VISU-member and PhD-student Brenda Bikoko, is part of the SitCI 2021 Conference where she gives a presentation about Slavery in the Cultural Imagination and more precisely about Appropriated Coloniality?
Methodologies developed by Ariella A. Azoulay and Tina M. Campt help to recognize and acknowledge problematic contexts in photography. Slavery may be a thing of the past, coloniality with its neoliberal globalization is certainly not over. Scholars like Walter Mignolo address this matter as the colonial matrix of power and provide a clear vision of what decoloniality is and for example how to delink from language control and imagery.
Delinking is an ethical conscious decision, that includes dewesternization. It is important to see the bigger picture and to treat each event with its own particularities as well. Therefore it is important to empathize with what is shown as suggests Azoulay and Campt. Carrie Mae Weems’ From Here I Saw What Happened and I Cried is a didactic 33 piece photo essay of appropriated photographs about African American history through the eyes of an African American woman. Her self-written semi-autobiographic narrative relates to the tradition of the slave narrative. It manipulates, addresses and informs the audience on the subject. Enslaved men and women are equally depicted in their hopeless situation, addressed and admired for their determination to free themselves as a people. Brussels based artists Antje Van Wichelen, Micheal Murthaugh and Nicolas Malevé developed The Recognition Machine a photobooth that can be visited online. The self-portrait activates a pre-tained algorithm through the recognition of 7 emotions and is matched to a 19th century analogue transformed archival colonial photograph. The artists draw a parallel between colonial and contemporary practices of surveillance. The booted person is invited to dive in the colonial archive, the history of photography and in his/her deeper self, addressing his/her relation with the concept of the other. The archives Antje used are forced to think of their place in the matrix of coloniality. In short both art works provide questions for its viewers to start a decolonial conversation.
More info: SitCI2021 Conference