Paper short abstract:

This paper deals with the topic of external artistic, activist and curatorial positions in museums using the example of the exhibition series Counter Images of the Rautenstrauch-Jost Museum Cologne. In collaboration the exhibition explores marginalized images as visual tools for (self-) empowerment.

Paper long abstract:

Images tell stories. But who selects, archives, and presents them? How do they shape or distort memory? How do we "read" old photos today?

Dedicated to the power of the visual and sensitive museum collections and archives, this paper sheds light on exhibiting photographs and the role photography plays when we write, mediate, and remember history.

Almost 200 years after its invention, photography has become a global medium. Never before have so many images been produced and distributed as today. In the beginning, however, it was closely linked to colonialism and ethnology. Western photographers took pictures of people, objects, and landscapes in colonies. In Europe, these images were, and in some cases still are, considered objective – just like the medium of photography itself. In fact, however, they were often used to classify people on the basis of external features in the name of a pseudo-scientific “racial science”. In this way, they contributed significantly to the stereotypes that are still effective today.

This paper refers to the Counter Images exhibition series at the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum in Cologne. In collaboration with artists, curators, and activists the exhibition explores marginalized images as visual tools for (self-) empowerment. Using contemporary works, they reveal the power of images and enable new perspectives. How can these collaborations be more than merely lip service, and what can a critical reframing of sensitive visual collections with external voices look like?

Paper long abstract:

African art though dynamic has changed in form, function, and meaning over time. However, the concept of Indigenous African art has remained static. This is because pre-colonial sacred objects have an aura of untainted timeless past reflecting the way of life of the African people. The colonial encounter with Africa witnessed a rush for African traditional religious artifacts and antiquities which left indelible marks of hostilities and cultural clashes among the African people. These sacred objects carry with them the people who venerate them. Writing from the Cameroonian perspective, Linus Asong in A Crown of Thorns demonstrates this rush from the West for antiquities in Africa through the buying of “Akuekeur”, the people’s god by the German explorer Virchov, from the D.O and his accomplices. This yields financial benefits while at the same time setting ablaze spiritual unity, the one thing that binds the people of Nkonkonoko Small Monje together. The paper is read from the social representations theory of Serge Moscovici which projects the possibility to classify persons and objects, compare and explain behaviours and objectify them as part of our social setting. The paper contends that colonial encounter with Africa, led to the disappearance of many African artifacts and sacred objects, some of which are currently found in European museums as decorations. These have generated debates and a clarion call by Africans for a return of their plundered cultural artifacts back to the African continent.

Keywords: Colonialism, Commodification, Sacred Objects, Social Representations, Linus Asong

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores the manner in which the materiality of colonial criminal law has filtered through to Western museums through a case-study of the Leopard Man statue in the newly renovated Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium, in a ‘fictitious’ storage space.

Paper long abstract:

The colonial encounter with the Man-Leopard murders stand as a symbol of the way in which criminal law was practiced in colonial Africa. As with many other cases of colonial criminal law, such as witchcraft, slavery or the killing of twin children, the murders' investigation was hampered by colonial powers' inability to understand African communities. Also, they were sensationalized and underscored Western racist perceptions of Africa. The murders have been studied from an anthropological perspective, from the perspective of legal history and so has the popular imagery relating to the murders. What has remained neglected is the question to what extent the materiality of colonial criminal law has filtered through to Western museums as a way to illustrate the interconnectedness between colonial regimes and the law as a tool of oppression and control. This paper takes as a case-study the statue of the Leopard Man in the newly renovated Africa Museum in Tervuren, Belgium, where it is put on display in a so-called ‘fictitious’ storage space, where it now remains as (not quite) part of the museum.

Paper short abstract:

My project concerns current societal identity debates, based on colonial photography. Contemporary visualisation of non-white Africans stems from the times of High Imperialism and colonial photography created racist visual patterns of peoples, resulting in sub-Saharan African stereotypes.

Paper long abstract:

Despite past and current social and political developments since Africa´s decolonisation, a visual world order narrative continues to be in place - one that continues to perpetuate a stereotypical image of Africa. A narrative that still has more in common with colonial times than with the 21st century by holding on to visualisations of violence, exploitation, disadvantage, infantilisation, and victimisation. The constant repetition of named visual patterns makes it harder to create and distribute an updated and non-Western identity based on collective memory from the agency of sub-Saharan Africa. The global north´s traditional viewing traditions are viewing traditions that need to be changed.

Long-term effects of colonial stereotyping and othering can be seen in ongoing attempts of identity-finding processes and the creation and maintenance of a collective memory. To change those identity and collective memory creation paths, the power centres with their origins being in the global north need readdressing. In a world of dominant social media outlets, images play a mightier role than before. This increases the importance of researching current movements and events that try to shake down the foundations of the historical visualisation of the sub-Saharan continent by its own constituents. This project is thus to be seen as part of a political and cultural counter movement to the global north. As such, my research aim is to equally analyse continuities as well as breaks within the establishment of a seeing pattern that puts African interests centre point within a twenty-first-century backdrop.