Unrecounted: Historical Amnesia in Germany and Namibia

"The exhibition ‘Unrecounted: Historical Amnesia in Germany and Namibia’ at the Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello suggests the future can only be really thought through the past, providing a foil to this year’s Venice Biennale theme, All the World’s Futures..."

Unrecounted: Historical Amnesia in Germany and Namibia

UNRECOUNTED juxtaposes a screening of Christoph Schlingensief’s film The African Twin Towers with Nicola Brandt’s installation Indifference. Namibia, with its history of German colonization (1884-1915) and South African apartheid rule (up to 1990), is the setting for both works. In response to Okwui Enwezor’s Venice biennale theme All the World’s Futures, UNRECOUNTED shows two artists who have inherited the legacy of the colonizer. This is the first exhibition at the Biennale to be supported by the National Art Gallery of Namibia. 

Christoph Schlingensief’s The African Twin Towers (2005-09) is a non-linear documentary film relating  Schlingensief’s attempt to stage Richard Wagner’s Ring Cycle in Namibia. Arriving in Namibia, Schlingensief soon abandoned the feature film he initially envisaged. Instead, he invited the residents of the former German colonial town Lüderitz to participate in construction of new stories. A charged and fragmentary record of

these events emerges. Schlingensief was posthumously awarded the Golden Lion for the display of his work at the German Pavilion at the Venice Biennale 2011.

Indifference (2014) is a video installation by the German-Namibian artist Nicola Brandt. Brandt collaborated with Herero women in Namibia. In the work, a sixty-year-old Herero-Namibian and a ninety-year-old German-Namibian recall a day spent close to unmarked mass graves. The Herero woman narrates the atrocities committed by the colonizers on the Nama and Herero people in 1904-1908. The video plunges us into Namibian landscape, indifferent to human tragedy. Both works foreground involuntary memory, and the way that unresolved trauma breaks out in everyday engagements. They show the extent to which German colonial guilt has not been dealt with by those who have inherited it. Through their work, each artist interrogates German historical memory and the Romantic tradition that sustains it. 

The exhibition is curated by Sarah Hegenbart, Vid Simoniti and Adina Drinceanu,

and produced by ValorizzazioniCulturali, in co-operation with the National Art Gallery of Namibia and Filmgalerie 451.

Dates showing: 4-9 May 2015

Conservatorio Benedetto Marcello – Palazzo Pisani, Sestiere di San Marco, 2810, Venezia

Opening times: 10-18h

Artist and curator talk: Friday, 8 May at 11 AM

www.unrecounted.com

Ink • Brush • Heart, XiShuangBanNa

“In the end of 2012 I was invited to visit the rainforest of XiShuangBanNa, in the South of China. While I was indulging myself in the serenity of the rainforest, I was more and more astonished by the supremacy of nature. While the colors of my daily environment fade everyday more towards grey, the colors here felt so vital and bright. I observed the trees that reach up to 90 meters height, comparable to most of the new constructed buildings in Chinese cities. In order to be so tall, these trees need to have extremely deeps roots. I realized then that our society in order to reach higher needs to go deeper and hold on to its own traditions. The trees leaves form an intriguing composition with the feathers of the peacock. With its tail of 100 eyes it is considered as a manifestation of the heavenly Phoenix on earth. In the tradition of Feng Shui it is indicated as the celestial animal of the South of China, representing power and beauty.”Simon Ma

Conservatorio di musica Benedetto Marcello, Palazzo Pisani, San Marco 2810

June 1st – November 24th

Organization: Museum of Contemporary Art, Shanghai

Italiano

“Alla fine del 2012 fui invitato a visitare la foresta pluviale di XiShuangBanNa, nel sud della Cina. Mentre mi intrattenevo nella serena quiete della foresta pluviale, mi sentivo sempre più colpito dalla supremazia della natura. Se i colori del mio ambiente quotidiano sbiadivano ogni giorno di più verso il grigio, qui i colori vibravano lucenti e vitali. Osservavo gli alberi che raggiungevano i 90 metri di altezza, un’altezza paragonabile a quella della maggior parte dei nuovi edifici delle città cinesi. Per essere così alti gli alberi dovevano avere radici profondissime. Mi resi conto che la nostra società, per soddisfare i bisogni più elevati doveva approfondire e legarsi alle sue tradizioni. Le foglie degli alberi formavano una composizione intrigante con le penne del pavone il quale, avendo una coda su cui spiccano cento occhi, era considerato la manifestazione terrestre della Fenice. Secondo la tradizione del Feng Shui è considerato l’animale celeste del sud della Cina che rappresenta il potere e la bellezza” (Simon Ma).

Conservatorio di musica Benedetto Marcello, Palazzo Pisani, San Marco 2810

1 giugno - 24 novembre

Organizzazione: Museo di Arte Contemporanea, Shanghai