Deberlinisierung - Die Welt neu erzählen, eine Theorie der Praxis

In the organizer's words:

Talks, lectures, readings, music, screening

Safi Faye Hall
In various languages with simultaneous translation into German, English and French

At the end of the century of nationalism in Europe and at the height of imperial expansion, the Chancellor of the German Empire, Otto von Bismarck, convened a conference in Berlin in 1884 to organize the division of the African continent among the industrial and military powers of the time. Fourteen European countries, the United States and the Ottoman Empire took part in the so-called Berlin Conference, which lasted until 1885. Their main aim was to secure their extractivist and commercial interests. The result was a profound dismemberment of Africa's original political structures, which had a lasting impact on its political, economic and social history.

For Africans, this marked the beginning of an era of resistance and struggle for their rights to self-determination. Colonial penetration was made possible by their technological and military inferiority. However, the firepower of the colonial powers in no way secured the division that had been achieved on paper. Neither military control over the vast world region nor the cultural and spiritual subjugation of its populations were guaranteed.

140 years after this overpowering event, it seems urgently necessary to disentangle the complex of colonial appropriation, identify its after-effects and eradicate its epistemological legacy. The Deberlinization project does this in the highly symbolic place where this complex originated - in Berlin - with activists and personalities from various fields: from the visual and performing arts, film, music, architecture, literature, economics, the humanities and social sciences as well as political theory.

A quarter of a century ago, Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, an artist of African descent living in Berlin, came up with an original way to escape the dilemma created by the Berlin Conference: He founded the Laboratoire de Déberlinisation (Deberlinization Laboratory). Over time, he developed tools and ways to emancipate himself by fictionalizing reality. Mansour Ciss Kanakassy's emergency kit includes a Global Passport, which facilitates freedom of movement in a world determined by the constraints of residence permits, and the AFRO, a currency freed from exchange rate guarantees and central bank supervision. At the intersection of artistic creation and social critique, a platform for reflection on the possibilities of retelling social connections within and beyond the post-colonial state, in a chaotic world, emerges.

Deberlinization continues this performative utopia in order to rethink the conditions for alternative narratives of the world order and its future - in a transformative poetics of the relationship between creative and resistant action, between history, memory and future. It simultaneously creates spaces of experience and horizons of expectation.

Ibou Coulibaly Diop and Franck Hermann Ekra, co-curators of Deberlinization

About the curatorial statement

With: Yousra Abourabi, Didier Awadi, Memory Biwa, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Simukai Chigudu, Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Daniele Daude, Nikita Dhawan, Mamadou Diouf, Soeuf Elbadawi, Christine Eyene, Tiken Jah Fakoly, N'Goné Fall, Julia Grosse, Maguèye Kassé, Maame A.S. Mensa-Bonsu, Célestin Monga, Simon Njami, Ladan Osman, Raphaëlle Red, Mahamadou Lamine Sagna, Djelifily Sako, Alioune Sall Paloma, Maboula Soumahoro, Ẹniọlá Ànúolúwapọ́ Ṣóyẹmí, Hildegard Titus, Abdourahman Waberi, Hyam Yared, Abdenour Zahzah

Part of heimaten, funded by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media on the basis of a resolution of the German Bundestag

Program overview

Fri., 25.4.2025
14:00
Greetings
by Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung

14:20
Deberlinization: Music
with Daniele Daude & The String Archestra

14:45
Presentation of the program
with the co-curators Ibou Coulibaly Diop and Franck Hermann Ekra

15:00
Keynote by Mamadou Diouf

16:15
Deberlinization: Poetry
with Ladan Osman

16:45
Quand, quoi, comment et pourquoi? (When, what, how and why?)
Talk by Mansour Ciss Kanakassy with Maguèye Kassé, accompanied by Djelifily Sako on the kora

17:30
Deberlinization: a cultural project
Panel discussion with Soeuf Elbadawi, Hildegard Titus and Abdourahman Waberi, moderated by N'Goné Fall

Sat., 26.4.2025
11:00
De-Berlinization: a political project
Panel discussion with Yousra Abourabi, Simukai Chigudu, Maame A.S. Mensa-Bonsu and Ẹniọlá Ànúolúwapọ́ Ṣóyẹmí, moderated by Alioune Sall Paloma

12:30
Deberlinization: Poetry
with Hyam Yared

12:55
Deberlinization: an economic project
Keynote by Célestin Monga

15:30
Deberlinization: a philosophical project
Panel discussion with Seloua Luste Boulbina, Nikita Dhawan and Mahamadou Lamine Sagna, moderated by Maboula Soumahoro

17:15
Deberlinization: arts in context
Panel discussion with Memory Biwa, Julia Grosse, Simon Njami and Abdenour Zahzah, moderated by Christine Eyene

Sun., 27.4.2025
12:30
Round Table
with representatives of Afrika-Rat - Dachverband afrikanischer Vereine und Initiativen Berlin-Brandenburg and Decolonize Berlin

15:00
Deberlinization: Les Afrique(s) hors d'Afrique (Africa[s] outside of Africa)
Reading by Raphaëlle Red

15:30
Raphaëlle Red in conversation with Ibou Coulibaly Diop and Franck Hermann Ekra

16:20
L'argent, la liberté, une histoire du franc CFA (The money, the freedom, a history of the CFA franc)
by Katy Lena Ndiaye, film screening

18:10
Musical intervention
by Didier Awadi

Price information:

Conference ticket per day: €5 Conference pass (package) for all three days: €10.50 (also entitles the holder to purchase a discounted ticket for the Tiken Jah Fakoly concert)