The history of chocolate is closely interwoven with Cologne’s colonial history: As a location for successful companies, the city was home to numerous actors who significantly drove production and trade of chocolate in Germany and Europe by exploiting people and ecosystems in colonies in West Africa (among others).
As a descendant of the Handelshochschule Köln (Cologne School of Trade), the TH Köln is historically linked to Cologne’s colonial history, in which the Cologne chocolate industry is closely rooted. The nearby Stollwerck site and the Cologne Chocolate Museum still bear witness to a history of colonial exploitation, the hegemonic structures of which continue to influence us to this day.
The project “Bitter Chocolate: Making Postcolonial Perspectives Tangible” focussed on the urban traces of the colonial product chocolate and cocoa in Cologne. The preliminary project results integrated analog interventions and digital information into a hybrid interaction and learning environment dedicated to the topic. The connecting concept was a city tour by means of a web-based app, which makes it possible to call up a wide range of information on the individual historical colonial relics and places directly on-site. These include texts, historical illustrations, but also audio and film files that can be interacted with via a simple interface on conventional smartphones. In addition to the actual app, access points and interventions were designed in the urban space, which either mark the location as a simple information point, refer to digital information by means of a QR code or address the local traces of colonialism as a spatially designed statement, aesthetically counteracting them and making them tangible.
Project Supervision
Dr. Johanna Steindorf, Prof. Andreas Wrede
Students
Axelle Julien, Ambra Spiller, Balint Lanyi, Hei Ching Lo, Jule Marie Schacht, Juliana Gutiérrez, Jood Khayal, Mafalda Brandão, Moritz von Laufenberg, Philipp Pätzold, Tsz Tsun Tang, Yuet Yi Juliett Tam
Further Project Partners
Decolonize Cologne
