Hochschule für Bildende Künste , Braunschweig, Germany
13 Jun 2018 - 15 Jun 2018
To Revolutionary Type Love is the name of an exhibition celebrating queer love in Kenya and beyond. It is a toast, and it is coming to Braunschweig. Artists Kawira Mwirichia, Malcolm Muga and Faith Wanjala from Nairobi will present the group’s exhibition, making use of the medium of photography in many ways, as well as of the East African textile, the kanga, using symbols and quotes unique to the triumphs and stories of the queer movements from Kenya’s and international communities.
Exhibition and symposium, 13.06-15.06.2018, HBK Braunschweig
Wednesday, 13.6.2018
Venue: Gallery of HBK Braunschweig
17.00 Opening address by HBK’s president, Vanessa Ohlraun
17.15 Welcome, Ulrike Bergermann and Rena Onat
17.45 Introduction to the exhibition: Q&A with Kawira Mwirichia, Malcolm Muga and Faith Wanjala (Nairobi)
18.30 ARKESTRATED RHYTHMACHINE KOMPLEXITIES. Soundperformance by Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt (Hildesheim) and Malte Pelleter (Lüneburg)
19.30 Dinner
Thursday, 14.6.2018
Venue: Aula of HBK Braunschweig
Symposium “To Revolutionary Type Love – appropriation and other practices”
Appropriation is making use of the world in changing the world. It can be a Revolutionary Type Love. Appropriation can be corporate power turning culture into capital, or it can be queer art turning heteronormative structures inside out. It is the potential and inevitable condition of any expression – but under conditions of huge inequalities.
Today, cultural appropriation is part of an ongoing colonialist disposession, hegemonic grabbings of discourses as well as of material culture, extraction of raw material, land grabbing, ecological and economical exploitation. In the wake of the entangled and violent history of Europe and Africa, the symposium looks at other practices and possibilities.
Of course, in a networked digital media world, questions of copyright and the commons intensified with sampling music, questioning the status of ownership and creativity. Pop music commodified Black beats, and cultural minorities hijack the entertainment industry. But this does not happen within a symmetrical power relation, as the distribution of wealth and technologies are extremely uneven.
The symposium will discuss artistic and theoretical strategies to resists the grab. We refer to TRTL’s queer photographic expressions and the usages of the traditional kanga cloth through queer histories and communities, we reflect on different time frames in afrofuturism and post-black art, we talk about possibilities of diasporic un/belongings, resistance, anger, and love.
Panel 1: Media, materiality, time
09.30 Welcome by the organizers; introduction into the panel by chair Maja Figge (Linz)
10.00 Ulrike Bergermann (Braunschweig): The Desire for Appropriation and Histories of the Kanga
10.30 Henriette Gunkel (London): Speculative Intimacies: On Photography and Time
11.30 Coffee
Panel 2: Trans/forming Images of Blackness in Media and the Arts
12.00 Introduction into the panel by chair Nanna Heidenreich (Köln)
12.15 Nana Adusei-Poku (New York/Berlin): From Post-Black Art to Performances of Nothingness
13.15 Lunch
14.30 Samanea Karrfalt (Bayreuth): Making Up for Lost Time: The Importance of Contemporary African Art
15.30 Stacie Graham (London): Reshaping Image: Cross-genre and Intersectional Examples within the Media Industry
16.30 Coffee
Panel 3: Transnational and diasporic perspectives
17.00 Introduction into the panel by chair Anja Michaelsen (Berlin)
17.15 Maureen Maisha Auma (Magdeburg), Katja Kinder (Berlin): Knowledges of (Un)Belonging – Transnational Queer Afrodiasporic Conversations
18.30 mahlOt Sansosa (Zanzibar/Santiago/NYC): minha língua materna é parte integral dois, aproxime-se… (my mother tongue is full: part ll – come closer…)
19.00 – venue: gallery –
Nadine Siegert (Bayreuth): “Utopian Sighs: Make Love to the Future”. A walk through the exhibition with some thoughts on the power of images for future-making
20.00 Dinner
Friday, 15.6.2018
Venue: Aula of HBK Braunschweig
10.00-12.00 Revolutionary appropriations? Wrap up, moderated by Nana Adusei-Poku, and open space for discussion
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Contact: Nielab Juyanda-Nassery, n.juyanda-nassery@hbk-bs.de
Web: trtl.hbk-bs.de
Twitter: https://twitter.com/trtl_bs
Organizers: Ulrike Bergermann, Rena Onat, Institute for Media Studies
HBK Braunschweig
Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1
38118 Braunschweig
Funding by: PRO*Niedersachsen, HBK Braunschweig, in cooperation with Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, and Schwules Museum Berlin.