Ein Reiterstandbild von Kaiser Wilhelm II. an der Hohenzollernbrücke wurde mit Farbe verunstaltet. Köln, 26.06.2020 | Verwendung weltweit

“Decolonization of the public space – a practical exercise in the methodological framework of performance studies”

As a continuation of the summer semester 2021, this semester (SoSe2022), the seminar-workshop “Museum On the Couch” proposes to look again at how colonial history is inscribed in public urban space (statues, street names, factories, stores, etc.), outside the walls of the museum (see student work 2021: http://curioweb.org/en/museum). Echoing the recent debunking of colonial statues (slavery being one dimension), artistic interventions or activist actions that occurred notably in the wake of the “Black Lives Matter” demonstrations (spring 2020), we will attempt to highlight how the colonial past of cities in former European metropolises continues to characterize public space. The approach implements a research method in anthropology that proceeds from the performance. It is a question of grasping social universes from situations that can be described as staged and narrated, in this case performances.

After having freely chosen a subject inspired by a place in the city of their choice that echoes its colonial past, students are invited, alone or in groups, to conceive an action taking place in the public space: wandering, performance, guided tours, “invisible theater” (Augusto Boal) or any form of “heuristic disruption” highlighting the principles that govern the political order of the public space in democracy today.

The project will be accompanied by the artist Juan Gomes (El Goma, Atari Show), a street performer, who will teach us some techniques of intervention in public space.

The course will be validated either by the realization of an accompanied action and / or a file relating either the action carried out or a past action of the same type, or by the writing of a file relating a recent action of déboulonnage.

Title in German : “Dekolonisierung des öffentlichen Raums – eine praktische Übung im methodologischen Rahmen der Performance Studies”.

in continuity of “Museum On the Couch”
Creative and reflexive explorations of public space, summer semester 2021. 

The free listeners/auditors can register by sending an email to curio@orange.fr to receive the zoom link allowing them to participate.

Language: English, German or French.

Starting April 7, 2022 from 3:00 to 6:00 p.m., then every other Thursday. 

A seminar of the Institute of Ethnology of the University of Cologne, in cooperation with the Rautenstrauch-Joest Museum and the Ecole Supérieure d’Art d’Avignon (ESAA).  

https://ethnologie.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/content.php?kid=436