BE.BOP 2012- BLACK EUROPE BODY POLITICS was the first international screening program and transdisciplinary roundtable centered on Black European citizenship in connection to recent moving image and performative practices. It took place at The Ballhaus Naunynstrasse, a translocal theatre space which serves as point of arrival for artists from (post) migrant communities and beyond. A Project of Art Labour Archives in collaboration with Allianz Kulturstiftung and Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. Conceived and curated by Alanna Lockward.
SESSION 1 / 04.05.2102
Jeannette Ehlers,
Black Magic At The White House, 3:46, sound, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives.
Synopsis: Ehlers performs a Vodoun dance in Marienborg, an old building which has a strong connection to the trans-Atlantic trade. It was built as a summer residence for the commander Olfert Fischer, in 1744. It is now the official summer residency of Denmark´s Prime Minister.
Three Steps of Story, 3:35, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives.
Synopsis: We see Jeannette Ehlers waltzing in a big mirrored hall, where the colorful and rebellious governor Peter von Scholten scandalized the white citizens by inviting then the “free Negroes” to the ball. It was also von Scholten, who proclaimed emancipation of slaves on St. Croix in 1848.
Jeannette Ehlers studied at The Royal Danish Academy of Fine Arts and The Funen Academy of Fine Arts. She has exhibited in several cities in Europe, USA, Asia and Africa; her works explores the Danish slave trade and colonialism worldwide through digitally manipulated photographs and video installations. http://www.jeannetteehlers.dk/
IngridMwangiRobertHutter
Neger, 4:16, sound, 1999. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives.
http://www.ingridmwangiroberthutter.com/ingrid_mwangi_robert_hutter/neger_1999.html
Wild Life, 01:33, sound, 1998. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives
http://www.ingridmwangi.de/ingrid_mwangi_robert_hutter/wild_life_1999.html
Masked, 5:16, no sound, 2000. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives
http://www.ingridmwangiroberthutter.com/ingrid_mwangi_robert_hutter/masked_2000.html
Synopsis: In Wild Life, Neger and Masked, Mwangi transforms herself into beastly images that derive from the discriminatory imagination of the West. By becoming first a roaring caged animal in Wild Life, and a minimalistic self locked “haired” entity in Neger and Masked, Mwangi’s videos blend beautiful images with the edge of brutality embedded in racial stereotypes. (By: Laurie Ann Farrel)
Ingrid Mwangi and her husband Robert Hutter work together as video, photography and performance artists. They came to consider their practice as inseparable, “one artist two bodies”, and thus exhibit under their combined names. The issues that they have tackled have included race, sex and relationships.
Teresa María Díaz Nerio
Hommage à Sara Bartman, 4:00, 2007. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives.
Synopsis: This performance is the result of an investigation on the Black performing body, and on how Blackness has become an act in itself. Sara Bartman´s iconic status is a consequence of the well documented “legitimate” scientific and voyeuristic rape of her body. http://vimeo.com/17094383
Teresa María Díaz Nerio is a Dominican visual and performance artist and researcher that lives and works in Amsterdam, she graduated as a Bachelor in Fine Arts from the Gerrit Rietveld Academie 2007 and Master in Fine Arts from the Dutch Art Institute 2009. Her research challenges hegemonic constructions on “reality”. http://teresadiaznerio.wordpress.com/
Emeka Udemba
Dancing with the Star, 11:46, no sound, 2011. Courtesy of the artist and Art Labour Archives.
Synopsis: This work explores the conceptual twists and turns of fluidity and impalpability of the body as a social and political context. Issues of tradition, religion and gender are chartered from image to body and body to image.
Emeka Udemba studied Art Education at the University of Lagos, Nigeria. His artistic practice focuses on the use of installations, video, photography, drawing and painting used as complementary to each other. His works focuses mainly on communication in the social and political sphere.
http://wikiart.net/index.php/Emeka_Udemba
Tracey Moffatt
Other,7:00, sound, 2009. Courtesy of the artist and The Momentum Collection.
Synopsis: Moffatt explores the ways in which societies define so-called minorities as the Other, using film collage to elicit poignant and insightful understandings of stereotypes and cultural attitudes.
Tracey Moffatt is highly regarded for her formal and stylistic experimentation in film, photography and video, her work draws on history of cinema, art and photography as well as popular culture and her own childhood memories and fantasies. She studied visual communications at the Queensland college of Art. http://www.roslynoxley9.com.au/artists/26/Tracey_Moffatt/
SESSION 2 / 05.05.2012
Jean Marie Teno
Le Malentendu Colonial, 78:00:00, sound, 2004. Courtesy of Les Films du Raphia.
Synopsis:This film looks at Christian evangelism as the forerunner of European colonialism in Africa, indeed, as the ideological model for the relationship between North and South even today.
Jean- Marie Teno studied audiovisual communication and worked as a film critic for Bwana Magazine and as chief editor at France 3. He produces his own films with the company Les Films du Raphia. http://www.jmteno.us/
Sumugan Sivanesan
A Children´s Book of War, A [Not So] Secret War. Terra Nullius and the Permanent State of Exception,1:46, sound, 2010. Courtesy of the Artist and The Momentum Collection.
Synopsis: One interpretation of international law has it that people can prove their sovereignty by their ability to make and maintain laws, and their ability to
declare war. Looked at that way, war is not only something civilizations do – it is something they must do in order for their right to self–rule to be respected.
http://childrensbookofwar.blogspot.com/
Sumugan Sivanesan is an anti–disciplinary artist. He is a member of the weather group_U, an experimental documentary collective focused on indigenous-non–indigenous exchange and collaboration. He lectures Experimental Film and Video at the College of Fine Arts, University of New South Wales. http://www.sivanesan.net/
William Kentridge
Black Box/Chambre Noire, 22:00, sound, 2005. Courtesy of the artist and Marian Goodman Gallery.
Synopsis:The development of visual technologies and the history of colonialism intersect in Black Box/Chambre Noire through Kentridge’s reflection on the history of the German genocide of the Herero and Nama in Southwest Africa (now Namibia) in 1904.
William Kentridge is a South-African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films. Aspects of social injustice that have transpired over the years in South-Africa have often acted as fodder for his pieces.
http://www.mariangoodman.com/artists/william-kentridge/
SESSION 3 / 06.05.2012
Michael Küppers Adebisi
Best Practice, culture and integration, sound, 2010. Courtesy of AFROTAK TV cyberNomads. (S. biography on p. 23)
Synopsis: AFROTAK TV cyberNomads, the Black German Social Media, Culture and Education Network, was set up in 2001 to document the exchange of socio-cultural communities of the black German diaspora reaching out to global transatlantic networks.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVvb7XaoFXs
Quinsy Gario
The Bearable Ordeal of the Collapse of Certainties, 2011, theater & poetry, photo by Brett Russel.
Quinsy Gario is a spoken word performer and is currently following the MA program Comparative Women’s Studies in Culture and Politics at the Gender Studies Department of the University of Utrecht. He makes art under the banner of NON EMPLOYEES. http://www.nonemployees.com/
Final screening followed by reception in partnership with AfricAvenir
5:00 p.m. Hackesche Höfe Kino
Robert A. Stemmle
Toxi, 89:00:00, sound, 1952. Courtesy of Goethe Institut.
Synopsis: As one of the first and most successful films to directly tackle the problem of “race” in post-fascist Germany, Toxi arguably has been instrumental in the (re)construction of the German nation as exclusively white.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ziZr3z10_B8&feature=related
Robert Adolf Stemmle (1903 – 1974) was a German screenwriter and film director. He wrote for 86 films between 1932 and 1967. He also directed 46 films between 1934 and 1970.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_A._Stemmle