SPIRITUAL REVOLUTIONS & “THE SCRAMBLE FOR AFRICA” - BE.BOP 2014. BLACK EUROPE BODY POLITICS
Curated by Alanna Lockward / Exhibition: May 02-31
BE.BOP previous editions (2012-2013) have engaged European audiences in intricate detail with the outrage generated by Black/African Diaspora peoples when confronting a racist world order structured along the lines of coloniality. BE.BOP 2014 now brings re-existence into the hallowed grounds of healing by means of drawing the spiritual map of Pan-Africanism before and after the so-called “Scramble for Africa”. The event will include for the first time an exhibition and a simultaneous presentation in Copenhagen in connection to “Say it Loud!”, so far the largest overall presentation of Jeannette Ehlers’ videoworks at Nikolaj Kunsthal (15.03-25.05.2014).
Ehlers’ video “Whip it Good”,which premiered as a performance during BE.BOP 2013, will be projected in the Foyer of Ballhaus Naunynstrasse. The self-explanatory whipping action in Ehlers’ work brings up unsolved issues regarding enslavement in the Caribbean plantation system and the challenges of coloniality. These are concerns that have been discussed thoroughly at BE.BOP since its pioneering introduction of the theoretical perspective modernity/coloniality/decoloniality conceptualized by a group of thinkers and activists from the Americas, the Caribbean and the US Latino Diaspora in the 90’s.
In his keynote entitled “Spirituality, Subjectivity And (Im) Migrant Consciousness: The Tasks Ahead”, Walter Mignolo, one of the founders of this group and advisor of BE.BOP, will address how the combination of these entanglements has created the conditions for reversing migration movements: from the colonies and ex-colonies to Europe and the US.
Another extraordinary public lecture will be given by Dennis Dickerson with the title “Religious Insurgency and the Long Civil Rights Movement in the United States.” in the framekwork of the Du Bois Lectures organized by the English and American Studies Department, Humboldt University Berlin.
For the first time in Berlin, Héctor Aristizábal, an internationally known theater of the oppressed practitioner, will create a space for collective meditation after his 30 minutes performance “Nightwind”. Also premiering in Berlin, the moving-image work of Anika Gibbons, Sasha Huber, Joy Elias Rilwan and Jane Thorburn will be presented along the photo series “Platos para los Muertos”(Meals for the Dead) by Yoel Díaz Vázquez dedicated to the Orishas. The exhibition will open with “Poison”, a performance by Charo Oquet , who will involve the audience with her characteristic usage of colour and video projections as healing devices, opening the way to an unprecedented meeting which in the liberating tradition of performance art is free and open to the public.
In the compilation of moving image from previous editions with groundbreaking works by Adler Guerrier,Teresa María Díaz Nerio, Raúl Moarquech Ferrera Balanquet, Mwangi Hutter, Tracey Moffatt, Pascale Obolo and Caecilia Tripp, among others, the public will be able to appreciate how BE.BOP. BLACK EUROPE BODY POLITICS continues its contribution to the radical imagination of European futures in which immigrants are becoming fundamental players.
A project of Art Labour Archives + Kultursprünge im Ballhaus Naunynstraße gemeinnützige GmbH With the friendly support of Heinrich Böll Stiftung, In Cooperation with the English and American Studies Department, Humboldt University Berlin
Events Calendar
Monday May 12
Opening and talk by Ylva Habel
Swedish Exceptionalism: the All-Out Moment
4 pm -Performance by Charo Oquet, Poison
Tuesday May 13
8 pm -Keynote by Walter Mignolo, "Spirituality, Subjectivity And (Im) Migrant Consciousness: The Tasks Ahead"
