BE.BOP 2018 engages collectively in undoing the asymmetries of knowledge brought about by colonialism. Basis will be the work of Caribbean Diaspora thinker Gloria Wekker. Combining panel discussions, performances, video art and book presentations, the congress empowers those silenced by hegemonic historical narratives and opens Black Europe to oceans of humanity.
Thursday June 7th, LICHTSAAL
11:00am Introduction
11:30am - 12:30am Tropical Berlin By Sumugan Sivanesan
Performance Lecture, Premiere
In this performance artist and activist Sumugan Sivanesan presents a speculative-fiction monologue told through a ‘recent European’, whose family arrived from the Asia-Pacific as climate refugees. This story-telling piece reflects on subcultural scenes in Berlin via the prism of Queer-Black, or rather ‘Quare’, Futurity. The work draws on embodied research into Berlin’s subcultural scenes to present a vision of a near future ‘Tropical Berlin’.
12:30am Decolonial Healing and Pan-Africanism in the Pacific 12:30am - 2:00am
In this first session artists and scholars take up the topic of healing situated in Pan-African politics within the Pacific. Robbie Shilliam focuses on the religious following called Paimārire, a liberation theory, led by Te Ua Haumene in New Zealand. Artist and activist Sumugan Sivanesan will further elaborate on his performance “Tropical Berlin” and share more about his research experience in Germany. Tania Cañas exposes her involvement with Black re-existence in Australia as an artist and activist.
Moderation Alanna Lockward
3:30am - 5:00am »Innocent« Mistakes + »Innocent« Erasures
With Manuela Boatca, Quinsy Gario, Julia Roth
This second session problematizes the notion of “innocence” in Western and predominantly white educational settings. Manuela Boatcă’s presentation raises awareness of the history of one of Germany’s oldest universities in Freiburg and its uncritical perpetuation of colonial thinking and epistemology. Scholar Julia Roth shows in her presentation the early entanglement of German finance and investment in colonialism within the Americas, exemplified by global economic influence of the Welser company, while Quinsy Gario speaks about his activism against anti-Black racism in the Netherlands, within the “innocent” spaces of the arts plantations of modernity.
Moderation Eva Boesenberg
