After Year Zero Geographies of Collaboration since 1945 - Haus der ...

After Year Zero 

Geographies of Collaboration since 1945 

19.09. – 24.11.2013 

Opening 18.09.2013, 6pm 

Press Conference 

18.09.2013, 5pm 

Exhibition Hall 

Subject to Change

PRESS CONFERENCE 

Wednesday, September 18, 2013, 5 pm 

Exhbition Hall 

The Press Conference will be hold in German, but we will take care of giving English resumées. 

Speakers: 

Bernd M. Scherer, Director Haus der Kulturen der Welt 

Anselm Franke, Curator 

Annett Busch, Curator 

The artists are present: 

John Akomfrah, Kader Attia, Jihan El‐Tahri , Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, The Otolith Group 

(Anjalika Sagar/Kodwo Eshun 

Please note that the opening of the exhibition with artists’ and curators’ talks will immediately follow the 

press conference at 6 pm. (all talks will be hold in English) 

The project After Year Zero takes as its starting point the realignment of global relationships after the 

Second World War – Europe’s “hour zero” However, it does not recount the post‐1945 confrontation of the 

ideological blocs of the Cold War. Rather, the project focuses on the world‐historical caesura of 

decolonization and the associated attempt to fundamentally challenge and transform the framework 

conditions of the era of colonial modernity. The exhibition brings together installations and films – 

including four new productions – by John Akomfrah, The Otolith Group, Kader Attia, Yervant Gianikian & 

Angela Ricci Lucchi, and Jihan El‐Tahri, which deal with the history of the colonial modernity and 

decolonization after 1945. 

After Year Zero is curated by Anselm Franke and Annett Busch in cooperation with the participating 

artists of the exhibition and research curator Heidi Ballet. 

Exhibition architecture and graphic design by Zak Group. 

After Year Zero is a production of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. The project After Year Zero is based on a 

series of workshops held in 2012 in Algiers, Dakar, Paris, and Johannesburg under the title “Matters of 

Collaboration,” in cooperation with the Goethe‐Institut Brussels and with funding from the “Excellence” 

program of the Goethe‐Institut. 

Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John‐Foster‐Dulles‐Allee 10, 10557 Berlin, 

Fon +49 30 397 87‐153, Fax +49 30 3948679, presse@hkw.de, www.hkw.de

PRESS RELEASE 

AFTER YEAR ZERO 


Exhibition 

Sept. 19–Nov. 24, 2013 

Opening Sept. 18, 2013, 6 pm onwards 

Exhibition Wed.–Mon. and bank holidays 11:00 am–7:00 pm 

Admission €6 / €4 reduced 

Conference 

Geographies of Collaboration I and II 

Oct. 3–5, 2013 and Nov. 23–24, 2013 

Berlin, September 18, 2013 

The project After Year Zero takes as its starting point the realignment of global relationships after the 

Second World War – Europe’s “hour zero” However, it does not recount the post-1945 confrontation of the 

ideological blocs of the Cold War. Rather, the project focuses on the world-historical caesura of 

decolonization and the associated attempt to fundamentally challenge and transform the framework 

conditions of the era of colonial modernity. Its central point of reference is the first Afro-African conference, 

held in 1955 in Bandung, Indonesia, at which some 600 delegates from 29 nations and liberation 

movements drafted a model for collaboration by the global South under the banner of an anti-colonial 

modernity. This milestone in the history of decolonization launched, among other things, the Non-Aligned 

Movement. “Year Zero” here designates an historical break, the beginning of a new time reckoning, a 

symbolic reference point for a social order. 

In their contributions to the exhibition “After Year Zero” and the conference “Geographies of Collaboration,” 

artists, filmmakers, and theoreticians pursue specific exemplary questions concerning the politics of 

historiography and the articulation of historical consciousness. For instance, how has the Pan-African 

movement positioned itself and changed since 1900? What role did an analysis of the continuity of colonial 

history and fascism play in the liberation movements? What echoes has the Négritude movement had in 

global pop culture since 1945? 

This investigation does not revolve around the confrontation, or the separation of identities, between the 

global North and South, but around models and geographies of collaboration, and reflection on the 

processes by which the “universal” is generated. By highlighting particular historical developments, it takes 

into account the fundamental interconnection of European and African history along with their respective 

narratives. A picture emerges of the continuing challenge posed by colonial history and its aftermath for 

prevalent historical models and political consciousness. 

The exhibition brings together installations and films – including four new productions – by John Akomfrah, 

The Otolith Group, Kader Attia, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, and Jihan El-Tahri, which deal with 

the history of the colonial modernity and decolonization after 1945. John Akomfrah, recipient of numerous 

film awards and cofounder of the Black Audio Film Collective, shows two video installations. In a new work, 

he takes on the relationship of the language of the liberation movements to the political realities in the 

former colonies in Africa. “The Unfinished Conversation” (2012) is devoted to the cultural theorist Stuart 

Hall and his vision of a post-racial society, as well as his views of the global developments and dislocations of 

the 1950s. The London artists’ collective The Otolith Group, initiated by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, 

mounts a new production for HKW that reflects on the Pan-African horizon of expectation for 

decolonization, taking as an example Ghana after its independence from Britain in 1957. In his works, Kader 

Attia investigates cultural practices of mutual appropriation and representation between Africa and 

Europe. His new production examines the interconnection of colonial history and the Christian mission, 

focusing on the Vatican’s vast collection of African art and cult objects, which is largely withhold from public 

Press Contact: Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Anne Maier, John-Foster-Dulles-Allee 10, 10557 Berlin, 

Fon +49 30 397 87-153, Fax +49 30 3948679, presse@hkw.de, www.hkw.de

PRESS RELEASE 

view. The four-channel installation by Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, based on years of 

archival research, sheds light on Fascist Italy’s imperial war in Ethiopia and Eritrea, and on the psychology 

of “fascistic man.” The question of power and its influence on the people who possess it runs throughout 

the works of the author and filmmaker Jihan El-Tahri. For the exhibition, she has compiled archive 

materials and in-depth interviews from the decolonization era that highlight the historical and 

contemporary role of Egypt. Other contributions include e.g. Project Travelling Communiqué (Zoran Erić, 

Kodwo Eshun/The Otolith Group, Armin Linke, Doreen Mende, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić, Stevan 

Vuković). 

A conference in October and November surveys diverse “geographies of collaboration,” working with the 

potential of the gray area in this term. It deals with, among other things, the implicit parameters of the 

global order and the essential role of Africa in the European construction of a universal history. Further, it 

discusses the historic significance of the Bandung conference of 1955 – including for the construction of 

the Congress Hall in Berlin (re-named 1989 as Haus der Kulturen der Welt and actual venue of After Year 

Zero – and the history of the global influence of African music, and it delves into the changeable categories 

of the “universal” in the production of art and culture. 

The project includes an online publication with contributions by authors, artists, and academics. 

After Year Zero opens on Wednesday, September 18, at 6 pm with artist discussions between The Otolith 

Group, John Akomfrah, and Kader Attia, and the curators, Anselm Franke and Annett Busch, as well as a 

screening with Jihan El-Tahri. 

Additionally, on Thursday, September 19, beginning at 6 pm, HKW will show two film rarities in the 

context of After Year Zero: At 6:00 pm From the Pole to the Equator 

Directors: Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi, Italy 1986, 101 min., silent film, followed by a Q&A 

session with the filmmakers. 

Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi journey into the universe of Luca Comerio, who with his 1920 documentary film 

of the same name created the myth of heroic European colonialism, in particular that of Fascist Italy. 

This will be followed at 8:30 pm by Cuba, an African Odyssey 

Director: Jihan El-Tahri, France 2007, 120 min., original version with English subtitles, with an introduction 

by the filmmaker. 

Fidel Castro and Che Guevara took the 1961 assassination of Patrice Lumumba, the first Prime Minister of 

the postcolonial Republic of Congo, as a sign that the African liberation movement was threatened with cooption 

by the West. This launched the era of Cuba’s active exertion of influence on freedom movements in 

Africa: a Cuban odyssey. 

After Year Zero is curated by Anselm Franke and Annett Busch in cooperation with the participating 

artists of the exhibition and research curator Heidi Ballet. 

Exhibition architecture and graphic design by Zak Group. 

After Year Zero is a production of the Haus der Kulturen der Welt. 

The project After Year Zero is based on a series of workshops held in 2012 in Algiers, Dakar, Paris, and Johannesburg 

under the title “Matters of Collaboration,” in cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Brussels and with funding from the 

“Excellence” program of the Goethe-Institut. 

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is an official partner of BERLIN ART WEEK www.berlinartweek.de 

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and the 

Federal Foreign Office. 

Further information: www.hkw.de/en/afteryearzero 

Photos for download: www.hkw.de/en/pressefotos 



DURING BERLIN ART WEEK 

18.9.2013 

Eröffnung 

Gespräche mit Künstlern und Kuratoren 

Opening 

Talks with artists and curators 

ab 18 h / from 6pm 

Musik und Bar 

Music and Bar 

20:30 h / 8:30pm 

19.9.2013 

Screening: From the Pole to the Equator 

18 h / 6pm 

Anschließend Diskussion mit den Filmemachern Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi. 

Followed by a discussion with the directors. 

Screening: Cuba, an African Odyssey 

20:30 h / 8:30pm 

mit einer Einführung der Filmemacherin Jihan El-Tahri. 

Introduced by the director Jihan El-Tahri. 

22.9.2013 

Ausstellungsführung 

Guided exhibition tour 

15 h / 3pm 



LIST OF WORKS 

John Akomfrah 

The Unfinished Conversation, 2012 

3 channel HD video installation, color, sound, 46 min 

John Akomfrah 

Transfigured Night, 2013 

Double channel HD video installation, color, sound, 30 min 

All works courtesy the artist, Carroll Fletcher 

Jihan El‐Tahri 

Flag Moments, 2013 

Single channel video, b/w, sound, 6 min 39 sec 


Interviews with Mokhtar Hallouda, Victor Moche, Prince Amr Al‐Faisal, 2013 

Single channel video, color, sound, 17 min 51 sec / 30 min / 18 min 46 sec 


The Price of Aid, 2009 

Single channel video, color, sound, 11 min (excerpt) 

All works courtesy the artist 

The Otolith Group 

In the Year of the Quiet Sun, 2013 

Single channel HD video installation, color, sound, 25 min 

Courtesy the artists 

Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi 

Imperium, 2013 

Mixed media installation with 4 channel video installation, color, sound, 3 min 10 sec 


Kader Attia 

Dispossession, 2013 

Installation with double slide projection (2x 80 colour slides) and video, color, sound, 13 min 

Courtesy the artist, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Galerie Krinzinger, Galeria Continua 



THE ARTISTS 

John Akomfrah 

John Akomfrah, a creative artist and cultural activist, has produced various documentaries, feature films 

and gallery installations, all of which have won prizes and critical acclaim across Africa, Asia, Europe and 

North America. Known principally as one of the originators of Black British Cinema ‐ and latterly as a 

trailblazer for British digital cinematography, Akomfrah was a founding member of the Black Audio Film 

Collective, the seminal British filmmaking collective. His film essay documentary, Handsworth Songs 

(1986) won international prizes, including the BFI John Grierson Award For Documentary. Since then 

John’s work has been shown in a variety of galleries and exhibitions and he was made a European Cultural 

laureate by the European Cultural Foundation (2012). His most recent pieces of work are Peripeteia, 

Psyche, At the Graveside of Andre Tarkovsky and The Stuart Hall Project, a single channel work premiered 

at the 2013 Sundance Film Festival in World Documentary Competition. 


Born into an Algerian family in France, Kader Attia spent his childhood between the two countries. 

The going back and forth between the Christian Occident and the Islamic Maghreb have had a profound 

impact on his work. It tackles the relations between the Western Thought and extra‐Occidental cultures, 

particularly through Architecture, the Human body, History, Nature, Culture and Religions. 

The philosopher and artist’s first solo exhibition was held in 1996 in the Democratic Republic of Congo. He 

gained international recognition at the 50th Venice Biennale (2003). His recent exhibitions 

include Reparatur 5.Acts, a solo show at KW Institute for Contemporary Art Berlin, Construire, 

Déconstruire, Reconstruire : Le Corps Utopique, a solo show at Musée d'Art Moderne de la Ville de Paris, 

dOCUMENTA(13) Kassel, Performing Histories (1) at MoMA, New York, the 4th Moscow Biennale, The 

Global Contemporary. Art World after 1989, ZKM, Karlsruhe, Contested Terrains, Tate Modern, London. 


Milan‐based filmmakers Yervant Gianikian and Angela Ricci Lucchi work together since 1970. They are 

renowned for their accomplished work with archival footage derived principally from the beginning of the 

20th century. Much of their work is explicitly political and grounded in the idea of the cinematic apparatus 

as a detached observer of modernity's vast upheavals: colonialism, war and statelessness. Their films have 

been presented at several film festivals around the world such as Cannes Film Festival, Venice Film 

Festival, Rotterdam Film Festival, Berlinale, Filmoteca Espanola Madrid and FID Marseille. Their most 

recent work 'Pays Barbare' premiered at the Locarno Film Festival in August 2013 and will tour to the 

Toronto Film Festival among other festivals. Their video installations have been shown at the 2001 Venice 

Biennial; Maison Hugo, Paris (both curated by Harald Szeemann), Jeu de Paume, Paris; MoMA, New York; 

Tate Modern, London, and Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago among other places. More recently 

their work featured in the 2012 Taipei Biennial and the 2013 Venice Biennial. 



THE ARTISTS 


Founded in 2002 by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun, The Otolith Group’s work explores the histories and 

potentials of science fiction and Tricontinentalism. Recent solo exhibitions include Thoughtform, Museu 

d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona and MAXXI Museo nazionale delle arti del XXI secolo, Rome, 2011; A 

Lure a Part Allure Apart, Betonsalon, Paris, 2011, Westfailure, Project 88, Mumbai, 2012 and Medium 

Earth, REDCAT, Los Angeles, 2013. 

Recent group exhibitions include There is always a cup of sea to sail in: 29th Biennial de Sao Paulo, 2010; In 

the Days of the Comet: British Art Show 7, Hayward Gallery, London, 2011, dOCUMENTA (13), Kassel, 

2012, ECM: A Cultural Archaeology, Haus der Kunst, Munich, 2013 and The Whole Earth: California and 

the Disappearance of the Outside, Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, 2013. 

In 2010, The Otolith Group was nominated for the Turner Prize. 


El‐Tahri, an Egyptian and French director and producer of documentary films, started her working career 

as a journalist. Between 1984 and 1990 she worked as a news agency correspondent and TV researcher 

covering Middle East politics. In 1990 she began directing and producing documentaries for French 

television, the BBC and other international broadcasters. Since then she has directed more than a dozen 

films including the Emmy nominated The House of Saud, which explores the Saudi/US relations through 

the portraits of the Kingdom’s monarchs. The Price of Aid, a film about the system of International Food 

Aid, has won the 2004 European Media prize and with Cuba: An African Odyssey El‐Tahri has also received 

international awards. Her most recent feature documentary Behind the Rainbow, released in 2009, 

examines the transitional process in South Africa. El‐Tahri has also written two books, The 9 Lives of 

Yasser Arafat and Israel and the Arabs: the 50 Years War. 



THE PANELISTS 

Armin Linke, Doreen Mende, The Otolith Group, Branimir Stojanović, Milica Tomić, Stevan Vuković 

‐ authors of Project "Travelling Communiqué. Reading a Photo Archive (1948–1980) Museum of 

Revolution 25. Mai, Yugoslavia" 

The research/project is conceived by Armin Linke (artist, Berlin/Milano), Doreen Mende 

(curator/theorist, Berlin/London) and Milica Tomic (artist, Belgrade) with the Museum of Yugoslav 

History in Belgrade, supported by the Goethe Institute Belgrade. Since then, Fabian Bechtle (artist, 

Berlin), Estelle Blaschke (photography historian, Berlin), Zoran Eric (art historian/curator, 

Belgrade), Theo Eshetu (filmmaker, Rome), Maja Hodoscek (artist, Ljubljana), Pramod Kumar (archive 

historian, New Dheli), Milica Lopicic (architect, Belgrade), The Otolith Group (artists/theorists, 

London), Olga Manojlovic Pintar (historian, Belgrade), Ana Sladojevic (theorist/curator, 

Belgrade), Branimir Stojanovic (philosopher/psychoanalyst, Belgrade), Jelena Vesic (curator/theorist, 

Belgrade/Maastricht), and Stevan Vukovic (philosopher/curator, Belgrade) contribute to project to 

en/counter the Non‐Aligned Movement in relation to its topicalities, double binds, architectures, and 

economics. 

Adekeye Adebajo (Cape Town) 

Adekeye Adebajo has been Executive Director of the Centre for Conflict Resolution (CCR), Cape Town, 

South Africa, since 2003. He served on United Nations missions in South Africa, Western Sahara, and Iraq. 

Dr. Adebajo is the author of four books on: Building Peace in West Africa; Liberia’s Civil War; The Curse of 

Berlin: Africa After the Cold War; and UN Peacekeeping in Africa: From the Suez Crisis to the Sudan Conflicts; 

and co‐editor or editor of seven books on: managing global conflicts; the United Nations; the European 

Union; West African security; and South Africa and Nigeria’s foreign policies in Africa. He obtained his 

doctorate from Oxford University in England, where he studied as a Rhodes Scholar. 

Nabil Ahmed (London) 

Nabil Ahmed is an artist and writer whose works have been presented internationally including at The 

2012 Taipei Biennale, Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin, The Centre for Possible Studies Serpentine 

Gallery, and South Asian Visual Arts Centre (SAVAC) in Toronto. He has written for Third Text, Media 

Field Journal and the forthcoming books Architecture and the paradox of Dissidence and is co‐curator at 

Call & Response, an artist run sound art project based in London. He is currently a PhD candidate at the 

Centre for Research Architecture at Goldsmiths, University of London where he also teaches. 

Garnette Cadogan (New York) 

Garnette Cadogan is an independent scholar and freelance writer whose work focuses on arts and culture 

and their intersection with the history of ideas. He is the co‐editor of the forthcoming "Oxford Handbook 

of the Harlem Renaissance" and is at work on a book about rock‐reggae superstar Bob Marley. He lives in 

New York City. 



THE PANELISTS 

Rangoato Hlsane (Johannesburg) 

Rangoato Hlasane is a visual artist, illustrator and DJ as well as the co‐director of the independent and 

interdisciplinary Keleketla! Library based in Johannesburg. His investigation focuses on the role of the arts 

in mobilising communities. He coordinated collaborative community based arts and development projects 

around South Africa using inter‐generational and interdisciplinary dialogue as a tool for education and 

empowering young people from all backgrounds. 

James T. Hong (Taiwan) 

Based in Taiwan, James T. Hong is a US‐born, independent filmmaker and artist whose works shed light 

on philosophical topics and figures, controversial race and class issues, and historical conflicts in Asia. His 

last film “Cutaways of Jiang Chun Gen ‐ Forward and Back Again” was shown in the Forum expanded 

section of the 2013 Berlinale. 

Keyti (Dakar) 

Keyti is known as one of the pioneers of Senegalese hip‐hop. With his group Rapadio he offered a radical 

approach to hip‐hop as a means to empower the people and address crucial political and societal issues. 

He is now, with Xuman, the host of Jounal Rappé, a successful news bulletin performed in rap coming 

every week on Senegalese tv. 

Bongani Madondo (Johannesburg) 

Bongani Madondo is a writer and cultural critic from South Africa. He has published on literature, music, 

and the politics of style and race matters. Among other awards, he received the SALA Literary Journalism 

Award in 2007 and the Steve Biko Advancement of Journalism Fellowship. His new book, "Sigh The 

Beloved Country", a collection of essays, long form journalism and memoir is due out at the end of 2013 

while his book on Brenda Fassie will be published in 2014. 

Rastko Močnik (Ljubljana) 

Rastko Močnik is a sociologist and literary theorist who also translates and teaches theory of discourse, 

theoretical sociology and epistemology of the humanities and social sciences at the University of Ljubljana. 

He has been involved in various political initiatives as well as campaigns and published numerous sociopolitical 

books. His recent books are based on the theories of ideology, nation and institution. 



THE PANELISTS 

Fred Moten (Los Angeles) 

Fred Moten is a poet and student of the black radical tradition. He is author of In the Break: The Aesthetics 

of the Black Radical Tradition, Hughson’s Tavern, B. Jenkins, The Undercommons: Fugitive Planning and 

Black Study (with Stefano Harney), and The Feel Trio. He lives in Los Angeles and teaches at the University 

of California, Riverside. 

Charles Tonderai Mudede (Seattle) 

Charles Tonderai Mudede is a writer, filmmaker, and cultural critic born in Zimbabwe and based in 

Seattle. He is an Associate Editor for the weekly The Stranger, a Contributing Editor for The Black Scholar, 

and a lecturer in English Humanities at Pacific Lutheran University, Washington. 

Shirin Rai (Warwick) 

Shirin Rai is a political scientist and professor in the department of Politics and International Studies at 

the University of Warwick, UK. Her research interests are in post‐colonial governance, processes 

of democratization, gender and politics. She is the author of “The Gender Politics of Development” (2008) 

and editor of “Ceremony and Ritual in Parliament” (2010). 



ABOUT “THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION” 

Smoking Dogs Films 

THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION 

A three screen gallery installation by John Akomfrah 

The Narrative Construction Of Reality (1983): this was an essay based on a television interview Stuart Hall 

gave to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation. In many ways, that essay will be our starting point and 

will ultimately be what this project is about 

THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is a three screen “ narrative construction” of the multiple realities of 

one the world’s most eminent thinkers – a thinker who is both a product of Europe and the Caribbean ; a 

thinker whose interests and concerns straddle across a range of disciplines and areas . These include 

Marxism, Nuclear Disarmament, Culture, Race, Television, Cultural Politics, Diasporic Identities. THE 

UNFINISHED CONVERSATION will be about revisiting these multiple lives, about creating a series of lived 

wholes out of the sum of these discreet parts. 

THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is an exercise in what Jacques Derrida calls Hauntology, an exercise in 

‘spectrapoetics’ in which a life is examined in the search for ghosts and phantoms that haunt it. 

Constructed as a set of moving image pieces and functioning somewhere between a history of post war 

Europe and a biography of Hall, between a film essay and a gallery installation, THE UNFINISHED 

CONVERSATION is about reconfiguring these interests and lives in a gallery setting. 

And this narrative approach is propelled by a set interlocking themes culled from the worlds of the social 

sciences, photography, literature, cinema, critical theory, black Atlantic histories and philosophy. 

THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is the third part of the trilogy that started with Mnemosyne and then 

The Nine Muses, two award winning archive based films, the first a site specific gallery installation the 

second a cinema version that opened at the Venice Biennale and then the Sundance Film Festival. Many of 

our new archeological moves in THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION will involve the insights, ideas, 

memories, and recollections of and by Stuart Hall, many developed and taught during his time formulating 

the faculty and the course at the Birmingham Centre for Contemporary Cultural Studies. A set of courses 

that imagined a whole new way of looking at the world. 

Hall arrived in the UK from Jamaica in the 1950’s, graduated from Oxford and from that moment became a 

tour de force on the New Left along with intellectual giants EP Thompson and Raymond Williams. 

The presence of Stuart Hall straddles the imagined, factual and invented worlds of THE UNFINISHED 

CONVERSATION. Hall’s ideas, voice, memories, recollections, inventions and insights will be our key 

narrative spur in a work structured by two final oppositions – between the imagination and the 

unimaginable. 

For John Akomfrah and Smoking Dogs Films, THE UNFINISHED CONVERSATION is a project about one of 

the most highly respected intellectual figures of our time, and one whose range of work covers every 

aspect of today’s modern society. On Hall’s 80 th birthday this year, he said that the question of identity, a 

central tenant in his train of thought, is “ an ever unending unfinished conversation”. 




Director – John Akomfrah 

The child of radical political activists who was born in Accra (Ghana) in 1957, John Akomfrah is one of the 

influential figures of the 80s black British cultural scene. As an artist, lecturer, writer, critic and film 

director, his twenty-five year body of work is considered among the most distinctive and innovative to be 

produced in contemporary Britain. 

A musician, photographer, Super 8 filmmaker and enthusiast in his teenage years, Akomfrah was also a 

founder member of various cine-clubs in London throughout the late seventies and early eighties. And 

through these organizations helped to champion a wide range of cinemas including Asian and European 

art house, the militant cinemas of Africa and Latin America as well as American independent and avantgarde 

cinemas to minority audiences. 

A disciple of punk’s DIY aesthetic, Akomfrah in 1982 helped found the Black Audio Film Collective, the 

seminal, cine- cultural workshop and directed a broad range of work within this critically acclaimed outfit 

- fiction films, tape slides, single screen gallery pieces, experimental videos, creative documentaries and 

music videos. Lyrical, poetic and essayistic, his work has always traversed the worlds of fiction and nonfiction, 

cinema and television, the art gallery and the film festival. 

His 1986 film essay, Handsworth Songs – a film essay that explored migration and memory - brought 

Akomfrah to the international circuit. And the film won seven international prizes including the 

prestigious John Grierson Award For Best Documentary in 1987. 

His début feature film, Testament was a moving story on African political exile that premiered at Cannes, 

(Semaine De La Critique) in 1980 and went on to win five international film prizes at festivals. 

John’s films have explored many facets of a multi cultural and multi racial Britain. His second feature film, 

the award winning Who Needs A Heart (1991) looked at the emergence of a the radical Black Power 

Movement in 1970’s Britain, while his documentary, A Touch Of The Tar Brush, (1990) celebrated the 

200 year history of multi racial communities in Liverpool. His documentary, RIOT (1998) Told by the 

real people who lived traced the real events that lead to the mass disturbances and riots of 1981 in 

Liverpool. His feature film Speak Like A Child (1997) is an intimate story of a group of children, byracial 

and white who are bought up in a remote children’s home. 




His drama-documentary Prostitutes (1996) look at the lives of women, mainly new migrants forced into 

prostitution. And his documentary, Goldie, British Drum and Base (1999) looked at the complex life of 

an abandoned by-racial child and his painful rise to fame. Stan Tracey, The God father Of British Jazz, 

(2001) his feature documentary, told through the life of pianist Stan Tracey is an intimate portrait on how 

Black American Jazz created the British Jazz scene. The Genome Chronicles II (2008) his film on the 

Black British Artist, Donald Rodney struggling to live through the last stages of his life battling against the 

chronicle illness, sickle cell anemia. 

And his recent Gallery film, Mnemosyne (2009) is a retelling of the post war mass migration to Britain of 

people from the Caribbean, India and Africa to the west Midlands Area, Mnemosyne’s gallery success 

gave birth to John’s latest film the award wining, The Nine Muses, (2010) which is now the feature 

documentary on post war mass migration to Britain of people from the Caribbean, India and Africa. 

John’s other area of interest has been in African American icons and his films have explored the lives of 

such historic figures such as Malcolm X (Seven Songs for Malcolm X, 1993) and Martin Luther King, 

Days of Hope (1997) and Louis Armstrong (The Wonderful World 1999). 

John is also one of the earliest exponents digital filmmaking in Britain with films such as The Cheese And 

The Worms (1996), Goldie (1999), Stalkers (2000) and Digitopia (2001). 

In 2000, Akomfrah was awarded the prestigious Gold Digital Award at the CHEONJU INTERNATONAL 

FILM FESTIVAL in South Korea for “the most impressive use of digital technology” on three films: RIOT 

(2000), THE CALL OF MIST (1998) and THE WONDERFUL WORLD OF LOUIS ARMSTRONG (1999). 

Since 1987 Akomfrah’s work has also been shown in a variety of galleries across the world. These include 

two shows at the Documenta (Germany) as well as shows at the De Balie (Holland); Centre George 

Pompidou 

(France); the Serpentine and Whitechapel Galleries (United Kingdom); Museum of Modern Art and The 

Walker Arts Centre (United States). 

A retrospective of Akomfrah’s gallery based work with the Black Audio Film Collective entitled ,“The 

Ghosts Of Songs” recently premiered in England (at the FACT and Arnolfini galleries) and is set to tour 

the rest of Europe this year. 

Established as one of the pioneers of digital cinema in the United Kingdom Akomfrah was awarded the 

prestigious Gold Digital Award at the Cheonju International Film Festival (South Korea) in 2000 for “the 

most impressive use of digital technology”. 

From 2001 to 2007, John Akomfrah was a Governor of the British Film Institute. And he is currently a 

Governor of film organization, Film London. He is Visiting Professor In Film at the University Of 

Westminster (United Kingdom). 

John has lectured throughout the world in a range of institutions including - the California Institute of 

Arts; the Art Institute of Chicago; the Tisch School of Art, New York; The London Institute. 

His most recent productions are Mnemosyne, a gallery installation, and the Nine Muses a feature 

documentary. 




Mnemosyne premiered at the Public Gallery in west Bromwich and then opened at the British Film 

Institute Gallery for two months in 2010. The installation opened in the Portuguese gallery in ,Carpe Diem 

and will be on show until the end of November 2011. 

The Nine Muses had its world premiere at the 2010 Venice Biennale Film Festival and went on to screen at 

some of the most prestigious international festivals in official selection, including, London, Dubai, 

Sundance, Karlovy Vary, Jeonju, Rio De Janeiero, Trinidad and Tobago, Vancouver and Sheffield with a one 

week theatrical run at Museum Of Modern Art in New York in October 2011. 

In January 2008 Akomfrah was awarded an OBE, for his “ contribution to the Film Industry ” and was 

presented with the Princess Margriet Award and made “European Cultural Foundation Laureate in 

Brussels in March 2012 . 

Producer: 

Producer: 

Production Company: 

Director: 

David Lawson 

+447879424 645 

David@smokingdogsfilms.com 

Lina Gopaul 

+447867 517086 

Lina@smokingdogsfilms.com 

Smoking Dogs Films 

26 Shacklewell Lane, London E8 2EZ; UK 

John Akomfrah 




Geographies of Collaboration since 1945



Exhibition 19.09.2013 – 24.11.2013 

The year 1945,⎯the “Year Zero” of Germany and Europe,⎯brought 

a reordering of global relationships. This political realignment 

is not recounted here as a history of the Cold War ideological 

blocs. Rather, the project focuses on the respective developments 

of European history and African history over the course 

of decolonization, on the ways in which they intertwined, and 

on the attempt by actors during this period to fundamentally 

transform the framework conditions of the colonial modern era. 

Probing deeply into specific exemplary questions, the exhibition 

and conference explore the politics of historiography 

and of the articulation of historical consciousness. The central 

point of reference is the first Asian-African conference, better 

known as the Bandung Conference, held in 1955 in Bandung, 

Indonesia, at which 600 delegates from 29 nations and liberation 

movements drafted a model for collaboration in the global South 

under the banner of an anti-colonial modernity⎯– a milestone 

in the history of decolonization that saw the launch of the Non- 

-Aligned Movement. The installations and films in the exhibition,⎯including 

four new productions,⎯highlight historical case 

studies along with their inscribed, and still competing, narratives. 

The talks, lectures, and films of the conference in October 

and November 2013 will survey “geographies of collaboration”, 

illuminating the gray areas in the way this term has been used 

over time. 

Vitrine 1 &€4 

Geographies of Collaboration Before and After 1945 

The idea of Pan-Africanism originated in the European metropolises 

at the beginning of the twentieth century, through the 

meeting of widely traveled, politically astute intellectuals. It 

developed from the simple and far-reaching insight that Africa 

could be greater than a single continent. Although this Africa 

was more imagination than experience, it nevertheless served 

as a blueprint for the formulation of a common interest directed 

against European colonial powers; it formed a potential connecting 

element between students, dock workers, university 

professors, artists, activists, or soldiers, whether in Europe, 

the Caribbean islands, or the United States. Marxist theory 

and analysis, and the concept of internationalism, served 

as resources, but not as ideologies, and were adapted and 

developed in the process. 

The idea of Pan-Africanism transformed and was realised 

from 1900 onwards as a congress movement (through the 

visionary initiator W. E. B. Du Bois) and briefly as a mass 

movement (through the businessman and journalist Marcus 

Garvey). As a harbinger and an organizational form, Pan- 

Africanism enabled Africa to take a seat at the negotiating table, 

at least in the forums of the United Nations. When Ghana became 

the first African country to gain independence in 1957, it was 

only possible thanks to years of preparation and collaboration. 

In the 1960s Pan-Africanism formed the intellectual basis for 

tri-continental networking (Havana, 1966), and became established 

on the African continent as a politically pragmatic 

organizational form: as the OAU (Organization of African Unity), 

and from 2002 as the AU (African Union), which was largely 

propagated and financed by Muammar Gaddafi. With his speech 

in the middle of the 1990s, “I am an African,” the South African 

President Thabo Mbeki once again evoked the old spirit, 

remodelling Kwame Nkrumah’s farsighted idea of the “United 

States of Africa” into a potential liberal economic union.

Vitrine 2 

The New World Order 

Between 1945 and 1989 the competing systems of the bloc 

confrontation and the associated models of the world order 

determined the historical-political consciousness in the Northern 

hemisphere. Berlin, the city that symbolized Nazi terror, now 

became symbolic of the Iron Curtain. Parallel to this ran the 

“Color Curtain”, separating the colonial world from the imperialist 

centers and their domestic societies. The collapse of civilization 

in the center of Europe conclusively robbed European 

colonialism of the basis of its legitimacy:⎯the universalist 

ideology of its civilizing mission, which could only be upheld 

through racist hierarchies and pseudo-science. During the 

war the Allies won the loyalty of the colonial population through 

the promise to accord them the right to self-determination, 

which had already been made during the First World War, and 

was subsequently broken. Even after 1945 this promise could 

only be redeemed through violence. The liberation movements 

drew on a history of ideas, at the center of which stood the 

possibility of the actual realization of the universalist promise 

of modernity. It was at the Afro-Asian Conference held in 

the Indonesian city of Bandung Conference in 1955 that this 

demand was met and the right to self-determination became 

a political reality. 

Vitrine 3 

“Year Zero”: Entry into History 

The third vitrine exposes some of France’s entangled relationships 

with its former colonies, and the ambivalence and 

contradictory attitude of its government when dealing with 

its colonial past. By means of “historical laws,” some with 

revisionist flavors, the French governments of the last decade 

have attempted to harness the historiography of the national 

collective memory. Meanwhile, behind the scenes of power, 

dubious deals concluded between France and its former African 

colonies have contributed to the formation of an elaborate network 

of economic and diplomatic alliances known as Françafrique. 

At different times other collaborations relating to France and 

its colonies have taken place: the French revolutionary masses 

joined the fight for the abolition of slavery; the contact and 

exchange of ideas between black Francophone intellectuals 

and their Surrealist counterparts shaped the theoretical basis 

of anti-colonialism.

Vitrine 5 

The Suez Canal 

The fifth vitrine has been conceived by the Egyptian filmmaker 

Jihan El-Tahri. The collected material depicts the evolution of 

the role of the Suez Canal as a vital strategic artery in both colonial 

and post-colonial history. The shortcut provided by the canal 

between Africa and Europe facilitated access to the colonies 

and opened new trade routes. Gamal Abdel Nasser’s decision 

to nationalize the canal in 1956 was a turning point in North- 

South relations, which plunged Egypt into the heart of the Cold 

War. The ensuing war became an international crisis,⎯a battle 

of wills⎯between the former colonial masters and the new leaders 

fighting for true independence. The Suez Crisis ended with the 

embarrassing resignation of Britain’s Prime Minister Anthony 

Eden, while victory for Nasser opened an alternative chapter 

in the New World Order. 

Vitrine 6 

Egypt: The Hinge of the Universal 

The sixth vitrine traces shifting and competing narratives 

and discourses of universality related to Africa and European 

ideology in the process of decolonization. The narrative of a 

universal history that had underwritten the ideology of colonial 

expansion was based on a history of civilization that incorporated 

ancient Egypt along racial criteria, thus dissociating it from 

the African continent. The bias of this hegemonic historiography 

was challenged in the 1960s by the Senegalese Cheikh Anta 

Diop, who sought to reverse fundamental colonial assumptions 

engrained in the historian’s discipline by proving that the 

ancient Egyptian civilization was an integral part of Africa, which 

he claimed was the true cradle of civilization. Cheikh Anta Diop 

also successfully employed another domain of universality 

in the service of his thesis. As director of the radiocarbon laboratory 

in Dakar, Diop advanced the new radiocarbon dating 

method in archeology,⎯the archeological equivalent to a “Year 

Zero,” and representative of advancement in the natural sciences, 

which, epitomized by nuclear science, had served as a bastion 

of continuity in Western claims to objective truths and privileged 

access to universality. This is juxtaposed in the vitrine with 

the universality engrained in the rhetorics of modernization and 

techno-social development represented here by the project of 

the Aswan Dam; with the UNESCO “world heritage” program 

to save the monuments of the ancient Nubian civilization from 

flooding; and with the Afro-Futurist counter-universality of 

performer and musician Sun Ra, who found actual universality 

in the exile of the universe fused with (black) ancient Egyptian 

mythology.

Vitrine 7 

Travelling Communiqué. Reading a Photo Archive (1948–80), 

Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia 

This project speculates about a Communiqué (public statement) 

that was published in an early moment of the Non-Aligned 

Movement, but never arrived in public debate. It forces us 

to rethink the Movement’s basic concepts in relation to today’s 

paradoxical forms of the politics of exclusion⎯perpetuated 

by globalization⎯that are entangled with the politics of inclusion 

legitimized by a state of permanent war. The project’s point 

of departure is a presidential photo archive of the Yugoslav 

leader Josip Broz Tito. What does this archive provide us with 

and how can we relate, today, to the politics of universalism 

beyond the dominant political and ideological concepts? 

The long-term collaborative project Travelling Communiqué. Reading a Photo 

Archive (1948–1980) Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia is conceived by 

Armin Linke (artist, Berlin/Milano), Doreen Mende (curator/theorist, Berlin/ 

London) and Milica Tomic (artist, Belgrade) in discussion and with the contribution 

of the Museum of Yugoslav History (Radovan Cukic, Ivan Manojlovic and Mirjana 

Slavkovic), Fabian Bechtle (artist, Berlin), Estelle Blaschke (photography historian, 

Berlin), Zoran Eric (art historian/curator, Belgrade), Theo Eshetu (filmmaker, Rome), 

Maja Hodoscek (artist, Ljubljana), Pramod Kumar (archive historian, New Dheli), 

Milica Lopicic (architect, Belgrade), The Otolith Group (artists/theorists, London), 

Olga Manojlovic Pintar (historian, Belgrade), Dubravka Sekulic (writer and architect, 

Belgrade/Zurich), Ana Sladojevic (theorist/curator, Belgrade), Branimir Stojanovic 

(philosopher/psychoanalyst, Belgrade), Jelena Vesic (curator/theorist, Belgrade/ 

Maastricht), and Stevan Vukovic (philosopher/curator, Belgrade). Photo Collection 

Museum of Yugoslav History (MYH), Belgrade. 

Vitrine 8 

A Fable of Fatal Incorporation: The Final Scene from Hyenas 

The eighth vitrine displays The Otolith Group’s close reading 

of the final scene from Djibril Diop Mambéty’s 1992 film Hyenas, 

adapted from Friedrich Dürrenmatt’s 1958 play Der Besuch der 

alten Dame. In Hyenas, Linguere Ramatou, the wealthiest woman 

in the world, “richer than the World Bank”, returns to Colobane, 

her impoverished hometown, in a fictional West African country. 

Ramatou demands the death of her former lover Dramaan Drameh 

in exchange for fabulous wealth. The process by which the 

townspeople of Colobane gradually persuade themselves 

to sanction and commit corporate murder is revealed. In its 

prophetic vision of sacrifice being incorporated into the bright 

future of the global market, Hyenas both pre-figures and casts 

a shadow on the forecasts for the future growth of Africa’s 

economy hymned by two articles both titled “Africa Rising”, 

published by The Economist and Time in 2011 and 2012 

respectively.

Foyer 

1 

EXHIBITION HALL 

1 

ENTRANCE 


F In the Year of the Quiet Sun, 2013 

Single channel HD video installation, color, sound, 25 min 


The name of The Otolith Group, founded by Anjalika Sagar 

and Kodwo Eshun in 2002, is derived from the microcrystals 

in the inner ear that provide balance and orientation. The group’s 

essay-films explore forms of critical futurity and the psychic 

simultaneity of historical experience. In their new film In the 

Year of the Quiet Sun, postage stamps produced in Ghana 

between 1957 and 1966 are assembled into a political calendar 

of Pan-Africanist imagery. In 1957, the same year that the Congress 

Hall in Berlin was inaugurated, Ghana, under the leadership 

of the revolutionary Kwame Nkrumah, became the first colony 

in Africa to gain its independence from the British Empire. The 

CIA-backed military coup that deposed Nkrumah in 1966 systematically 

destroyed the visual culture of Nkrumahism; the only 

images to survive this purge are postage stamps. In the Year 

of the Quiet Sun is a re-arrangement of these philatelic documents 

into a kinomuseum of Pan-Africanist Pop Art. The film is simultaneously 

informed by a close reading of “Nkrumah: The Leninist 

Czar,” the controversial essay on the personality cult of 

Nkrumahism, dictatorship, and scientific socialism by the influential 

political theorist Ali A. Mazrui, first published in Transition 

Magazine in Kampala, Uganda, in 1966.

John Akomfrah 

B The Unfinished Conversation, 2012 

3 channel HD video installation, color, sound, 46 min 

C Transfigured Night, 2013 

Double channel HD video installation, color, sound, 30 min 

Both works courtesy the artist, Gallery Carroll Fletcher 

John Akomfrah is the director of numerous award-winning 

films dedicated to the experience of colonialism, diaspora and 

resistance. He is one of the founders of the Black Audio Film 

Collective, which was active between 1982 and 1998 and was 

groundbreaking in placing racism and black identity in Britain 

on the public agenda. 

The Unfinished Conversation is a three-screen “narrative 

construction” of the multiple realities of Stuart Hall, one of the 

world’s most eminent thinkers. As a theorist of cultural identity 

and difference, Hall exerted great influence on Akomfrah and 

the collective movement in which he was involved. Hall arrived 

in the UK from Jamaica (then still a British colony) in the 1950s, 

graduated from Oxford, and became a decisive voice of the 

New Left along with intellectuals such as E. P. Thompson and 

Raymond Williams. The Unfinished Conversation focuses on 

Hall’s “formative years” in the 1950s and 1960s. 

With Transfigured Night John Akomfrah contributes a new 

production, in the form of a two-screen installation. “Verklärte 

Nacht” (transfigured night), a poem by Richard Dehmel, is taken 

by Akomfrah as a moment of departure to compose a dramaturgy 

of a confession of infidelity on the eve of new times. Akomfrah 

finds a symmetry in the poem, a mirror of the “promise”, the 

post-colonial subject made to the newly independent⎯now 

narcoleptic⎯entity: the post-colonial state. 


G Imperium, 2013 

Mixed media installation with 4 channel video, color, sound, 

3 min 10 sec 


Imperium is an installation, made of montages of altered archival 

materials, in which the images that remain of Mussolini’s imperial 

campaign in Africa are contemplated. Imperium has been 

conceived as an archeological investigation of the rise and 

the anthropology of the “fascist man”, and as a contribution 

to the debate on the continuities between colonialism and fascism; 

it focuses on questioning fascism’s iconographic legacy and 

the complicity of the viewer. 

In an attempt to create a New Roman Empire, the forces 

of fascist Italy first “pacified” Libya and then attacked Ethiopia, 

which would be incorporated in Italian East Africa in May 1936, 

forty years after the historical defeat of Italian forces in the battle 

of Adwa that had secured Ethiopian sovereignty. The Italian 

campaign was notorious for its brutality, including the use 

of mustard gas, admitted to by Italy only in the 1990s. The 

materials Gianikian and Ricci Lucchi use are sourced mainly 

from the private archives of soldiers, workers, and bankers 

who traveled along with the colonial mission and worked 

closely with the general Rodolfo Graziani and Count Galeazzo 

Ciano, Mussolini’s son-in-law. Interspersed with these images 

is footage from Lake Nemi, a mythical place in Italy where the 

sanctuary 

of the antique goddess Diana is situated. Caligula built two large 

ships on Lake Nemi, floating palaces that later sank in the lake. 

In 1926, Mussolini’s Napoleonian year, the “Duce” traveled to Libya 

and decided to find the ships of Caligula. Mussolini then initiated 

the work of destroying the Diana forest and draining the lake 

in order to recover Caligula’s ships in 1928.


H Dispossession, 2013 

Installation with double slide projection, (2x 80 colour slides) 

and video, color, sound, 13 min 

Courtesy the artist, Galerie Nagel Draxler, Galerie Krinzinger, 

and Galeria Continua 

In his newly produced installation Dispossession, Kader Attia 

confronts the imagery of ethnographic objects kept in the collection 

of the Vatican with interviews on the practice of collecting 

African art and artifacts. The interviews accompanying the 

photographic images discuss aspects of the trade of ethnographic 

artifacts and artworks. As in some of his previous works, Attia 

approaches the question of the shifts in meaning of art and artifacts 

as part of a colonial and counter-colonial geography of 

appropriation. These geographies, manifest as contradictory 

tension in the respective objects, shed light on the historical 

production of the divide between the Christian and the pagan 

idolater, a division that turned into the colonial separation and 

the ideology of scientific objectivity versus primitive fetishism, 

and of art that was embedded in cult and ritual versus that which 

was secular: modern art. 

Jihan El-Tahri 

A Flag Moments, 2013 

Single channel video, b/w and color, sound, 6 min 39 sec 

D 

Interviews with Mokhtar Hallouda, Victor Moche, 

Prince Amr Al-Faisal, 2013 

Single channel video, color, sound, 17 min 51 sec / 30 min / 

18 min 46 sec 

E The Price of Aid, 2009 

Single channel video, color, sound, 11 min 

All works courtesy the artist 

Jihan El-Tahri is a documentary filmmaker whose work is 

devoted to the post-independence history of Africa, as well 

as the Arab world. She exemplarily seeks to understand the 

geographies produced by movements and individuals and their 

ideological resources, the often implicit framework conditions 

of global dimension, and the anatomy of power as it has played 

out in late capitalism and modernity. Her contribution to the 

exhibition consists of newly produced filmic and documentary 

montages, excerpts from previous films and her archives, and 

expert advice. For her contribution on Egypt she concentrates 

on the critical role Egypt has played since the early days of 

colonialism both as physical and mythico-narrative geography, 

and its changing collaborative affiliations and functions. Other 

inserts into the exhibition allude to the sources of the disastrous 

effects of the aid-economy in the post-Second World War 

structures of the Marshall Plan, and to the slow momentum 

of independence from the 1950s to the end of apartheid in 1994.

Conference and Films 

3 October 2013: Writing History 

The talks and films address the fundamental role of Africa as well 

as inclusions and omissions in the European construction of world 

history, and continuities at the nexus of colonial rule and fascism. 

4 October 2013: Universal Resources in the 

Space Age — Trajectories in Pop Culture 

African music revolutionized European popular culture after 

1945, although the specific lines of connection and influence 

are often obscure. The films and talks will take a fresh look 

at the imaginary, biographical and theoretical body of source 

material for diverse pop genres. 

5 October 2013: The Bandung Moment — 

Alignments and Re-alignments 

The 1955 Bandung Conference marked a clear break in the final 

phase of colonialism. How did Bandung change the ideological 

and power-political parameters and what has become of the 

vision of collaboration of the global South? 

23 – 24 November 2013: Universal Horizons 

and the Categories of Art 

Which institutional and museum categorizations reflect the 

global power structures and the colonial legacy of the modern 

era? From the “primitivism” of modern art to the globally operating 

system of contemporary art today, the conference contributions 

situate cultural production in the geopolitical geographies of 

modernity. 

With Nabil Ahmed, David Barton, Garnette Cadogan, Ntone Edjabe, Bassam 

El-Baroni, Rangoato Hlasane, James T. Hong, Keyti, Koyo Kouoh, Kien Ket Lim, 

Bongani Madondo, Rastko Mocnik, Fred Moten, Charles Tonderai Mudede, 

Erhard Schüttpelz, Shirin Rai, some authors of the project Travelling Communiqué. 

Reading a Photo Archive (1948–1980) Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia and 

the artists of the exhibition a.o. 

Films by Jihan El-Tahri, Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi, Théo Robichet, 

Ousmane Sembène, Jean-Marie Straub & Danièle Huillet and John Akomfrah. 

“Universal Resources in the Space Age” in collaboration with The Space Between Us. 

Credits 

Curators 

Annett Busch, 

Anselm Franke 

In collaboration with the 

artists of the exhibition 

and research curator 

Heidi Ballet 

Exhibition Architecture 

and Graphic Design 

Zak Group 

Executive Architecture 

meyer-ebrecht 

Architekten (Sabine 

Schneller, Kerstin 

Meyer-Ebrecht) 

Curatorial Assistance, 

Project Coordination 

Elsa de Seynes 

Translation 

Herwig Engelmann 

(English - German), 

Colin Shepherd 

(German - English) 

Copy-Editing 

Joy Beecroft (English), 

Mandi Gomez (English), 

Claudius Prößer (German) 

Subtitling 

Subtext Berlin 

Special thanks to 

Max Annas, Lotte Arndt, 

Kristine Andersen, 

Jacqueline Cabaço, 

Yasmina Dekkar, 

Berthold Franke, 

Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, 

Koyo Kouoh, Olivier 

Marboeuf, Laurie Robins, 

Katharina von 

Ruckteschell-Katte, 

Dierk Schmidt, 

Territorial Agency 

Credits 

Haus der Kulturen der Welt, 

Berlin 

Visual Arts and Film 

Department 

Head 

Anselm Franke 

Program Coordination 

Daniela Wolf 

Program Assistance 

Janina Prossek 

Assistance Film program 

Magdalena Wiener 

Processing Cornelia 

Pilgram 

Trainee 

Miriam Greiter 

Interns 

Tim Roerig, 

Lisa Scheibner 

Production Research 

and Artists’ Support 

Ulrike Hasis, Sebastian 

Hauer, Marlene Rudloff, 

Nada Schroer 

Technical Department 

Head 

Mathias Helfer 

Exhibition Set Up 

Gernot Ernst & Team 

Video Editing 

Stefan von Chamier 

Building Facilities 

Frank Jahn, Benjamin 

Brandt & Team 

Film projection 

René Christoph 

Communications 

Department 

Head 

Silvia Fehrmann 

Press Office 

Anne Maier, 

Anna Bairaktaris 

Internet 

Eva Stein, Jan Köhler, 

Kathrin May, Stefan 

Schildt, Gabriel Stolz 

Public Relations 

Christiane Sonntag, 

Sabine Westemeier 

Editorial Office 

Axel Besteher-Hegenbart, 

Franziska Wegener, 

Elisa de Bonis 

Education Program 

Silvia Fehrmann, 

Leila Haghighat, Eva Stein 

After Year Zero is a 

production of Haus der 

Kulturen der Welt. The 

project is based on a 

series of workshops held 

under the title “Matters 

of Collaboration” in 2012 

in Algiers, Dakar, Paris, 

and Johannesburg 

in cooperation with 

the Goethe-Institut 

in Brussels and with 

funding from the 

Excellence Initiative 

of the Goethe-Institut. 

Travelling Communiqué 

is realized in cooperation 

with Goethe Institute 

Belgrade, supported 

by the Federal Foreign 

Office of Germany 

www.hkw.de/afteryearzero

EDUCATION 

The Kids&Teens programme: 

What notions do we have about geography and history? Workshops for kids and teens parallel to the 

Sunday guided tours. 

Sunday, Sep 22, 2013 | 3pm | Fee: 5€ 

Mixtapes, Music, Memories 

With Aaron Snyder 

from 10 years upwards 

Registration: kids_teens@hkw.de 

How do changes in recording technology influence our notions of culture? Kids produce their own 

mixtapes from music cassettes and other sounds. 

Sunday, Oct 6, 2013 | 3pm | Fee: 5€ 

Welt in Sicht – Fantastische Geografien 

With Jan Holleben 



How is geography made? Kids create their own fantasy lands and cities from a wide range of materials. 

Sunday, Oct 13, 2013 | 3pm | Fee: 5€ 

Diakarussell – Kunst aus Licht und Farben 

With VJ CHRS SMTHNG 



Kids make art. They produce their own slides using diverse techniques and archive material from HKW. 

Parallel to the workshops there are guided exhibition tour for adults every Sunday at 3pm. 

Guided exhibition tours 

Every Sunday, 3pm 

In English: Sep 29 & Nov 3, 2013 

With Anselm Franke 

In German: Sunday, Oct 27, 3pm 

In English: Sunday, Nov 17, 3pm 

Fee: 3 € plus ticket 



PHOTO DETAILS 

AFTER YEAR ZERO 

Geografien der Kollaboration seit 1945/ 


19.9. – 24.11.2013 

18.9.2013 

Fotos zum Download finden Sie unter www.hkw.de/pressefotos 

unter der Rubrik After Year Zero. 

Die Website wird ständig aktualisiert. 

Photos for download are available on www.hkw.de/en/pressefotos 

go to After Year Zero. 

More photos are continuously being added.

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