• Fri 02 06 – Sun 02 07 2023 •
"MY LIFE BEGAN SEVERAL CENTURIES AGO"
An Ecosystem of Circulating Images
WITH RAPHAËL GRISEY, BOUBA TOURÉ
CURATED BY AMINATA DIOUF,AGNES STILLGER
With the exhibition "My Life Began Several Centuries Ago", photographer and filmmaker Bouba Touré, together with artist Raphaël Grisey, addresses the question of how decolonial ecologies can be uncovered and made collectively fruitful.
For centuries, the relationship between Africa and Europe has been determined by a hegemonic system of exploitation in terms of a Western-influenced capitalist plantation logic. These colonial continuities and legacies perpetuate asymmetries of power that produce ever new forms of forced migration and displacement.
The exhibition, on view at the ADKDW Studio from 02 06, represents part of Bouba Touré and Raphaël Grisey's joint research and archive project: titled Sowing Somankidi Coura. A Generative Archive, they create a hybrid and living ecosystem of images that brings to light the interconnections between the battlefields of Verdun, the precarious dormitories of African migrant workers in Paris, and the Malian village of Somankidi Coura.
The agricultural cooperative Somankidi Coura, founded in 1977 by former migrant workers and activists in France, became a symbol of self-empowerment: Their "return" to Mali, West Africa, resulted in reappropriation and the creation of a collective utopia based on friendship, solidarity, and care for the land, or, in Bouba Touré's words, in “the awakening of an African consciousness".
Exhibition
Fri 02 06 2023 - Sun 02 07 2023
Opening hours: Fri-Sun | 14:00 - 19:00
or upon request: a.stillger@uni-koeln.de
ADKDW Studio, Herwarthstraße 3, 50672 Cologne
Free entry
The exhibition is part of the curatorial project The Entire Story Starts Where with exhibitions, film screenings, workshops, lecture performances and round table discussions about dynamics of connections and exclusions within global networks, which will take place in different locations throughout Cologne between 15 May and 2 July 2023.
In a public colloquium session on the curatorial project of the Research Training Group" connecting - excluding" on 26 May 2023, Aminata Diouf, Raphaël Grisey and Agnes Stillger will talk about the archive and artistic practices for knowledge production.
Colloquium
Wed 26 05 2023 | 9:00-17:00
University of Cologne, a.r.t.e.s. Graduate School for the Humanities Cologne
Aachener Str. 217, 50931 Köln
3rd floor, room 3.A06 ("Skyfall")
Registration is requested: Mlier@smail.uni-koeln.de
A cooperation of the DFG Research Training Group "connecting – excluding" Cultural Dynamics Beyond Globalized Networks and the Academy of the Arts of the World (Akademie der Künste der Welt, ADKDW) with African Futures Cologne. Funded by the German Research Foundation.
