»The Western archive is exhausted!«
Felwine Sarr
TALKING OBJECTS LAB
WHO ARE WE?
TALKING OBJECTS LAB is an artistic research project dedicated to the decolonization of memory and knowledge, unfolding in think tanks, symposiums, artistic interventions, and exhibitions over several years. The curatorial team consists of members from Kenya, Senegal and Germany, the countries where the majority of our activities take place: currently Mahret Ifeoma Kupka, Isabel Raabe, Malick Ndiayé, Njoki Ngumi and Chao Tayiana Maina. The LAB accompanies the TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE, an archive for decolonial knowledge production.
WHAT DO WE DO?
- Challenging the Eurocentric Knowledge system and exploring plural forms and practices of knowledge of the African continent
- Learning from contemporary artists perspectives
- Acknowledging loss, gaps and missing narratives
- Re-evaluating objects as a body of knowledge
- Questioning classical museum forms of preservation and presentation
WHY?
- Breaking up colonial thought patterns
- Challenging Eurocentric views
- Practicing 'epistemic disobedience'
- Fostering decolonial curatorial and artistic practices
HOW?
Poly-perspectivity, breaking with hierarchies of knowledge and accepting that all knowledge is research in progress. Memory, too, is a process, dynamically generated out of the present, which means we will never arrive at something we can call a fact, but rather move through a dynamic network of multiple meanings and possible interpretations. We address the trauma and have a holistic approach to healing in the sense of making things whole.
LONG-TERM GOALS
In the long term, TALKING OBJECTS should contribute to a new ethics of relations between the Global South and the Global North.
The TALKING OBJECTS LAB wants to provide space for long-term research and collaborative learning by taking a long-term approach.
The TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE, planning to launch in 2024, seeks to break with euro-centric knowledge systems and visualize the poly-perspective nature of the knowledge by making the polyphonous body of knowledge around objects visible and accessible.
THE TALKING OBJECT ARCHIVE
WHO ARE WE?
The TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE is a digital platform looking at questions of decolonial knowledge production, to be launched in December 2024. The archive is informed by the accompanying ongoing artistic research project TALKING OBJECTS LAB and is interested in polyperspectivity and plural knowledge systems.
Digital Team:
- Chao Tayiana Maina, Cheryl Ogada, Mutanu Kyanya , Muthoni Mwangi, Wairimũ Nduba (African Digital Heritage)
- Alisa Verzhbiskaya, Danielle Rosales, Robin Coenen (Visual Intelligence)
- Erik Stein
- Isabel Raabe, Jeanne Nzakizabandi (TALKING OBJECTS)
Participating museums:
- Musée Théodore Monod, Dakar
- Grassi Museum für Völkerkunde, Leipzig
- Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Köln
- Museum der Europäischen Kulturen, Berlin
- Museum Angewandte Kunst, Frankfurt
WHAT DO WE DO?
Starting with objects from the collection of European and African Museums we are fanning out a polyphonic universe of knowledge: objects are thus made to speak and serve as door openers. The archive is developed together with African Digital Heritage (Nairobi) and a variety of thinkers and artists experimenting with text, images, audio and video and to create their own cosmologies of objects in digital space.
LONG-TERM GOALS & AUDIENCE
The digital archive will be open to the public and is aimed at researchers, practitioners working in the arts and those interested in decolonial perspectives on knowledge production.
TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE IS FUNDED BY
Die Beauftragt der Bundesregierung für Kultur und Medien/BKM (Federal Cultural Commissioner for Culture and the Media), KfW Stiftung, Heinrich Böll Stiftung, Auswärtiges Amt (Federal Foreign Office)