“Everything Passes Except The Past” is an exhibition and virtual debate festival organized by the Goethe-Institut in collaboration with Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo in Turin. The growing public awareness of racist violence and historic injustice has put colonial monuments, ethnographic collections and film archives into the spotlight of political and social debates. For the purposes of ”Everything Passes Except The Past“ we propose an artistic and discursive approach to the residues of colonialism in order to redefine power structures and envision alternative futures.

The exhibition will take place from September 17 – October 18 2020 at the Fondazione Sandretto Re Rebaudengo and presents art works by Bianca Baldi, Alessandra Ferrini, Grace Ndiritu and the collective Troubled Archives. The artist’s practices introduce multiple voices putting in question the idea of the image as ‚document’ and address the responsibility that we have toward colonial photographs, even one hundred years later. Their works use, transform and edit colonial images without ignoring or erasing the harmful objectifications of the past. They point out the close intertwining of the history of photography with the history of colonialism, whose presumptuous, manipulative mode of representation continues to the present day. By reworking and combining the biased image archive, they develop a constructively critical access to racist footage and show how colonial power structures are established and stay present today.

The exhibition is accompanied by a rich, discursive online-festival on October 17: Alongside a keynote contribution from Bénédicte Savoy, round-table talks with activists, artists, experts, curators and researchersfrom Africa, Latin America and Europe will take place. The debates will discuss the challenge to decolonize museum collections, public space and film archives in order to bring views from the Global North and the Global South into intensive dialogue. Besides, the presentations focus on the question how we could learn from the methodologies of art, critical theory, and activism to provoke politicisation and critical metamorphosis.

The festival is part of the Goethe-Institut’s 2-year long international project “Everything Passes Except The Past” which organised various workshops and events in Belgium, France, Portugal and Spain in 2019. Many of the participating artists and experts present works and statements that have been developed during this research period. A publication of the results in bookform is foreseen for October 2020.

Program for virtual debates on October 17, 2020

11am: Introduction by the organizers

11.15am: “Amnesia. 40 years‘ debate on african cultural heritage in European Museums » -Keynote lecture by Bénédicte Savoy

12pm: Panel 1 “New Museum Practices: On the Ethics and Politics of Return”: Bénédicte Savoy, Didier Houénoudé, Christian Greco, moderated by Ayoko Mensah

2.30 pm: Workshop-Presentation “On Collaboration and Care: Revisiting Colonial Collections with the Local Publics ”: Carolina Orsini, Simona Berhe, Kibra Sebhat

3.30 pm: Panel 2 “From Local to Global: Italian Museum Practices in an Entangled World”: Rosa Anna Di Lella, Alessandra Ferrini, Angelica Pesarini

5.30 pm: Panel 3 “All Statues Must Fall? Conflicts and Iconoclasm in Public Space”: Daniela Ortiz, Igiaba Scego, Berlin Postkolonial, moderated by Tania Adam

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