Black Berlin Biennale
For Contemporary Art and Discourse
Founded in 2012 by Afrotak TV cyberNomads to address the misrepresentation of minorities in the arts and the stereotypical use of images of people of african descent in the art communities.
Gallery
Since 2016, our Black Berlin Biennale is an official event of the UN's International Decade for People of African Descent. In 2017, Adetoun was invited to present the BBB as part of the German delegation to the UN Commission on Human Rights in Geneva. UNESCO Germany announced BBB on its website in 2018 and since 2012 we have received support from the Amadeu Antonio Foundation.
2022
Generation Repair, Healing Pluriverses
2020
Afrophobia, Every breath you take, Global decolonial freedom fights of the 20th & 21st century
2018
We Need Another (S)He-R-O, Nothing about us without us
2016
No Fear of Content, No Amnesty on Genocide
2012
Forget Fear, Völkermord Verjährt Nicht
Since 2001, Afrotak TV cyberNomads have been supporting Black Germans and the African Diaspora in Germany to revolutionise the processing of visual representation in general and the German genocide in Namibia (1904-1908) but also in Tanzania.
How we do remember ourselves, has thus become an important intervention in German mainstream commemorative culture.
As part of the alliance "No Anmnesty on Genocide" we have helped shape the politics of visual representation and the choice of decolonial language with which we address our experience as diaspora.
Until we created the Black Berlin Biennial for Contemporary Art and Discourse, it was quite difficult to think, write and talk about genocide, but it was even more unthinkable to represent it visually beyond representation in the tradition of white German pro and/or decolonial perspectives.
There was a BBC report approaching the topic from outside Germany and various smaller productions from a white perspective, but there was no material from the Black German community to deal visually with this topic.
Since the German culture of remembrance in Germany was proactive, overlooked the German genocides in Africa and focused exclusively on the German Nazi Holocaust, the members of Afrotak TV cyberNomads experienced the exclusion from the discourse as pariahs, because they had already undermined the mainstream discourse linguistically and in visual representation during the 2004 Black Media Congress at the HKW.
At this Black Media Congress we showed the documentary film "Hitler's black victims".
The issues of African victims in Germany and in German colonies, black German victims in Germany and in Africa, African-American, African-British and African-French victims in the German catchment area of World War II and later in the occupied European territories were excluded from the German culture of remembrance or #memorialculture.
The approach of Afrotak TV cyberNomads was therefore decolonization in the representation of the genocide in Germany. The first Black Berlin Biennale for Contemporary Art and Decolonial Discourse and the images we produced made people freeze and hardly anyone wanted to talk to us.
We experimented with flashmob strategies that we had previously used successfully in the fields of art and political education.
The People of African Descent in Germany are storming the #Museum policy of the #HumboldtForum and its discursive neocolonial lines of argumentation as People of African Descent are burned in police custody in prison cells, but that does not bother Parzinger #OuryJalloh.
Namibia: No Amnesty on Genocide, Genocide is not statute-barred... is still running as an intervention because the FRG has not yet apologised for the genocide in Namibia, and the crimes against humanity in other former German colonies, but the Humboldt Forum is coming anyway.
The doubts pile up and the looted art becomes more and more obvious but the #HumboldtForum is not bothered by that. Refugees are struggling and visas are getting harder to get. Asylum is also being outsourced to countries where people trafficking in People of African Descent and drug trafficking and slavery are carried out. But the Humboldt Forum continues to argue that everyone is welcome.
Subversion and the media documentations and interventions were willingly adopted and mostly appropriated by our white allies, since generally no recognition is given for this contribution to the common struggle, and thus this part of the common struggle for recognition is often whitewashed.
In the eight years of its existence since 2012, the Black Berlin Bienniale has thus also become an archive of genuine academic, artistic and curatorial, activist interventions of African descent in the discourse from a civil society bottom-up perspective that strives for social change rather than commercial) #AfroFuturismus #Occupy #Reichstag.
Afrotak TV cyberNomads have continuously documented this struggle for the recognition of the Maafa (black term for genocide against Africans and People of African Descent) on video, so in our archives you can find important documents for this part of black history in Germany.
People were asked to take photos and self-portraits with our posters, upload them to social media platforms and make a statement. This was also done very tentatively. So we decided to take pictures and photos of the people with the posters and upload them ourselves. Thus we filled our archive with the first strategic image and propaganda material, which dealt with the issues from a self-determined perspective of the African Diaspora.
The strategies of subversion developed by us and our media documentations and interventions were willingly adopted and in most cases appropriated by our white allies, since generally no recognition is given for this contribution to the common struggle and thus this part of the common struggle for recognition is often washed white.
The 2016 #AntiHumboldtBox exhibition shows this madness as a travel exhibition worldwide. But the Humboldt Forum is coming anyway. The memorial arch for the African victims of genocide and slavery is moving to the Humboldt Forum together with the Hereros and Nama, but that doesn't bother the makers either.
Committee for the erection of an African Memorial March in memory of the victims of #Genocide #Sklaverei #Rassismus.
NO AMNESTY ON GENOCIDE DEUTSCHLAND
Interventions in Public Spaces, Facade Gallery KuLe, Media-Lounge-Exhibition & Panels
Opening
31. Aug. 2016
Der Menschwerdungs-reMix / Black lives Matter Literarische Multi-Media Performance von AFROTAK TV cyberNomads / mit MFA Kera, Corin Arnold Speeches Adetoun Küppers-Adebisi, Black Berlin Biennale 2.0 Marie-José Ourtilane, Artistic Director Project Space Festival Elisabeth Kaneza, UN-Fellow Hochkommissariat UN - BRD Dr. Karamba Diaby MdB (Member of Parliament).
Sat. 15. Okt. 20:00
Lounge with Exhibition, Music und Getränken Finish 1st transnational Congress of Herero und Nama
Sun. 16. Oct. 10:30
KunstHaus KuLe protest and solidarity march with the Herero and Nama delegates to the Berlin Castle / Humboldt Forum, the reconstructed residence of Kaiser Wilhelm II, the main person responsible for the genocide of 1904 - 08.
Finissage
Mon. 31. Oct. 18:00
- Representative, Bündnis gegen Rassismus, Aktionswoche gegen Rassismus
- Dr. Pierette Herzberger-Fofana, Speakercherin für Schule, Bildung, SeniorInnen, Asyl, Willkommenskultur, Migration und Integration, Erlangen
- Israel Kaunatjike, Speaker of Hereros in Germany
- Niema Movassat, Member of Parliament
- Anetta Kahane, President of Amadeu Antonio Foundation
- Darnell Summers, Musical Performance
WE NEED ANOTHER (S)HE-R-O
Nothing about us without us, Anything about us without us is against us
29. August - 31. Oktober 2018
Opening program
19:00 – 19:30 Arrival / Lounging
19:30 – 20:00 DEMO / Gathering / Panel on Namibia Genocide ArtHouse KuLe / INTRO: Desney Baily & Trio (Live Soul-Jazz) / Performance Pan-African Anthem
20:00 – 20:30 Speeches / Grußworte Stephan von Dassel – District Mayor Berlin Mitte (requested), Namibian Embassy – Ambassador H.E. Andreas Guibeb (requested), Armin Massing (Berlin Global Village), Esther Muinjangue (Namibia Genocide Committee), Yonas Endrias (UN Dekade for People of African Descent), Initiative Oury Jalloh
20:30 Opening African Dishes in the KuLe Yard
20:30 – 21:15 Desney Baily & Trio
21.30 DJ Mo Lateef - AFROBEATS & …
Finissage
31. 10. 2018 18:00
- Keynote Karamba Diaby, Member of Parliament
- Klaus Lederer, Senator for Culture, TBC
- Yonas Endrias, UN Decade for People of African Descent
Related exhibition
Black Womanhood reLOADED, Berlin Global Village, Neukölln
Murals
- Kunsthaus KuLe, Mitte
- Hauswand Oranienstrasse / Manteuffelstrasse, Kreuzberg
- Berlin Global Village
- VOLLGUT in ehemaliger Kindl-Brauerei, Neukölln
Support
Senatsverwaltung für Justiz, Verbraucherschutz und Antidiskriminierung UNESCO Deutschland (Sektion Kultur) gefeatured. Wir waren in der Tageschau.