Beiträge zur dekolonialen Kritik

Under the keyword of decolonial criticism, our own colonial entanglement is currently being reflected in art, science and society. In this discourse, colonialism is not understood as a temporally and spatially distant phenomenon that came to an end with the historical decolonization of the mid-20th century, but rather as a fundamental structuring of modernity. Our world is permeated by a colonial matrix, a grammar that enables, for example, the police law of white settlers in the colony of Deutsch-Südwestafrika as well as the current police practice of racial profiling. Additionally, previously unsuspicious concepts, such as aesthetics and their instruments, such as white cubes and black boxes, appear strangely violent in the new light of decoloniality.

In the symposium, thinkers speak with the audience and with one another about central concepts and contexts for decolonial work in Germany in 2019. We begin with a clarification of terminology. The Zurich-based cultural anthropologist Rohit Jain will order some of the terms currently used in his work, including postcolonialism, (de)colonialism and diversity, addressing them in a European and global context. We continue with a core piece of decolonialism, namely the critique of philosophical universalism. The documenta professor Nora Sternfeld will, in contrast, talk about the history and possibilities of a universalism of the marginal. Last but not least, we will deal with the question of the colonialism of the others. The protest researcher Olga Reznikova will present insights into a non-Western Russian imperialism.

JULIAN WARNER works as a freelance cultural anthropologist at the interface of art and science. He used to be a research assistant at the Institute for Cultural Anthropology of the Georg-August-University Göttingen, dramaturg and performer of various performances by Oliver Zahn as well as dramaturg and ethnographer of Anta Helena Reckes "Schwarzkopie" of Mittelreich. Julian Warner is together with Elisa Liepsch co-editor of the anthology ALLIANZEN - Kritische Praxis an weißen Institutionen and works as curator at the Künstler_innenhaus Mousonturm in Frankfurt, the Sophiensæle in Berlin and the Münchner Kammerspiele. He teaches seminars and workshops at universities and art institutions in Germany and abroad.

NORA STERNFELD is an art mediator and curator. She is a documenta professor at the Kunsthochschule Kassel and co-director of the /ecm master's course in exhibition theory and practice at the University of Applied Arts Vienna. Sternfeld is a founding member of trafo.K (Büro für Bildung, Kunst und kritische Wissensproduktion Wien) and since 2011 part of freethought (Plattform für Forschung, Bildung und Produktion London). She was one of the artistic directors of the Bergen Assembly 2016 and publishes on contemporary art and anti-racism.

ROHIT JAIN is a researcher at the Institute for Social Anthropology and Empirical Cultural Studies (ISEK) at the University of Zurich and works as managing director of the postmigrant Think & Act Tank Institute New Switzerland (INES). He has published on postcolonial public spaces between Switzerland and India. Jain was involved in artistic research projects on the role of gold trading in the public space of Switzerland (Zurich University of the Arts) and on urban citizenship (Shedhalle Zurich) and is co-founder of the racism-critical humourous festival Laugh Up. Stand Up! as well as the Salon Bastarde, a series of postmigrant happenings in Zurich.

OLGA REZNIKOVA studied at the St. Petersburg Institute for Jewish Studies and at the LMU Munich and graduated in European Ethnology, Sociology and Geography at the LMU Munich (2012). Her academic interests include anti-Semitism research, feminist and postcolonial theories, and ethnographic research on workers' protests and strikes. She is currently doing her doctorate at the Georg-August-University in Göttingen in cultural anthropology on the subject of truck driver protests in Russia.