Kanon-Fragen

Can the ethnographic gaze be “given back”, restituted? Within the context of ethnology and the aesthetic avant-garde of post-war West Germany, the exhibition examines Hubert Fichte’s writing and takes it as the starting point for new artistic works on questions of representation and restitution, dissolution of boundaries and canonization, and updating colonial power relations.

How were Europeans depicted in the art of the colonized? Starting from the collection of Cologne museum director and ethnologist Julius Lips (1895–1950), the exhibition addresses transcultural histories of the interconnectedness of colonial-era art.

What are the limits of perception when confronting the esoteric or the falsified? Which rituals of madness pervade culture? Filmed both in the Congo and Belgium, the film Télé Réalité creates a tunnel of perception, converging the story of a Congolese reality TV-show and the Belgian carnival.

What musical patterns have been preserved in the sounds of the African Diaspora, thus defying time and forced migration? What sonic affinities exist between Luanda, Lisbon and Salvador da Bahia, or between Dakar, Cali and Lima? How did postcolonial appropriations and transfer processes become inscribed in contemporary rhythms across the Atlantic and beyond?

In the political spectrum of the Cold War, networks of solidarity linked the Cuban revolutionary regime, the Anti-Apartheid movement of South Africa, the Palestinian revolution and other anti-colonial liberation insurgencies. Artists and collectives were fundamental in mobilizing these international networks as they reappropriated public spaces, organized protest marches and occupied the city walls and community halls with visual idioms and practices. Does the historiography of art include their legacy? Which historical sources formed the basis for their narratives and memories? What is their connection with the solidarity struggles of the present time?

How do we learn to work? What skills do we have to acquire in order to measure up to the demands of the labor market? In other words, how does human capital come about?

Neolithic Childhood examines how the artistic avant-gardes reacted to the multiple crises of European modernity around 1930 – the “crisis of consciousness,” the revisions of early and pre-history, the imperialist struggle, the barbarism of technological mass war, the shock of capitalist industrialization, the failure of the Second (Socialist) International, the endgame of bourgeois humanism and the hypocrisies of colonial discourse.

Saving Bruce Lee will discuss the legacy of Soviet filmmaking on the film history of African and Arab countries based on, for instance, recordings, films and the personal memories of students enrolled at the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography (VGIK) in Moscow who took part in the program from the early 1960s to in the late 1980s.

After the Second World War, the battle of the systems also embroiled the arts and culture in a symbolic arms race. One example of this was the Congress for Cultural Freedom (CCF), an organization founded in West Berlin in June 1950 by a group of writers driven to consolidate an “anti-totalitarian” intellectual community.

Institutionalization and positioning are conducted through the regulatory system of the archive and the document. In the film works shown, Filipa César, Grada Kilomba, Diana McCarty and Krista Belle Stewart shift the reading of archival footage from universal, political and cultural fact to one that imagines documents as extensions of private witnessing and embodied memory.

The exhibition “Misfits” is devoted to three individuals of late modernism or proto-contemporary art from Southeast Asia: Tang Chang, Rox Lee and Bagyi Aung Soe. The oeuvres of these three artists are currently at the threshold of art historical canonization.

In the 1970s, artists across the world mobilized around anti-imperialist solidarity movements. Departing from the 1978 International Art Exhibition for Palestine in Beirut, Past Disquiet stitches a speculative history of networks: grassroots collectives across Paris, Rome, and Tokyo; artists’ unions in Damascus, Casablanca, Berlin, and Warsaw; biennials in Venice, Baghdad, and Rabat, and museums in Santiago de Chile, Cape Town, and Managua. Curated by Kristine Khouri and Rasha Salti, the exhibition engages the problematics of oral history while critically exploring the mechanisms of canon-making.

The critique and deconstruction of the modern canon has shaped both artistic practice and theory over the past three decades. However, the canon is not just an instrument of institutional power. It is also a means to create forms of literacy and historical consciousness.