Prélude: Ré-imaginer le passé – Talking Objects Film Night
@KINDL — Centre for Contemporary Art
Am Sudhaus 3, Berlin
6 March 2024
19.00 pm — 21.00 pm
The exhibition Ré-imaginer le passé, developed in Dakar, prompts a reevaluation of the past and paves the way for alternative forms of knowledge. The artists examine how a future can be imagined from a decolonial perspective. The exhibition is on view from 24 March to 28 July 2024 at KINDL — Centre for Contemporary Art.
As a prelude to the exhibition, the TALKING OBJECT LAB invites you to a film night that turns to lost knowledge and shared memories, and takes an Afrofuturistic look into the future.
Introduction: Isabel Raabe (curator of the exhibition Ré-imaginer le passé, initiator of the TALKING OBJECTS LAB) & Celina Basra (author, curator, member of the TALKING OBJECTS LAB team)
Kwaku Ananse
Kwaku Ananse (2013. 26 min. Ghana/Mexico/USA. Dir. Akosua Adoma Owusu) is a West African fable about a male spider who spends years collecting all the world's wisdom in a wooden container. When he tries to hide the container up a tree, he can't find a way to transport it high enough into the branches. His little son, Ntikuma, shows him what to do which infuriates him so much, Kwaku Ananse throws the container down onto the ground. It breaks, and the collected wisdom seeps away. Everyone rushes over, hoping to salvage what they can… Nyan Koronhwea returns to her father Kwaku Ananse's native Ghana for his funeral. They lost contact long ago. Overwhelmed by the funeral, she retreats into the spirit world in search of Kwaku Ananse. Carrying her ambivalent emotions with her into the forest, she learns an ultimate truth about human relationships.
PUMZI
PUMZI (2009. 21 min. Kenya/South Africa. Dir. Wanuri Kahiu) is a 20-minute Sci-fi film about futuristic Africa, 35 years after World War III ‘The Water War’. Nature is extinct. The outside is dead. Asha lives and works as a museum curator in one of the indoor communities set up by the Maitu Council. When she receives a box in the mail containing soil, she plants an old seed in it and the seed starts to germinate instantly. Asha appeals to the Council to grant her permission to investigate the possibility of life on the outside, but the Council denies her exit visa. Asha breaks out of the inside community to go into the dead and derelict outside to plant the growing seedlings and possibly find life outside.
Deep Down Tidal
Deep Down Tidal (2017. 19 min. South Africa. Dir. Tabita Rezaire) explores the ocean as the setting for colonialist and neo-colonialist power structures. The film delves into the concept of electronic colonialism, a theory that presents Western dominance in digital technologies as a strategic pursuit by post-industrial nations to assert their global influence. Through a montage of celestial forms, human figures, and distorted telecommunications, Tabita Rezaire's visual narrative illustrates how, in the contemporary era, the battleground for colonizers has shifted from physical landscapes to the digital realm.
… these practices are done in sharing her stories
… these practices are done in sharing her stories (2020. 4,24 min. Zambia. Dir. Gladys Kalichini) is a product of the artist's extended stay in South Africa and focuses on how women tell stories about women as well as the rituals of cleansing and caring. The viewers get to explore the power of sharing memories as a way of subverting erasure, forgetfulness, and amnesia. The hymn that plays in the background is by Catholic women in Zambia and is titled 'ulemu kumwamba' which can loosely be translated to English as 'to pay respect to the heavens'.