Track_3
Alternative (re)presentations. Regimes of the gaze and decolonial transfers of knowledge
"Track Academy" is a series of discursive programs combining scientific, artistic and educational formats. It creates communicative situations through the temporal and spatial condensation of the different activities, allowing for broader scopes of interaction and activation of specific knowledge. The themes "Track Academy" tackles derive from the exhibition program of the Kunstverein in 2017. They address contemporary challenges such as digitalization and networking, urbanity and urban development as well as migration and diversity.
Track_3 Alternative (re)presentations. Regimes of the gaze and decolonial transfers of knowledge
For her current exhibition at Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof Bianca Baldi draws from photographs taken during the construction of Kamina radio station (1911-14) as well as a talisman scroll from the former German colony in Togo which she encountered at the Slovene Ethnographic Museum in Ljubljana. Track_3 questions the structural and ideological conditions of archives and collections as places of memory and oblivion. Which perspectives are being (re)presented and (re)produced? Are there alternative concepts and what are the potentials of everyday cultural practices for the transfer and exchange of knowledge?
2
pm
Eyes
in the Back of Your Head (an incantation)
Performance
by Bianca Baldi (artist, Frankfurt a. M./Brussels)
Language:
English
„5751
1228 5213 2667 6398 514
A
medium intervenes to provide you an aerial perspective,
she
gives you the floor plan, a map of your game quest.
The
documents are sufficient proof for the introduction of the problem of
reality“
Bianca Baldi's artistic practice and research interests stem from an image making practice that
includes video, photography, drawing, installation and writing. Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof currently presents “Eyes in the Back of Your Head”, her first institutional solo exhibition in Germany.
2.30
pm
On
the Surface of Text
Collaborative
reading session with props, by Ofri Lapid (artist, Berlin)
Language:
English
“On the Surface of Text” is a hybrid of a lecture, installation and reading session which will involve the audience. It examines the manner in which literacy plays a role in the establishment of colonial power. During the session we follow the story of Sankama, “the first of the Amazonian Piro tribe who claimed to know how to read”, published in 1947 by the missionary and linguist Esther Matteson. His story challenges the perception and interpretation of foreign customs and the manner in which we transcribe culture into commodified, solidified texts.
Ofri Lapid’s work explores social and political agencies invested in the creation of cultural heritage and their manifestations in academic research, in fieldwork and in the museum realm. Since 2012 she has been travelling and taking part in residencies in various remote villages, such as rural Bulgaria, Finland, Rajasthan-India and the Peruvian Amazon. She is currently a PhD candidate at HFBK Hamburg.
3.30
pm
The
colonial gaze of the photographer: representation by means of
expropriation
Multimedia
lecture by Tania Mancheno (political scientist, Hamburg)
Language:
German
Photography
essentially changed the colonial gaze. Before Europeans were informed
about truths from the occupied overseas territories through the
mediation of subjective chroniclers. Now it were photographs which
communicated the authenticity of the Other and the Self. Referring to
Hito Steyerl’s apology „ In Defense of the Poor Image“
Tania
Mancheno tries a decolonial reading of this image category thus
questioning colonial photo archives. Mancheno will outline the so
called „Kolumbusblick“ to decenter it with the perspective of the
poet Assia Djebar and thereby set into motion the regimes of
visibilities and invisibilities produced by photography.
Political
scientist Tania Mancheno currently
writes her Phd on the forgotten history of multiculturalism at
University of Hamburg.
5.30
pm
Occupied
Objects
Conventions
of (re)presentation and alternative strategies
Conversation
with Bianca Baldi, Ofri Lapid and Tania Mancheno
Language:
English
What possibilities and challenges do artistic research, exploration, adaptation and transformation of collections and their subjects offer? What translations can artistic practices achieve and to what effect? How can hierarchies of visibility be undermined and what role does the use of media and modes of presentation play?
7
pm
Restaurant
at the 1st and 2nd class waiting room
Tasting
& performance by Franziska Pierwoss (artist, Berlin)
Langauge:
German
On May 1, 1897 the restaurant „Heeschen“ opened at Harburg train station in the 1st and 2nd class waiting room featuring an exclusive menu. In keeping with the „zeitgeist“ the restaurant was grandly decorated. Exquisite food was served under palm trees and at moderate prices, according to an announcement. After serving lobster and mutton saddle for the opening, simple and hearty cooking was offered for the day-to-day services which was common in German train station restaurants. In the wood-panelled back room of Kunstverein Harburger Bahnhof Franziska Pierwoss invites a reflection on the current use of so called German cuisine by politically motivated groups, for example the menu served during the „Alternative for Germany“ (AfD) party conference at Martitim Hotel in Cologne.
