Grußwort
Dear DEKOLONIALE-Team
Dear artists and friends,
Dear collegues and activists –
I am glad to welcome you on behalf of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. Considering the great program that lies ahead –
I will be happy to be brief…but I will also be very clear!
I will be clear to stress out that DEKOLONIALE has been the most significant initiative to deal with the history and continuities of German Colonialism.
In Berlin. And nationwide.
Let me highlight only three aspects that have turned this initiative into a success.
„What will remain!?“ – „Was bleibt?!“
The title of this festival ends with this rather modest combination of question mark and exclamation mark – I will always put the exclamation mark first!
„Dekoloniale has been … a wild ride!!“
[That is a quote from Anna Yeboah, the head of Dekoloniale Project]
„A wild ride“ and a journey that has led us all over Berlin – step by step, exhibition by exhibition, festival by festival:
From Treptow to Kreuzberg to Charlottenburg and to Mitte.
That was a journey through time and space:
Digging up the multiple layers of Berlin‘s colonial history.
Marking sites of colonial and countercolonial significance.
Offering an archeology of resistance that brought to light the endurance, solidarity and ingenuity of so many who have opposed colonial regimes.
DEKOLONIALE has produced an anticolonial topography of Berlin. It has deeply changed our understanding of this city.
If this critical reading of a colonial capital marks the first outcome – the second aspect caught the team of the DEKOLONIALE by surprise.
I am talking about the overwhelming interest among so many other cultural institutions to learn from DEKOLONIALE.
Not just in Berlin, but all over Germany.
This project instantly sent the message out into the entire cultural scene:
To start the homework of decolonizing institutional histories – as well as city histories.
Although this created an almost instant overload of work, the team of the DEKOLONIALE has invited professionals from all over Germany to come together and to learn.
It has started to train cultural institutions training themselves in their processes of decolonization.
This is and it continues to be hard work.
Which leads me to my third aspect …and final „point of praise“: This initiative relied on an alliance of civil initiatives, NGOs and cultural institutions:
Berlin Postcolonial….
Each One Teach One….
Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland…..
and the Stiftung Stadtmuseum Berlin….
….to name just a few protagonists from the multitude that forms this initiative – in Germany and abroad.
DEKOLONIALE has established a transcontinental network of partners, political players and artists, whose brilliant work we see in this space
[– and who will enter the stage in just a moment].
I am very grateful to all the people who have made this exhibition, this festival, this exciting, wide-ranging public manifestation of DEKOLONIALE possible.
There is so much, that will remain!
So viel, das bleibt! :
The task of institutional change and decolonization will remain.
The sense of empowerment will remain.
This decolonial input will surely resonate within future debates about new perspectives for memory culture.
This network of decolonizing partners will remain.
And it reaches from Berlin to Germany to activists, collegues and friends all over the world.
Thank you all for being here….
I wish all of you a great festival!
Thank you for your attention.