COLONIAL NEIGHBOURS – Vortrag von Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock

COLONIAL NEIGHBOURS: EIN PARTIZIPATIVES ARCHIV- UND FORSCHUNGS-PROJEKT ZUR DEUTSCHEN KOLONIAL-GESCHICHTE

Balatbat-Helbock presents the ongoing participatory archive and research project "Colonial Neighbours", a project by SAVVY Contemporary Berlin.

COLONIAL NEIGHBOURS is an ongoing participatory archive and research project that deals with GERMAN COLONIAL HISTORY and its repercussions and continuities into the present. Through the collective collection process, gaps and omissions in German collective memory are addressed and dominant orders of knowledge and historiographies are scrutinised. The archive also serves as a platform for discussion and exchange and as a starting point for collaborations with actors from different fields.

A "DISTANT" PASTThe GERMAN COLONIAL PAST is a history of ignorance and closure[1].

In the official collective memory, it is actively repressed, concealed and denied or presented as fragmentary and isolated from other historical developments. As a result, German COLONIALISM often appears as part of a "distant" past. However, colonialism has left a lasting mark on both the "periphery" and the "centre". As many have pointed out, an understanding of current political constellations in Germany and Europe cannot emerge without an understanding of Germany's role as a colonial power. The city of Berlin plays an important role in the history of COLONIALISM. In the years 1884-1885, the country's representatives invited the famous "Congo Conference" to the capital, where the African continent was divided up between the European powers. Berlin set in motion the process of Europe's global expansion, where political rules for the COLONIALISATION of African territories were negotiated and implemented. Racism and COLONIALISM are inextricably linked, the consequences of which continue to have an impact to this day.

Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock is a curator and researcher at SAVVY Contemporary Berlin and is part of the participatory archive project Colonial Neighbours. She received her Masters in Postcolonial Cultures and Global Politics from Goldsmiths University of London. In her work in the permanent collection of SAVVY Contemporary, she searches for colonial traces that manifest themselves in our present. The collaborative archive is dedicated to the discussion of forgotten histories and the decanonisation of the Western gaze.