Transnational Restitution Movement
kuratiert von GROUP50:50 und Studio Rizoma

Als vor ein paar Monaten zwei der Museen mit den größten Sammlungen afrikanischer Kunst in Europa ihre Benin-Bronzen nach Nigeria zurückgaben, wurde deutlich: Wir treten in eine neue Ära der postkolonialen Debatte ein. In diesem historischen Moment laden GROUP50:50 und Studio Rizoma Künstler*innen, Aktivist*innen und Denker*innen aus Europa und Afrika ein, die Grundlagen für eine transnationale Restitutionsbewegung zu erarbeiten. In einer Reihe von Lektionen, Stücken und Interventionen präsentieren und diskutieren sie künstlerische und politische Praktiken, die sowohl afrikanische als auch europäische Identitäten neu definieren und den transkontinentalen Dialog und die Zusammenarbeit neu gestalten.

Seit den 1960er Jahren setzt sich eine Bewegung von global vernetzten Künstler*innen, Intellektuellen und Aktivist*innen beharrlich für die Rückgabe afrikanischer Kulturgüter und menschlicher Überreste ein, um den Prozess der Entkolonialisierung nach der Unabhängigkeit voranzutreiben. Nach einer langen Periode der Stagnation hat sich die Debatte in den letzten Jahren beschleunigt, mit Beispielen physischer Rückgaben wie der Behanzin-Schätze an die Republik Benin oder der Benin-Bronzen an Nigeria. Während die Restitution auf höchster diplomatischer Ebene beschlossen und so lange wie möglich hinausgezögert wird, liegt es an den Künstlern und der Zivilgesellschaft, diesen Prozess zu beschleunigen und zu begleiten. Es ist an der Zeit, denen zu folgen, die den Weg für eine breite und transnationale Bewegung geebnet haben. Wie können die symbolischen, sozialen und historischen Bedeutungen dieser Objekte restituiert werden? Wie können sie dabei mit zeitgenössischen Kontexten der Wissensproduktion und der sozialen Interaktion in einen Dialog treten?

Sobald wir eine europäische Perspektive verlassen, werden Schädel und Skelette zu mehr als nur wissenschaftlichen Objekten und Masken zu mehr als nur Kunstobjekten. Sie sind von Geistern der Ahnen bewohnt, die brutal ihrem Lebensraum entrissen und in vergessenen Sammlungen weggesperrt wurden, von wo sie bis heute den europäischen Kontinent heimsuchen. Sollen diese Objekte restituiert werden, müssen wir in Europa und in den ehemaligen Kolonien lernen, über die lange Geschichte der physischen Gewalt, der wirtschaftlichen Ausbeutung, der Entfremdung, der kulturellen Aneignung und der Entwurzelung dieser sinnstiften den Objekte zu sprechen. Welche Rituale können wir erfinden, um die Rückgabe der Objekte zu begleiten? Wie können wir den Prozess der Entfremdung umkehren, der mit einem hegemonialen eurozentrischen Denken und mit kolonialer Gewalt ausgelöst durchgesetzt wurde?

Die Destabilisierung der sozialen Strukturen durch die Enteignung von Objekten mit kulturellem Wert oder symbolischer Kraft ermöglichte die Ausbeutung von Mensch und Natur. Moderne Ideen des wirtschaftlichen Fortschritts und die damit verbundene Trennung von sogenannten „fortgeschrittenen“ und „primitiven“ Gesellschaften, der Zwang zum Wirtschaftswachstum und die Idee einer unendlichen Verfügbarkeit natürlicher Ressourcen vernichteten jede alternative Kosmologie, die das Verhältnis zwischen Mensch und Natur anders definieren könnte. Sollte die Restitutionsbewegung auch die Rückgabe der natürlichen Ressourcen fordern? Wer zahlt für die fortwährende Zerstörung der Lebensräume durch die Ausbeutung von natürlichen Ressourcen? Und wäre es nicht besser für die Menschheit, wenn alternative Kosmologien wiederhergestellt werden könnten?

„The Time For Denial Is Over“ ist ein Projekt von GROUP50:50 (Basel-Lubumbashi), Studio Rizoma (Palermo), Centre d’Art Waza (Lubumbashi) und European Alternatives, in Zusammenarbeit mit PODIUM Esslingen, The European Pavilion, CTM Festival Berlin, euro-scene Leipzig, Kaserne Basel und Vorarlberger Landestheater.

After the opening event in Palermo, "The Time For Denial Is Over" travels to Basel, Bregenz, Leipzig, Berlin, Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.

FIRST SESSION: The Arduous Transformation of Institutions

The European and African museums and the political institutions that decide on restitution are changing very slowly. Hegemonic ideas have been deposited in layers, and structural inequalities continue to reproduce today. How can we contribute to their transformation from inside and outside the institutions? Moderated by: Emmanuelle Spiesse

Lesson#1 Parlons des Mensonges Institutionnels – Bénédicte Savoy, Art Historian, Berlin

Bénédicte Savoy has shaped the restitution debate of recent decades. Together with the Senegalese author Felwine Sarr, she wrote a revealing and groundbreaking report on the restitution of cultural heritage commissioned by the French President Emmanuel Macron.

Lesson#2 Dealing with a Fragmented Heritage – Peju Layiwola, Visual Artist, Lagos

Peju Layiwola is an artist and professor of art history. Her work focuses on the looting and restitution of cultural heritage from the Kingdom of Benin (Nigeria) and memory culture, voids, and postcolonial continuities. She is the curator of various exhibitions, including I MISS YOU, at Rautenstrauch Joest Museum, Cologne, that prepares the restitution of 96 objects from the museum's collection to Nigeria.

Lesson#3 Continuous Repositioning – Leone Contini, Artist and Anthropologist, Rome

The artist and anthropologist Leone Contini has worked extensively on the colonial traces scattered in the deposits and archives of Italian museums, amongst others in the former Colonial Museum in Rome, now Museo delle Civiltà, as well as in the archives of his family who lived in Libya, where his grandfather worked as an archaeologist.

Lesson#4 Radical Education – Sepake Angiama, Curator and Educator, London

Sepake Angiama has developed educational programmes for various institutions, including Tate Modern, documenta 14 and Manifesta12. She is the artistic director of the Institute of International Visual Arts (Iniva), dedicated to developing artistic research, collective study, publishing and commissioning that reflects on the social and political impact of globalisation.

Screening – You Hide Me – Nii Kwate Owoo

In 1970, the Ghanaian filmmaker Nii Kwate Owoo spent a day filming in the basement archives of the British Museum. In 1971, his film You Hide Me was banned in Ghana for being “anti-British”, ironically resulting in a headline published by the influential London-based magazine West Africa that announced the film to the rest of the world. More than half a century later, You Hide Me was awarded the Best Documentary Prize at the Paris Short Film Festival 2020.

Talk Series – SECOND SESSION: Speak to the Dead and the Spirits!

When anthropologists, doctors and warlords passed on African masks and ritual objects, skulls and skeletons to European museums, they robbed these objects of their spiritual meaning. The relationship between humans, the spirits of ancestors and nature was declared superstition. How can we rediscover the relationship between humans and spirits? Moderated by: Eva-Maria Bertschy

Lesson#5 Qui est le Voleur ? – Mwazulu Diyabanza, Political Activist, Paris

In 2020, Congolese activist Mwazulu Diyabanza tried to steal objects from European museums and bring them back to his country. The trial against him was highly publicised in Europe. As a result, he founded the Multicultural Front Against Pillaging to unite the world's indigenous peoples to recover their looted heritage.

Lesson#6 Revisit the Past of Beauty – Christian Nyampeta, Visual Artist, London

In Christian Nyampeta’s film Sometimes it was Beautiful, the spirits of several postcolonial luminaries, a filmmaker, and a high ranking royal of a former colonial empire talk about the “traces of a history that is filled with pain” and the “balance of composition”. The film was, among other places, presented at The Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in New York.

Lesson#7 Returning the Dead as Humans and Citizens – Ciraj Rassool, Historian, Cape Town

Ciraj Rassool is a Professor of History at the University of the Western Cape, Cape Town and has written many influential books on Africa's cultural heritage. He explores how human remains in European museums can be returned and what rituals are used to restore their humanity.

Lesson#8 A Visit of the Mbuti People – Patrick Mudekereza, Curator, Lubumbashi

Patrick Mudekereza, artistic director of Centre d’Art Waza, travelled with GROUP50:50 to the equatorial forest to visit the nomadic Mbuti people. Their music theatre production tells the story of seven "pygmy skeletons" brought to Geneva by a Swiss doctor in the 1950s, a tale of exhumation and displacement.

Lesson#9 The Unburied of the Cimitero Dei Rotoli – Caterina Pasqualino, Anthropologist and Filmmaker, Palermo / Paris

In her current project, the Palermitan anthropologist and filmmaker Caterina Pasqualino focuses on the scandal of the unburied in the Cimitero di Santa Maria dei Rotoli. She takes this as an opportunity to talk to Palermitans from different communities about their funeral rituals and their relationship to the dead.

Screening – Return: An Epic Journey – Rita Mukebu

Inspired by the African masks in the Rietberg Museum in Zurich, the Swiss artist Lukas Stucky designed a mask and asked the Congolese artist Rita Mukebo to give it the status of an artwork. In a short film produced by Centre d’Art Waza Lubumbashi, Mukebu tests the relevance of the mask by visiting the Tshokwe community, the art museum director, a university professor, and others.

Return: An Epic Journey. Directed by Rita Mukebu. Produced by Centre d’Art Waza, Lubumbashi, 2021. 15 min.

Screening – Sometimes It Was Beautiful – Christian Nyampeta

A film by artist Christian Nyampeta, about a meeting between improbable friends, gathered to watch I fetischmannens spår (In the Footsteps of the Witch Doctor), one of the six Swedish films cinematographer Sven Nykvist made in or about Congo between 1948 and 1952.

Sometimes It Was Beautiful. Directed by Christian Nyampeta, Stockholm, 2018. 38 min.

Talk Series – THIRD SESSION: Colonial Ghosts and Future Landscapes

Colonial history has been imprinted in the landscapes, both in the colonised South and the ruling North. We find hybrid landscapes inhabited by the ghosts of past crimes between devastated mining regions and highly developed oases of prosperity. What will we leave behind in the topography of the future? How can we imagine the restitution of habitats that are being destroyed? Moderated by: Lorenzo Marsili

Lesson#11 Abandoning and Re-connecting Heritage – Emilio Distretti, researcher, writer and educator, London / Basel

Emilio Distretti is a Postdoctoral Fellow in the History and Theory of Architecture and Urbanism at the University of Basel. His research and pedagogy take on interrelated avenues on critical re-use of colonial architectural heritage, reparative justice and decolonial politics in the Mediterranean (Italy, North Africa and the Levant) and in the Horn of Africa.

Lesson#12 Solanum Aethiopicum – Aterraterra, Artist and Farmer Collective, Palermo

Fabio Aranzulla and Luca Cinquemani of the Palermo-based collective Aterraterra have cultivated an eggplant species that arrived in Italy from Ethiopia during colonial times, now fully part of Italy’s cultural heritage. They tell a transnational story between biodiversity, neocolonialism and identitarian narrations.

Lesson#13 Who Owns the Forest? – Remy Zahiga, Climate Activist and Indigenous People Rights Advocate, Bukavu

Remy Zahiga is a Congolese youth and climate activist who has made it his mission to preserve the rainforest in the Congo Basin and fights for the rights of its indigenous communities, such as the Mbuti people. He advocates for recognising indigenous knowledge to find a climate-friendly way of dealing with nature.

Lesson#14 Past and Present Slaves – Alagie Jinkang, Researcher, Palermo

Alagie Jinkang's research examines the exploitative conditions of the Senegambian communities who harvest olives in the Italian fields and live in the so-called ghetto of Campobello di Mazara. He makes a challenging comparison with historical forms of slavery.

Lesson#15 Natural Heritage – Evelyn Acham, Climate Activist, Kampala

Evelyn Acham is one of the most heard voices of the Fridays for Future movement in Africa and the national coordinator of the Rise Up Movement founded by Vanessa Nakate. She fights for preserving future habitats and a radical shift in economic and development policies.

Screening – Il Corno Mancante – Leone Contini

During the Second World War, the ethnographic collections in Milan were bombed – and with them a Sino-Tibetan sculpture. The missing parts of the statue were buried in an artificial hill created from the debris of the bombing. Years later, plants, animals and people reoccupy the sterile debris dump. In Leone Contini’s film Il Corno Mancante which was partly shot in Palermo, the sculpture's missing horn is buried with several ritual acts.

Il Corno Mancante. Directed by Leone Contini, Milano, 2017 / 2018. 25 min.

Screening – Terra Inquieta – Chiara Ambrosio and Caterina Pasqualino

Chiara Ambrosio and Caterina Pasqualino‘s film Tierra Inquieta portrays a group of neighbours from a working-class district of Granada, Spain. After the 2008 financial crisis, they transformed a dumping ground into an orchard – a physical manifestation of resistance, only a few kilometres from the mass graves of the Spanish Civil War, and where Garcia Lorca was murdered.

Terra Inquieta. Directed by Chiara Ambrosio and Caterina Pasqualino, Granada, 2017. 64 min.

Programm

mit

Bénédicte Savoy
Kunsthistorikerin, Berlin

Mwazulu Diyabanza
Aktivist, Paris

Peju Layiwola
Bildende Künstlerin, Lagos

Leone Contini
Künstler und Anthropologe, Rom

Sepake Angiama
Kuratorin und Pädagogin, London

Rete Anticolonale
Künstler- und Aktivistenkollektiv, Palermo

Christian Nyampeta
Bildender Künstler, London

Hervé Youmbi
Bildender Künstler, Douala

Rita Mukebu
Bildende Künstlerin, Lubumbashi

Ciraj Rassool
Historiker, Kapstadt

Patrick Mudekereza
Kurator und Autor, Lubumbashi

Caterina Pasqualino
Anthropologin und Filmemacherin, Palermo/Paris

Huguette Tolinga
Perkussionistin, Kinshasa

Christiana Tabaro, Michael Disanka, Theatermacher, Kinshasa

Elia Rediger
Künstler, Sänger Komponist, Basel

Kojack Kossakamvwe
Gitarrist und Komponist, Kinshasa

Ruth Kemna
Bratschistin, Performerin, Palermo

Emilio Distretti
Forscher und Pädagoge, London/Basel

Aterraterra
artist and farmer collective, Palermo

Remy Zahiga
Klimaaktivist, Bukavu

Alagie Jinkang
Wissenschaftlerin, Palermo

Evelyn Acham
Klimaaktivistin, Kampala

Lord Spikeheart (DUMA)
Musiker, Nairobi

Ecko Bazz & STILL
Musiker, Kampala + Mailand

...und andere

Kuratiert von
Patrick Mudekereza
Eva-Maria Bertschy

mit weiteren Beiträgen von
Giorgio Mega
Emmanuelle Spiesse (LAM, Les Afriques dans le monde, laboratoire CNRS)

Produktion
Letizia Gullo
Giorgio Mega
Pamina Rottok

General management
Marta Cillero

Set Design and production
Jesse Gagliardi

Technical direction and service
Sinergie Group

Video production and documentation
La Bandita Film

Institutional relations
Patrizia Pozzo 

Public relations in art and culture
Sofia Li Pira

Kommunikation
Izabela Anna Moren

Editorial assistant
Elisa Capellini

Graphic Design
Simone Capano, Luca Pantorno

Social media
Elena Fortunati