The transdisciplinary workshop examines the anchoring of postcolonial collective memory in Europe’s public space by looking at the strategies and networks of marginalised actors to overcome continuing colonial inequality from different perspectives. The focus is particularly on musicians, intellectual activists and writers.

Analysing these different actors, we investigate media and various forms of knowledge production that transport memory through space and time and help groups and individuals to construct their past. Europe’s public cultural memory makes it difficult for postcolonial groups to anchor memory in public space. Not only are public spaces, such as urban spaces, comparatively poor in memories that do not correspond to those of the dominant society; public-state funding also often excludes the memory of these groups. The workshop examines the reasons for this – particularly with regard to race and racism – and looks for ways to reduce or abolish power asymmetries in the anchoring of memory in public space. Individual media and forms of knowledge production and the infrastructures surrounding them, such as the film or music industry, the art and literature scene or activist practices in urban space or in various academic contexts, will be examined.

We propose a transdisciplinary approach that takes cultural and social scientists, activists and cultural workers or artists equally seriously as knowledge producers and brings them together, thus diversifying knowledge production on the topic and creating new synergies between different epistemic practices. The workshop is based on participatory research approaches. The contributions to the workshop include formats such as lectures, films, (musical) performances or other artistic presentations that examine the topic and the questions and perspectives raised here independently, but in dialogue with each other. The workshop will be held in German and English.

A program overview can be found here.

The language of the abstract is also the language of the lecture.

Dessa Ganda

ResisTanzen ist eine tänzerische Auseinandersetzung mit diversen Formen und Ausdrücken des Widerstands. Die Performance nimmt die Zuschauer*innen mit auf eine Zeitreise zu hervorstechenden, aber dennoch in Deutschland wenig bekannten Persönlichkeiten und Widerstandsbewegungen. Herausgestellt werden markante Bewegung, Bilder und Haltungen. Geschaffen wird ein Raum für kraftvolle Geschichten (Gefördert 2022 durch das DIS-TANZ- SOLO Programm von Dachverband Tanz Deutschland und Neustart Kultur).

Luis Gimenez Amoros

The International Library of African Music (ILAM) is located in South Africa and it is the largest sound archive of African music in the continent. From the 1920s to the 1970s, Hugh Tracey, his son, Andrew, and numerous “others” recorded more than fourteen thousand songs from fifteen countries in sub-Saharan Africa. ILAM covers a wide range of African musical styles – ranging from South Africa to Sudan. Since 2011, the author has conducted repatriation and revitalization projects of ILAM’s recordings in southern Africa (Zimbabwe, Malawi, Zambia, Mozambique and South Africa) resulting in multiple publications (peer review articles, albums and documentaries) including his book ‘Tracing the mbira sound archive in Zimbabwe’ published by Routledge in 2018.  This lecture examines the digital return of ILAM´s mbira sound archive through the author, African scholars, and mbira teachers in southern Africa. Particularly, this type of revitalization project examines the scholarly and collaborative outcomes from the interaction between ILAM (as a hub for African music studies) and the African academia during the revitalization project. In the second part of this lecture, there will be a reconsideration on how the cultural diversity of ILAM’s recordings transcend the African continent becoming a source of global interaction with multiple actors (musicians, migrant communities, DJs, music archivists, etc.) in European cities.

Alexander van Wickeren

The contribution investigates the beginnings of a politized music culture reminiscent of African heritage in the context of the 1960s and 70s’ civil rights movements and decolonization processes by focusing on West Germany. It shows how a new small music public developed in West Germany, which was dependent on alternative record labels. Black musicians tried to use these structures to anchor musical cultural traditions from the former African colonies in Europe. Using the example of the African-American jazz group Mombasa, the talk examines how black musicians in West Germany began to update African sonic heritage in order to protest against racism and marginalization, yet also to be economically successful in a changing music market. I argue that commercial and political aims of these protagonists were closely intertwined.

Sonja Gaedicke

The contribution will bring together Patricia Hill Collins’ concept of Intellectual Activism with ideas from the field of Memory Activism to explore how these approaches can transform the representation of memory in public spaces. Memory activism is understood as a strategic commemoration of a contested past that aims to achieve political change by working outside of state structures. The talk asks what transformative memory work can look like in practice, which is becoming increasingly important in view of the current political climate.

Rahab Njeri

In einer Zeit, in der globale Bewegungen für soziale Gerechtigkeit immer lauter werden, spielt intellektueller Aktivismus an Universitäten eine zentrale Rolle im Kampf gegen Rassismus, Sexismus und koloniale Strukturen. Aus einer Schwarzen feministischen und dekolonialen Perspektive, Intellectual Activism an Universitäten ist ein wesentlicher Bestandteil postkolonialer und dekolonialer Bestrebungen, die darauf abzielen, die Dominanz westlicher Wissenssysteme zu hinterfragen und andere epistemische Ansätze zu fördern. Aus einer postkolonialen Perspektive betrachtet, geht es darum, koloniale Strukturen und Denkmuster innerhalb akademischer Institutionen zu dekonstruieren, die oft marginalisierte Stimmen und Wissensformen ausschließen. Dekolonialer intellectual Activism fordert daher eine kritische Reflexion und Transformation der universitären Lehrpläne, Forschungsansätze und institutionellen Praktiken.

Linda Jalloh und Merle Bode

Wir bieten kolonialkritische Stadtteilführungen an, um im öffentlichen Raum über die deutsche Kolonialvergangenheit und Kontinuitäten in unserer Gesellschaft und uns selbst zu sprechen. In unserem Input gehen wir auf verschiedene Aspekte bei der Konzeption unserer kritischen (post)kolonialen Stadtrundgänge in Köln ein und reflektieren, was das Aktivistische an politischer Bildungsarbeit ist: mit welchen Perspektiven zum Kolonialismus sind wir bei der Recherche konfrontiert, welche Erzählungen können die hegemoniale Geschichtsschreibung und unser eigenes Wissen kritisch beleuchten und dekonstruieren.

Was hat (Post)Kolonialismus eigentlich mit uns persönlich und der heutigen Gesellschaft zu tun und was muss sich ändern?

 

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor 

In a world where dominant narratives wilfully overshadow or consume peripheral voices, how can we recraft alternative myths, stories of origin, and conceptions of being? This presentation proposes a radical reimagining of collective memory and identity through Storymaking-As-World-Making, focusing on Africa-centred narratives, history, and epistemologies. Central to this reimagining is the reactivation of a diasporic mythic imagination as a sense and tool for future crafting, self-definition, and memory transmuter. As Mia Couto reminds us, “We are made from stories.” The person of African descent has, arguably, been deliberately estranged from a sense of African deep time and longue durée, compelled, as it were, to inhabit a different and often disempowering story and navigate an alternative map of the world and its imagination of reality. Narratives are orienting devices, and they can misdirect their subjects whether by design or chance. Can the African diaspora also excavate and revitalise not only resonant African archetypes but also explore affirming ones that have emerged from their lives and stories in Europe and elsewhere? To what goal? How do language, memory, and naming shape perceptions of diasporic realities and also relations with the African “elsewhere”? What is the importance of reconnecting with African geographies and other landscapes of belonging? Can a direct engagement with historical traumas transmute and inform a narrative of emerging futures? What if forgiveness served as an act of resistance and liberation? With the advantage of acquiring a complex reading of inhabiting multiple worlds simultaneously, and navigating often hostile spaces, what overlooked extraordinary senses have the diasporic communities evolved to support their living and thriving which would infuse the retelling of being in one place or another, and the world? How might a complex, layered, life-giving diaspora-lives-honouring origin myth, one that is also a love story for humanity, begin if the diaspora positioned themselves as protagonists in the unfolding drama of global history, rather than extras in someone else’s script? This exploration of the “dimensions of postcolonial memory” comes at the cusp of epochal global shifts and the overt decline of multi-century hegemonic forces. Crisis and opportunity. In the words of Charles Bukowski, “Can you remember who you were before the world told you who you should be?” This is a summons, a challenge, and a call to adventure and rediscovery further fuelled by the spirit of that evergreen Fanonian cry, now desperately needed for our now-decaying world, for the re-humanisation of our existence.

Elnathan John

This contribution examines how contemporary graphic novels are reshaping the portrayal of Black and other people of color, reclaiming narratives that challenge historically marginalized depictions in both graphic novels and cartoons. By analyzing the interplay of words and images, this talk explores how postcolonial discourse in graphic novels engages with the subaltern, providing a space to reimagine and reclaim BIPoC identities. It will also highlight how these works confront and dismantle colonial visual legacies, offering new, empowering representations.

Glenda Obermuller,

Germany played a decisive role in world colonial history. Two years ago, Cologne decided to work through its colonial past. One of the ways of working through it is, above all, knowledge. This input will explore the role of grassroots activism in creating decolonial spaces, in this case a Black Library, and the question of responsibility for cementing such a structure in an increasingly fragile political climate.