On November 15, 1884, 130 years ago, representatives of ten other European countries, the USA and the Ottoman Empire met in Berlin at the invitation of the German Empire and the French Republic. The Berlin Conference, West Africa Conference, Congo Conference - to this day there are various names for this meeting, which lasted until February 26, 1885.
Politicians, adventurers, colonial enthusiasts, merchants and bankers gathered at Wilhelmstrasse 77, the Reichskanzler-Palais, Bismarck's official residence, not far from the most prestigious domiciles of Berlin's high finance. Disputes over raw materials and land on the African continent were to be brought to an end in order to provide a basis for efficient, systematic exploitation according to the Western, imperial understanding of law. The conference, which was described in a contemporary newspaper report as "one of the most brilliant celebrations", was thus the prelude to the comprehensive colonization of the African continent - without considering its population, its cultures and identities, its state systems and economic relations as significant in any way.
For the recently deceased Nigerian author Chinua Achebe, the denial of the existence of African people and thus African history was the basic idea behind colonial ideology. At the Berlin Conference, Germany, like the other colonial powers, was primarily concerned with establishing a national identity in addition to economic interests and claims to power. People of African origin were only accepted to the extent that they fitted into the national idea. Being German was first and foremost associated with being white.
Germany's colonial past is barely present in the collective consciousness. Resistance in the former colonies is just as little discussed as the recruitment of Black people by European armies during the two world wars.
Colonial wars, the First and Second World Wars, National Socialism and realities that are still racist today cannot be dealt with in a sustainable way if Germany's colonial history is dismissed as "too insignificant" and consequently ignored. The existence of African and Black people and their perspectives is ignored. Like Africa, they seem to be far away.
130 years later, however, Europe - and thus also Germany - is confronted with the tangible questioning of national borders in the course of diverse globalization processes. The fictitious construct of an ethnically homogeneous white nation state inherited from the 19th century can no longer be maintained. People of African origin are stepping out of the spaces arbitrarily assigned to them and living new realities - and not just since 2011 on Oranienplatz - in the immediate vicinity of Ballhaus Naunynstraße.
Against this backdrop, the Ballhaus is dedicating We are Tomorrow to the main theme of the Berlin conference from November 15. The arbitrary division of the African continent is the starting point for a multi-layered examination of German colonial history. Artists and academics from a wide range of fields and countries will question discourses on the colonial past and break with familiar practices of remembrance and representation. Looking back sharpens our perception of current socio-political developments.
The Ballhaus thus remains - after the festivals Dogland, Almancı! 50 Years of Fake Marriage, Voicing Resistance and Black Lux. Ein Heimatfest aus Schwarzen Perspektiven - a laboratory for strategies of rebellion for a self-determined confrontation with post-migrant and post-colonial realities of life.
We are tomorrow opens on November 15 with the exhibition series Yesternow. Between Jetset and Oblivion, curated by the artist Manuela Sambo. Afterwards, the Pan-African Groove Collective invites you to a concert whose musical styles are made up of such diverse African and Afro-diasporic genres as Afro-Beat, Highlife, R&B, M'Balax, Souk, Jazz, Hiphop and Salsa.
Film and theater makers such as Branwen Okpako and Simone Dede Ayivi, who are already staging productions at the Ballhaus, tell Black history(ies) as a self-confident and self-determined continuity. Simone Dede Ayivi, for example, will be on show with her guest performance Performing Back. Accompanied by the voices of Black German activists and cultural practitioners, she will travel to the sites of former Völkerschauen, colonial monuments and colonial street structures in Germany; she will dislocate them in a very concrete way and (re)discover her own post-colonial aesthetic on stage.
International guest performances by performers and dancers such as Annabel Guérédrat from France/Martinique, Mmakgosi Kgabi and Stompie Selibe from South Africa and Qudus Onikeku from Nigeria/France negotiate German colonial history by appropriating the colonial stereotypes of their bodies, translating them into multi-layered body languages of self-empowerment and allowing the audience to experience these in a concrete and sensual way during their dance performances.
The musician Jean-Paul Bourelly invites visitors to interdisciplinary jam sessions in talk show format, the Polyphonic - Spontaneous Town Meetings. He creates a space in the Ballhaus where the audience is invited to ask questions and discuss. His musicians record the discussions so that a new form of communication emerges from the interplay between discussion and sound, musicians and visitors.
A central component of the thematic focus is the first Indaba of Black Cultural Professionals. The aim of this conference is to name colonial continuities in the cultural sector, to collect and exchange ideas for the desired state of a cultural sector that faces up to its past in order to approach decision-makers in cultural policy with clear suggestions. The audience is invited to actively participate in the discussions - as well as in other artists' talks and panel discussions that will take place throughout the duration of We are Tomorrow.
Events such as the Literary Topographies of Colonialism series curated by Nadja Ofuatey-Alazard also offer the opportunity for audience discussions. From November 16, films will also be shown every Sunday at the fsk-Kino am Oranienplatz as part of the film series Beyond The Maps. African Resistance Against Colonial Power, which is curated and designed by Enoka Ayemba.
One of the highlights of We are Tomorrow is the world premiere of Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien in February, a play by Weimar-born author, songwriter and singer Olivia Wenzel. The text was written as part of the post-migrant literature workshop RAUŞ - Neue deutsche Stücke, a collaboration between Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Maxim Gorki Theater and the culture and society magazine freitext. Mais in Deutschland und anderen Galaxien includes, among other things, the depiction of the self-evident - the self-evidence of not being perceived and classified in Germany first and foremost by skin color. The film is directed by Atif Hussein. He is interested in reflecting social contexts in fictional biographies, which could always be his own, very personal ones - between comics and East German punk, on the Milky Way or all-German transit routes.
Joshua Kwesi Aikins takes visitors to specific places of remembrance in Berlin as part of his bus tours entitled Permanent Colony Berlin. Actors from Label Noir accompany the post-colonial city tour. With their performances, they question the memory practices of a society in which monuments still honor colonial protagonists.
The Ballhaus revisits the Berlin Conference as a symbol of German colonial history in order to look at identity constructions from multiple perspectives and think ahead in a visionary way. The past is reflected upon, the present is illuminated, new channels of communication and future scope for action are opened up.