recognized as part of a universal human condition and where any attempt to demarcate a particular Other is thus rendered null and void.
To respond to Fichte's call for action (1980) "I beg you to build walls so that Pope Samb can paint them! And the scarcity of Papisto Boy's remaining walls in Dakar's urban landscape affected by an accelerated process of change, this exhibition offers its walls to the archives of this pioneering artist. Comprising photography, video and drawing, it is a dialogue between artists who, in many ways, have stories intertwined with those of Papisto and Fichte. Their practices draw on positions of marginality and sensitivity, working mainly in the public sphere; in doing so they continue the quest of Papisto Boy and Hubert Fichte for a truly open humanity.
http://www.rawmaterialcompany.org/_2421
Saturday, 29
We are traveling to Dakar next Sunday and for sure will visit this exhibion - inshallah. To prepare as best as possible I am doing resarch on Hubert Fichte and Leonore Mau. Papisto Boy — hope we will find his murals. As for the other three artists, I would like to be surprised.
Hubert Fichte - Der schwarze Engel
Capturing Psyche: Leonore Mau
Papisto Boy: Art in Dakar
Saturday, 15
i spent two weeks in Hamburg staying with my parents who both have by now more than eighty years. i don't have the chance to see them often; so i spent most of my stay with them. we had a good time, for sure. imagine, we had been living together for 18 years, the first third of my lifetime. nevertheless, sometimes—unsolved stories from the past prompted discussions about family structures as well as small disputes within our political views. but on the whole we learned about how to live in peace.
sad to say that i didn't make it to Berlin to visit the 10th Biennale for Contemporary Art. but at least i could buy the catalogue. i didn't see the exhibition led by Tina Turner's We don't Need Another Hero so any comment about it becomes superfluous. however, to spread what should be spread i want to copy some propositions that correspond with my way of thinking and express what i feel. between quotations that don't refer to each other (in the original) i place (...)
Thiago de Paula Souza: What exactly do we mean when we say "Ww don't need another hero"? What statement are we making? Gabi Ngcobo: For me a hero is a question of power. Power is powerless when it is not used to empower. It becomes toxic when abused, when it becomes a tool used to silence, oppress, violate, or dispossess. (...) Yvette Mutumba: Yes, repetition is also a reminder. Sometimes it's good to repeat in order to make a point. Not in the sense of reinventing the wheel, because that's not necessarily how one gets closer to a goal. (...) GN: This feeling of being trapped in a loop of history is real. Here we are in 2018 thinking about a song written in 1985 in order to make sense of the place we are in—a place we feel stuck in, so to speak. I would rather consider repetition as being like a spiral, a return to the changing same—the song "returns" in a world where technology has taken over our lives and Robert Mugabe is no longer the president of Zimbabwe... Nomaduma Rosa Masilela: What's also important is that we don't feel compelled to respond to every single one of the endless possible references and current realities—there's futility and hubris within that kind of exhibition. Rather, we know our specific references, and work through/within those. (...) YM: It is a narrative, but it's a very subjective one. NRM: And an incomplete one, or one that acknowledges its incompleteness. A negation isn't simply a coherent response to something—a solid, stable, response. It is about the openness of a negation (...) TdPS: When we met here in Berlin in January last year, you said something about how we should find a way to make an exhibition that wouldn't look like an exhibition. And I was... super scared. (...) Moses are you still there? (...) NRM::I've been trying to think through this idea of openness or possibility in the publication I am working on, Strange Attractors.(...) The project looks at different ways in which we try to communicate and be close with each other, and the ways we unintentially send missives out into the world—the letters and games that we write and play with ourselves and with others, which end up leading unexpected lives and eliciting unpredicted results. We can't control how things are ultimately "read". But that's beside the point, because we can question the current conditions and create situations that allow for multiple readings. TdPS: I think with our refusals we are being aggressive somehow, and that's not a bad thing. In this gesture, there is a violence. When we say "we don't need..." or I am not what you think I'm not," we are more than what you expect us to be. So, in a way I think we are very aggressive when we refuse. One needs a lot of violence and strength to refuse. (...) GN: I think we are refusing to be violent rather than being violent. This is a refusal to be complicit in all the violence happening around us and towards us. TdPS: I think if you refuse something, if you decide not to endorse some current trend or to engage in a certain kind of work or role, you are somehow breaking the order, while still part of the system, but trying to find an ethical position between all these contradictions that we encounter. And to break the order is to bring kind of chaos or, if you like, a kind of violence. Maybe we should describe what we understand by violence... GN: Yes, maybe we should. Why do you insist in this word? TdPS: Maybe there is a problem with the word, and the word is scary somehow. I think it's different, the violence that we produce is different. It's simply a response to another kind of violence. (...) I think it's the only road we should take. It's like James Baldwin saying "I'm not your negro." It's a very violent statement but we know why it is necessary, because we are at war. GN: We are just expressing a desire for a different world. But I could soften up to this idea of violence... Because, let's face it, at the core of our curatorial thinking is a warship, which we face in our visual identity, the dazzle camouflage of World War I battleship. Indeed, we are at war, but our war vessel—its direction, its speed, its size—need not to be determined by expectations outside of ourselves. (...) NRM: So I was thinking about Johanna Piotrowska and the conversation we had with her yesterday about her Frowst series of staged photographs that examine the anxieties inherent within familial structures and thinking about the need sometimes to break the familiar bonds, which are supposed to be comforting but which can be violent, can trap us. Breaking free of that can feel violent. But this is necessary in order to reconstruct or to rethink how one actually loves. And breaking out of these ties isn't a rejection, nor is it lacking love, but rather because you want things to be different. We don't need to know the way home... yet? TdPS: That's a good example that crystallizes what I've been trying to say, because when you break family bonds, it's violent, even when your intention is not to hurt anyone, you are pushing against something. YM: Yes, but it's also not just violent towards what you are breaking away from. It's violent and painful for yourself. It's difficult to enter the unknown, even if it's for a good reason. NRM: I think what you say, Yvette, can also relate to the camouflage warship. This is not only about dealing with external impositions but also the ones we impose on ourselves, our own limitations. We need this camouflage for the wars we are waging out there and also the ones we are waging inside. (...) Serubiri Moses: It's a very strange thing to think about Germaness—or that Germany as a country has been isolated culturally or historically from the world. I think Germany needs to think of itself a bit differently, in the sense that there would be no German philosophical tradition without the contributions of the Arab world and Africa. And the reason why we're in Germany is because many people in Germany understand that fact. GN: No, it's also because they don't understand that fact. That's the whole point. I think why we focus on these monuments of "negation" is in order to refuse to be read in limited ways. In one of the first interviews I did with the Goethe-Institut, I countered the interviewer's description of my practice as "postcolonial"—I've never been explicit about that. But the title of that interview became: "We are all postcolonial." I did say that, so people can understand "postcolonial" doesn't mean those things that pertain to "black" or Others of Europe. It doesn't mean "from Africa." Actually we can think of Berlin as perhaps one of the most important places thinking about the postcolonial. We are not here to educate people about postcoloniality, decoloniality. We refuse to provide this as a service—to educate, to help decipher, to correct. Here it's important to heed Toni Morrison's statement that racism keeps you from doing your job. It keeps you explaining... SM: As curators I think we are often pushed in this kind of direction: "Explicate! Be academic! Bring out your theory!" or "Give us your premise!" you know? We have to explain to people all the time about what it means to be black or to be African or to be political—a constant process of explaining. So I also interpret the work that I've been doing with the Berlin Biennale as a rejection of some kind. We are rejecting not only the idea of a hero, but also in saying that we don't need, we are refusing to conform to the same kind of demand that has been there over and over again: "Explain yourself! Who are you and what are you doing here?" Refusing to do this is very disturbing for a lot of people—even other curators who come from Africa—because it kind makes some of the things they've been doing not irrelevant but unnecessary. It challenges the way in which certain curators have been operating. YM: And even if you do explain, it doesn't really change anything, because it doesn't hurt and hence doesn't go any deeper. If you always serve the need by explaining why the other person is wrong and what they have to do to become a proper decolonised white person, that is the easiest way for that person. But true change cannot happen when you just tell someone what to do. They have to figure it out themselves. That's why I think it's not interesting to always serve this demand. TdPS: I agree, totally. I think that's why we don't have to be totally transparent. I think it's important to somehow walk in the shadows and produce in a kind of silent mode. Transparency is something important for people who want to be served. They need transparency. They need to understand what's going on, because that is what they expect us to do, for them. YM: Yes, in a way it's a very colonial behaviour and they don't realize that they are reenacting that. TdPS: The word "Afrikanisch" was everywhere when the announcement was made about the curatorial team. Look, mom, a negro! SM: (...) Home is a place where people fight. If you are at home, you have to fight. And when you are in Gemany, you want to be loved? I want someone come up to me and say: "you fucking negro." I am also interested in that. I am interested in this encounter with people who clearly don't see what we are doing and think it's all about them.
10th Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art. We Don't Nneed Another Hero. 2018
Curated by Gabi Ngcobo with Nomaduma Rosa Masilela, Serubiri Moses, Thiago de Paula Souza, and Yvette Mutumba
Thursday, 6
days of rain. let me insert a picture i posted at facebook as well as at my whatsapp status yesterday - without comment. to learn this lesson of the text picture is not that easy like it sounds when you really get it’s meaning. or let’s say concerning my character i am not able to let negativity easily pass and just heading forward like nothing happened. when someone approaches me negatively for example at worst case humiliates me or puts me down by showing off his or her own superiority (i.e. in position, wealth or physical power), i respond in a disturbed way, react harshly or defend myself, because it not about criticism and the inception of a nearly objective discussion. negative means to me judging my personal experiences, questioning the quality of my work and not willing to comprehend my point of view - compromising my dasein per se. reducing me, for example, for the fact that i don't have given birth.
people frequently ask me how i can live without the security of a health insurance, which is compulsory in europe. for sure, they make me miss something they do have to boast about. furthermore, they try to convince me that their system of social security is the best. last but not least, they like to tickle out the fear that is behind making me feel insecure and becoming afraid of my own style. and exactly that fear evokes negativity followed by unconscious, hasty movements, emotionally charged, petrified disputes that push a peaceful solution out of sight.
Monday, 3
i don’t like gossip. i do talk about my problems, but avoid defaming others to strengthen my own position.
i prefer an eclectic analysis to the benefit of everyone involved.