Transnational Restitution Movement
curated by GROUP50:50

Since the 1960s, a movement of globally networked artists, intellectuals and activists has been persistently working towards the return of African cultural assets and human remains in order to advance the process of de-colonization after independence. After a long period of stagnation, the debate has accelerated in recent years – with examples such as the restitution of Behanzin treasures to the Republic of Benin or the Benin bronzes to Nigeria. Innumerable initiatives from artists and cultural institutions were formed throughout the world that promoted and accompanied this restitution process. In this historic moment, the GROUP50:50 is inviting artists, activists and thinkers from Europe and Africa to work on the foundations for a transnational restitution movement. In Leipzig, they will present and discuss artistic and political practices in a series of screenings and talks that will redefine the African and European identities and reshape the transcontinental dialogue and cooperation.

Once you leave the European perspective, skulls and skeletons become more than scientific objects and masks more than art objects. They are inhabited by ancestral spirits brutally removed from their habitat, locked away in forgotten collections and still haunting the European continent. With the process of restitution, we must learn, in Europe and in the former colonies, to dialogue about the long history of physical violence, economic exploitation, alienation, cultural appropriation and dislocation of these objects that produced meaning. What rituals can we invent to accompany the return of the objects? How can we reverse a process of alienation induced by hegemonic euro-centric thinking imposed by colonial violence?

The destabilisation of social structures through the expropriation of objects with cultural value or symbolic power enabled the exploitation of humans and nature. Modernist ideas of progress and the subsequent separation of “advanced” and “primitive” societies, the imperative of economic growth and the infinite availability of natural resources, annihilated any alternative cosmology that defined the relationship between humans and nature differently. Should the restitution movement also claim the restitution of natural resources? Who pays for the ongoing destruction of the habitat caused by the exploitation of natural resources? And would it not be better for humanity if alternative cosmologies could be restored?

“The Time For Denial Is Over”is a project of GROUP50:50(Basel-Lubumbashi), Centre d’Art Waza (Lubumbashi) and Fondazione Studio Rizoma (Palermo) in collaboration with PODIUM Esslingen, The European Pavilion, CTM Festival Berlin, euro-scene Leipzig, Kaserne Basel and Vorarlberger Landestheater.

"The Time For Denial Is Over" travels from Palermo to Basel, Bregenz, Leipzig, Berlin, Kinshasa and Lubumbashi.

9. November 2022, Schaubühne Lindenfels, 17:00 – 19:00

FIRST SESSION: Dialogue with communities and their ancestors!

One of the greatest challenges for a transnational restitution movement is to build a dialogue with those local communities that were dispossessed during the colonial period. How can local communities reappropriate the power of interpretation for the objects and people that they have lost? Local cultural centers, civil society organizations and transnational artist groups will then gain the role of creating bridges between institutions in the north and local communities in the south. But how can this encounter be shaped? Which misunderstandings, which difficulties are we confronted with?

Screening: Mangi Meli Remains

In Old Moshi, Tanzania, a head is missing. It’s Mangi Meli’s, who had resisted against the occupation of the Kilimanjaro area by the German colonial powers and was executed in 1900. After a request from scientists, his head was then shipped to Germany. Mangi Meli’s grandson has been awaiting its return up until the present day.

Discussion with: Mnyaka Sururu Mboro, activist (Berlin), Konradin Kunze, theatermaker, Flinn Works (Berlin), Isabelle Reimann, provenance researcher (Leipzig)

Screening: Faire-Part

Directors: Anne Reijniers, Nizar Saleh, Paul Shemisi and Rob Jacobs, 2019. 58 Min. (excerpt of 20 Min.)

On the eve of postponed Congolese elections, two Congolese and two Belgian cineasts work on a film about Kinshasa and its resistance against the legacies of colonialism. The four filmmakers want to tell a story together, but having grown up on other sides of history, they have different views on how to tell that story. How should it look like? Who should be in it? For whom is it made? FAIRE-PART is the search of 4 filmmakers for a way to portray the city. Through filming artistic performances in public space, they paint a provocative picture of Kinshasa and its relations with the rest of the world.

Discussion with: Faire-Part, transnational collective (Kinshasa / Brussels)

10. November 2022, Schaubühne Lindenfels, 18:00 – 20:00

SECOND SESSION: Face the damage, treat the wounds!

Today, there is no doubt that thousands of artifacts and the human remains of ancestors located in European museums must be returned to their countries of origin so that people can reappropriate the cultural heritage that they had demanded in long political battles. However, the returning ancestors and artifacts remind people of a long history of violence, exploitation and repression that we have to deal with here in Europe and in Africa. In this sense, the restitution could be a painful and simultaneously healing process in which the relationship between the African and European continent will be fundamentally transformed.

Screening: You Hide Me

Director: Nii-Kwate Owoo, Ghana, 1970. 16 min.

In 1970, the Ghanaian filmmaker Nii-Kwate Owoo spent a day with shooting in the cellar archives of the British Museum. In 1971, his film YOU HIDE ME was forbidden in Ghana as “anti-British”, which ironically led to an influential London magazine “West Africa” publishing a headline that made the film famous in the rest of the world. More than half a century later, YOU HIDE ME was awarded the prize for the best documentary film at the Paris Short Film Festival 2020.

Discussion with: Bénédicte Savoy, art historian (Berlin)

Screening: Behind the Glasses

Director: Azgard Izambo, 2019, 4 min.

In 2018, the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde invited curators and artists from Kinshasa to create the exhibition “Megalopolis I – Voices from Kinshasa” with their own works and in discussion with the museum’s collection – among other with the objects that King Leopold II gifted to the Leipzig museum in 1894. This is the context in which the short film BEHIND THE GLASSES was created by Azgard Itambo. He captures the pain and questions that a young man from Congo is confronted with when looking at these objects behind glass. How can people live without this history today?

Discussion with: Ohiniki Mawussé Toffa, German studies scholar and historian of colonialism (Leipzig) and Stefanie Bach, curator for global art at the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde (Leipzig) 

Screening: Return. An Epic Journey

Directors: Rita Mukebu and Joseph Kasau. Produced by Centre d’Art Waza, Lubumbashi, 2021. 15 min.

Inspired by the African masks at the Museum Rietberg 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 the Centre d’Art Waza Lubumbashi, Mukebu tests the meaning of the mask by visiting the Tshokwe community, the director of an art museum, a university professor and others.

Discussion with: Stéphane Kabila, curator, Centre d’Art Waza (Lubumbashi) and Joseph Kasau, co-director of the film (Lubumbashi)

with

Eva-Maria Bertschy
Curator and theater maker, GROUP50:50, Berlin / Palermo

Patrick Mudekereza
Curator and author, GROUP50:50, Lubumbashi

Bénédicte Savoy
art historian, Berlin

Paul Shemisi and Rob Jacobs (Faire-Part)
transnational collective, Kinshasa / Brussels

Mnyaka Sururu Mboro,
activist, Berlin

Konradin Kunze, theater maker, Flinn Works, Berlin

Isabelle Reimann,
provenance researcher, Leipzig

Christiana Tabaro and Michael Disanka
theater makers, Kinshasa

Elia Rediger
artist, singer and composer, Basel

Kojack Kossakamvwe
guitarist and composer, Kinshasa

Ohiniki Mawussé Toffa, German studies scholar and historian of colonialism, Leipzig

Stefanie Bach, curator for global art at the Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig

Stéphane Kabila, curator, Centre d’Art Waza, Lubumbashi

Joseph Kasau, director and artist, Lubumbashi

Curated by
Patrick Mudekereza
Eva-Maria Bertschy

Translation
Luca Maier
Katia Flouest-Sell

Social media
Fellow Publishing