Programme “We Are All the Other”
« Demounting Doegen»
Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro . curated by Frances Zuma Cooper
the CERA PROJECT . United Kingdom | 30.07.2016
"We always supposed something would give us a definition of who we were, our class position or our national position, our geographic origins or where our grandparents came from, but I don't think any one thing any longer will tell us who we are" - Stuart Hall
“Demounting Doegen” by Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro is a performance that involved 234 black balloons, serving as transmitters or channels for voice recordings from 1910 to 1941. These recordings were prepared by the German colonial project commissioned by the Sound Prussian Commission, under the direction of Wilhelm Doegen, a German linguist responsible for creating the first Museum of World Cultures in Germany. During the span of two world wars, Germany grappled with its identity and political standing by reflecting on its cultural and technological advancements through African heritage and migration. This period, termed as ultra-modernism, sought to re-map Germany's political, and more importantly, colonial power. Doegen was responsible for the gramophone recordings of over 8,000 African prisoners of war detained in colonial camps across Germany. The soldiers' pleas for help were broadcast across the country in exhibition galleries to raise funds for the resettlement of colonies abroad. However, a significant portion of this archive is missing—the voices of the women.
-
Title: "Demounting Doegen"
Curator: Frances Zuma Cooper
Artist: Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro
Dates: 30/07/2016
Venue: the CERA PROJECT (UK). -
Link for the performance leaflet PDF
-
Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro's interdisciplinary practices incorporate a synthesis of collaborative engagements, the development of international community dialogue and body politics through a merging of conceptual responses in live art performance, film, literature & archives. Her practices derive from developing a creative language through cancer physio-therapies in her personal battle with Leukaemia cancer throughout the 90's. Her critical process is informed by discourses of histories, archives and theories on postcolonialism, diaspora, migration, identities, afro & alter modernism and culture. Her work reveals and creates moments of synthesis and harmony between seemingly disparate, bodies of knowledge, cultural traditions and value systems. An exploration of creolised identity, heritage, memory and homeland, the artist investigates systems of colonial past & present, tyranny, dictates of gender, traditions and mythologies. She engages with communities contesting handcrafted economies of art, politics, literature, ecologies and philosophy combining alternative strategies in performance and practice to deconstruct social narratives and work on processes and engagement rather than final products. With her approach both educative and allegorical, Anguezomo Mba Bikoro highlights the different tones of a society shared between delusions and ritual.
-
Frances Zuma Cooper