The Albanian Conference: Home is where the hatred is
12 Nov 2021 - 29 Jan 2022
Anna Ehrenstein feat. DNA, Fadescha, Rebecca-Pokua Korang, feat. DNA, Fadescha, Rebecca-Pokua Korang, 2021, exhibition view KOW, foto: Ladislav Zajac
Anna Ehrenstein, feat. DNA, Fadescha, Rebecca-Pokua Korang
Every now and then, art demonstrates what progress might look like because it does—experiments with—something that isn’t quite so easy to do on a grand social, political, or economic scale, even though it appears to be urgently called for or at least has long been called for by progressive voices. For example? Fair global collaboration, decolonialized relations, solidarity that extends beyond traditional in-groups, a concern with issues that are not necessarily one’s own yet vital to individuals as well as the whole community. Did someone say: discourse of the commons? Yes, that too. And if you haven’t heard of it, time to get used to it: commoning (as a lived practice of looking to the common good rather than economic profit, including in art) will be a key theme in the near future.
Sounds complicated? Just a bit. Anna Ehrenstein’s exhibition experiments with—does, puts into practice—what appears to be urgently called for. She creates an occasion, sets a stage, establishes an economy for a model of cultural collaboration, of concentus and coproduction, that intertwines political demands from various places all over the world. She teamed up with Fadescha, an influential art and cultural activist from Delhi; DNA, the duo of musicians from Lagos also known as Blair Opara and Clint Opara; and Beccy-Pokua Korang, an Afro-German performer. The five met in Albania, where Ehrenstein has a home, to produce four videos that constitute the exhibition’s core.
The point of departure for their collaboration: the lessons each of them had learned during public protests that they had actively supported. Protests against police violence, arbitrary decisions by the authorities, and corruption in Nigeria; protests against the caste hierarchy, hetero-patriarchal violence, and the reactionary government in India; protest against gender-discriminatory laws in Ghana; antiracist protests in Germany. Also a point of departure: shared demands for LGBTQ acceptance, improved access to basic necessities for everyone, decolonialization. Demands that have been on the table for a long time.
That’s why yet another, a historic point of departure for the project were the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conferences held starting in 1958—the inaugural conference convened in Tashkent—which made history as a forum for these and related demands, though without achieving much, the fate of many such efforts. The collective around Anna Ehrenstein gathers in front of the camera on an ancient site in Albania to propose its own conference, informed by Occupy methods, that would articulate the participants’ various demands; some are utopian, while others seek to reclaim achievements and attainments of the past. Two music videos by Lagos’s DNA spotlight public corruption and digital tools encouraging neighbors to inform against each other (“Community Policing”). A fourth film presents quotes we should read if we hope to get somewhere.
At the gallery, the working group’s four video productions are screened on fitness equipment, an arrangement inspired by Fadescha’s belief that protests are not defined by their substantial demands alone, that they should also be seen as a workout program for the body that needs to make its weight felt in the public arena. The additional pictures and sculptures casting the project’s discourse into a creaking hybrid aesthetic are part of the ambition to harness (and test) collective popular imageries as a vehicle for progressive messages—a means, in fact, to lend creative appeal and form to them. Even a punching bag from a boxing club makes for a not implausible metaphor: the rage or despair that drive people to strike out, or the sheer pleasure of taking a swing, might be an essential part of it, too.
For how could people not be enraged, right? How, when we think about everything that’s been mentioned, could we not be furious? The art on display in the exhibition recognizes and integrates that rage yet channels it into a positive language of activity, of collaboration, of community spirit; of music and the physical expression of emotion and, not least importantly, the physical articulation of political stances and of a lived and living transformation of the familiar (which has been, and still is, in part a product of colonial, racist, and sexual violence). That explains how this exhibition—not despite but actually because of its themes—is at its heart a cheerful affair.
It addresses suffering without speaking the languages of an art that’s only too adept at capitalizing on that suffering, its modes of representation victimizing victims a second time rather than featuring them as agents (did someone say documentarism?). It puts a finger on where it hurts without causing more hurt. Better to inspire people, with ideas and practical models, to empower—and be it only as an experiment—the commons.
Every now and then, art demonstrates what progress might look like because it does—experiments with—something that isn’t quite so easy to do on a grand social, political, or economic scale, even though it appears to be urgently called for or at least has long been called for by progressive voices. For example? Fair global collaboration, decolonialized relations, solidarity that extends beyond traditional in-groups, a concern with issues that are not necessarily one’s own yet vital to individuals as well as the whole community. Did someone say: discourse of the commons? Yes, that too. And if you haven’t heard of it, time to get used to it: commoning (as a lived practice of looking to the common good rather than economic profit, including in art) will be a key theme in the near future.
Sounds complicated? Just a bit. Anna Ehrenstein’s exhibition experiments with—does, puts into practice—what appears to be urgently called for. She creates an occasion, sets a stage, establishes an economy for a model of cultural collaboration, of concentus and coproduction, that intertwines political demands from various places all over the world. She teamed up with Fadescha, an influential art and cultural activist from Delhi; DNA, the duo of musicians from Lagos also known as Blair Opara and Clint Opara; and Beccy-Pokua Korang, an Afro-German performer. The five met in Albania, where Ehrenstein has a home, to produce four videos that constitute the exhibition’s core.
The point of departure for their collaboration: the lessons each of them had learned during public protests that they had actively supported. Protests against police violence, arbitrary decisions by the authorities, and corruption in Nigeria; protests against the caste hierarchy, hetero-patriarchal violence, and the reactionary government in India; protest against gender-discriminatory laws in Ghana; antiracist protests in Germany. Also a point of departure: shared demands for LGBTQ acceptance, improved access to basic necessities for everyone, decolonialization. Demands that have been on the table for a long time.
That’s why yet another, a historic point of departure for the project were the Afro-Asian Writers’ Conferences held starting in 1958—the inaugural conference convened in Tashkent—which made history as a forum for these and related demands, though without achieving much, the fate of many such efforts. The collective around Anna Ehrenstein gathers in front of the camera on an ancient site in Albania to propose its own conference, informed by Occupy methods, that would articulate the participants’ various demands; some are utopian, while others seek to reclaim achievements and attainments of the past. Two music videos by Lagos’s DNA spotlight public corruption and digital tools encouraging neighbors to inform against each other (“Community Policing”). A fourth film presents quotes we should read if we hope to get somewhere.
At the gallery, the working group’s four video productions are screened on fitness equipment, an arrangement inspired by Fadescha’s belief that protests are not defined by their substantial demands alone, that they should also be seen as a workout program for the body that needs to make its weight felt in the public arena. The additional pictures and sculptures casting the project’s discourse into a creaking hybrid aesthetic are part of the ambition to harness (and test) collective popular imageries as a vehicle for progressive messages—a means, in fact, to lend creative appeal and form to them. Even a punching bag from a boxing club makes for a not implausible metaphor: the rage or despair that drive people to strike out, or the sheer pleasure of taking a swing, might be an essential part of it, too.
For how could people not be enraged, right? How, when we think about everything that’s been mentioned, could we not be furious? The art on display in the exhibition recognizes and integrates that rage yet channels it into a positive language of activity, of collaboration, of community spirit; of music and the physical expression of emotion and, not least importantly, the physical articulation of political stances and of a lived and living transformation of the familiar (which has been, and still is, in part a product of colonial, racist, and sexual violence). That explains how this exhibition—not despite but actually because of its themes—is at its heart a cheerful affair.
It addresses suffering without speaking the languages of an art that’s only too adept at capitalizing on that suffering, its modes of representation victimizing victims a second time rather than featuring them as agents (did someone say documentarism?). It puts a finger on where it hurts without causing more hurt. Better to inspire people, with ideas and practical models, to empower—and be it only as an experiment—the commons.