2024-02-28 | Rehema Chachage: event at Velvel Voice Club, Berlin

We are very happy to share event by our fellow Rehema Cachage, together with Valerie Asiimwe Amani, ‘Restitution - Notes on the Stone, which will happen tomorrow, February 29, at 8 pm, at Roter Salon, Berlin.

Repost: Texte zur Kunst

Velvet Voice Club: “Restitution – Notes on the Stone”

Roter Salon, Volksbühne am Rosa-Luxemburg-Platz

February 29, 2024, 8 pm

Public institutions in the Global North have begun to return cultural objects once looted or otherwise appropriated in colonial contexts back to individuals, communities, and nations on a wider scale. The March issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST focuses on such transferals of ownership and the discourses around them. While the debate in Germany has most prominently focused on the return of the so-called Benin Bronzes looted by the British Empire, it only addresses the tip of the proverbial iceberg. Materials unilaterally removed from, for example, the former colony German East Africa include Berlin’s big museum attraction, the Giraffatitan skeleton, as well as a stone sample purported to be the “Tip of Kilimanjaro,” one half of which is now lost, and the other half currently held somewhere between the many mountains of Austria.

Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani’s contribution to our March issue is about these histories – and much more. Together, the two artists will perform their poetic piece at the Velvet Voice Club. This will be followed by a conversation with Mahret Ifeoma Kupka, who was involved in the conception of this issue of TEXTE ZUR KUNST. Among other things, they will talk about what creative powers could be unleashed if the energy invested in reclaiming the mountains of material culture amassed during colonialism by European museums was rechanneled toward building a future – instead of continuously insisting on redressing past wrongs.

With Valerie Asiimwe Amani, Rehema Cachage, and Mahret Ifeoma Kupka

The event will be held in English.

Image credit: courtesy of Valerie Asiimwe Amani and Rehema Chachage

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