Emil Nolde and the afterlife of colonialism
Installation in the «Zwischenraum»
of the MARKK Museum, 2023
of the MARKK Museum, 2023
In 2019, a box from the colonial «Medical-Demographic German New Guinea Expedition», in which Emil Nolde took part, was found in the MARKK archive. In these newly discovered, not yet archived pictures, Emil Nolde can be seen wearing a colonial helmet, as the colonial officials did. From my point of view, he thus casts light and shadows of the past into our time.
But have we ever asked ourselves what it meant to wear a colonial helmet back then? Nolde, after all, lived at a time when racial theories formed a legal and intellectual basis for the problems and institutional violence in which many migrants lived. Nolde is depicted in the photograph wearing a colonial helmet, a characteristic element of the colonial masters in the former colonies, a symbol of power, a symbol of racial difference and ethnic superiority.
This observation is not new, as a contemporary of Nolde, a Nigerian artist named Thomas Ona Odulate, who lived in Nigeria and also experienced the British occupation, used the sculpting techniques of the region to portray Europeans in wooden sculptures as well as their clothing and accessories.This observation is not new, as a contemporary of Nolde, a Nigerian artist named Thomas Ona Odulate, who lived in Nigeria and also experienced the British occupation, used the sculpting techniques of the region to portray Europeans in wooden sculptures as well as their clothing and accessories.
The Installation was part of the Fluctoplasma Festival in the «Zwischenraum» of the MARKK Museum.
But have we ever asked ourselves what it meant to wear a colonial helmet back then? Nolde, after all, lived at a time when racial theories formed a legal and intellectual basis for the problems and institutional violence in which many migrants lived. Nolde is depicted in the photograph wearing a colonial helmet, a characteristic element of the colonial masters in the former colonies, a symbol of power, a symbol of racial difference and ethnic superiority.
This observation is not new, as a contemporary of Nolde, a Nigerian artist named Thomas Ona Odulate, who lived in Nigeria and also experienced the British occupation, used the sculpting techniques of the region to portray Europeans in wooden sculptures as well as their clothing and accessories.This observation is not new, as a contemporary of Nolde, a Nigerian artist named Thomas Ona Odulate, who lived in Nigeria and also experienced the British occupation, used the sculpting techniques of the region to portray Europeans in wooden sculptures as well as their clothing and accessories.
The Installation was part of the Fluctoplasma Festival in the «Zwischenraum» of the MARKK Museum.
The White
Background
Lecture Performance
AIL, Kassenhalle Postsparkasse, 2023
AIL, Kassenhalle Postsparkasse, 2023
Under the inventory number: 2260 and the storage location: K5570, they are registered as: «OBJECT», in the collection group: «Natural materials» under the so-called title: «1 pair of raw rubber shoes». This type of archiving in the Technisches Museum Wien is the surviving testimony to colonialism and the various faces of extractivism. One of these faces is the rubber known at the time as «white gold», the extraction of which is responsible for genocide and yet represents only part of the colonial and post-colonial violence perpetrated in the Amazon region.
In addition to physical violence and its culmination in genocide, other violent strategies were also carried out, representing epistemic extractivism and epistemicide.
The lecture performance establishes a dialogue between selected images, their archives and their «afterlife» as well as their extractivist mechanisms. It explores the question of which types of representations historically served the exploitation of the Other and were used for the extractivism ofrubber. The lecture performance was shown forthe first time in the public programme of Angewandte Festival, exhibition: «stretching across time and space- On the coloniality of objects and projects»
In addition to physical violence and its culmination in genocide, other violent strategies were also carried out, representing epistemic extractivism and epistemicide.
The lecture performance establishes a dialogue between selected images, their archives and their «afterlife» as well as their extractivist mechanisms. It explores the question of which types of representations historically served the exploitation of the Other and were used for the extractivism ofrubber. The lecture performance was shown forthe first time in the public programme of Angewandte Festival, exhibition: «stretching across time and space- On the coloniality of objects and projects»
The City of Hamburg and
the Afterlife of
Colonialism
Installation
Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, 2022
Hamburger Bahnhof Berlin, 2022
In the city of Hamburg, one can discover not only traces of the former colonial metropolis, but also traces of thought patterns that still exist, which have survived and have not ceased to exist - the «coloniality of power» (Aníbal Quijano). Part of these structures can be found - along with the representations of the last century, which are now part of the cultural heritage - in the forms of selective remembrance and conscious forgetting of history, which the city’s plaques of the cultural monuments (Kulturdenkmaltafel) recount.
The «blue plaques» initially try to give a first historical impression of the architecture of Hamburg’s cultural monuments. However, these plaques decide, depending on the building, what kind of memory may be illustrated. To give an example, in the case of buildings with a complicated colonial past, such as the Chile, Africa and Asia House, the colonial part of the past is not mentioned at all. Instead, a memory without memory is created out of the diplomatic formality of selective remembering. The installation «The City of Hamburg and its Afterlife of Colonialism» rewrites this forgotten memory by appropriating the institutional formality. It makes the forgotten both present and visible by showing the colonial traces in the context of other images and reflecting the constructed representations, as a visual form of «acting» (Aby Warburg).
The installation consists of two constructions of site fences that function as two interconnected plaques, forming a visual constellation based on the narratives of representation from institutions (left side) and private spaces (right side) that can bedescribed as «the afterlife of colonialism».
The «blue plaques» initially try to give a first historical impression of the architecture of Hamburg’s cultural monuments. However, these plaques decide, depending on the building, what kind of memory may be illustrated. To give an example, in the case of buildings with a complicated colonial past, such as the Chile, Africa and Asia House, the colonial part of the past is not mentioned at all. Instead, a memory without memory is created out of the diplomatic formality of selective remembering. The installation «The City of Hamburg and its Afterlife of Colonialism» rewrites this forgotten memory by appropriating the institutional formality. It makes the forgotten both present and visible by showing the colonial traces in the context of other images and reflecting the constructed representations, as a visual form of «acting» (Aby Warburg).
The installation consists of two constructions of site fences that function as two interconnected plaques, forming a visual constellation based on the narratives of representation from institutions (left side) and private spaces (right side) that can bedescribed as «the afterlife of colonialism».
Intervention &
City Walk
City Walk
2021 - Today
In the intervention, the plaques of the cultural monuments (Kulturdenkmaltafeln) are overlaid with silk-screen printed tissue paper. The formulated historical counter-narrative on the tissue paper illuminates the colonial past of the institutions, which are not to be found on the official cultural monument plaques because, due to the diplomatic formality of selective remembering, only certain memories find a place in the public space, while other memories are left out and suppressed because they are not supposed to be present as memories in public consciousness. By superimposing the narratives on the «blue plaques» through the semi-transparent tissue paper, both narratives become visible and the conflict between the two disparate narratives is made evident. In this way, both exist in the same space despite their disparity.
We are all
Kanaken
Experimental Documentary20:20 Min. 2021
In his essay film, «Wir sind alle Kanaken», Kervin Saint Pere demonstrates the complex layers of meaning associated with the term «Kanake» which have been violently imposed through European colonialism. The usage of the term is closely tied to racist practices of European colonization in the Global South and continues to be used to legitimize violence today. Saint Pere tackles these colonial practices, for it is through images, non-scientific myths and «theories» that the person designated as Kanake is dehumanized, degraded and marked as the Other and the Stranger.
From the historical postcards and photographs of the colonies that appear in the film, the very people who are being objectified are cut out and ghostly superimposed on filmic archival footage of European expeditions. The created stencils condense the cinematic gaze, magnifying, like a second camera eye on the colonial own gaze. What viewers no longer see in the film are images of people reduced to «scenes of violence», but those who have made these categorizations and devaluations, namely: the Europeans. Saint Pere creates a reversal through this emphasis; the Europeans, who appear as observers in heroic-looking poses, become the critically scrutinized object. The repetition of the sentence «As in the thought patterns of the European colonies» in the voice-over precisely illustrates that the current meanings of the term «Kanake» as guest workers, refugees and so-called non-integrated people are still linked to colonial and racist images. In the past and present, the word serves to legitimize violence through categorizations, to ensure unjust order, and to maintain structures of domination and discrimination.(Cana Bilir-Meier)
From the historical postcards and photographs of the colonies that appear in the film, the very people who are being objectified are cut out and ghostly superimposed on filmic archival footage of European expeditions. The created stencils condense the cinematic gaze, magnifying, like a second camera eye on the colonial own gaze. What viewers no longer see in the film are images of people reduced to «scenes of violence», but those who have made these categorizations and devaluations, namely: the Europeans. Saint Pere creates a reversal through this emphasis; the Europeans, who appear as observers in heroic-looking poses, become the critically scrutinized object. The repetition of the sentence «As in the thought patterns of the European colonies» in the voice-over precisely illustrates that the current meanings of the term «Kanake» as guest workers, refugees and so-called non-integrated people are still linked to colonial and racist images. In the past and present, the word serves to legitimize violence through categorizations, to ensure unjust order, and to maintain structures of domination and discrimination.(Cana Bilir-Meier)
Among
Savages
Experimental Documentary
14:40 min. 2021
Among Savages attempts to deconstruct the Western gaze on «the savage» and its consequences. Alternating, overlapping archival footage and self-produced imagery filmed in the slide archive of the University of Hamburg‘s Department of Art History, as well as postcards from the period, are accompanied by a narrative about an American named Carlos Poppe who produced shrunken heads for profit.
The appropriation and commercialisation of the ritual practice to the point of deliberate killing, the literal hunting of heads to satisfy the increased economic demand for heads by tourists and collectors, raises the question of who is actually the savage. At the same time, the viewer is cynically confronted with documentary and written narratives from the 1940s that present and emphasise the superiority of the work of white male ethnographers. The work opens up a space for complex contexts and connections between narratives of the Other and the categorisation of the Other as savage, uncivilised or exotic, the latter of which remains a popular category in institutional and museum archives to this day.
The appropriation and commercialisation of the ritual practice to the point of deliberate killing, the literal hunting of heads to satisfy the increased economic demand for heads by tourists and collectors, raises the question of who is actually the savage. At the same time, the viewer is cynically confronted with documentary and written narratives from the 1940s that present and emphasise the superiority of the work of white male ethnographers. The work opens up a space for complex contexts and connections between narratives of the Other and the categorisation of the Other as savage, uncivilised or exotic, the latter of which remains a popular category in institutional and museum archives to this day.
©saintperekervin2025