In 1998, I had the experience, as a spectator, of being present within the spectral moving-image environment of Lovers. Developed in collaboration between Furuhashi and an innovative digital arts agency operating in Tokyo, Canon ArtLab, Lovers was installed within a range of arts-museum spaces internationally in the years following its first appearance, when it was shown at a gallery space for performance and moving-image experiments, the Hillside Plaza, in Tokyo, from 23 September to 3 October 1994. The Hillside Plaza was used, during the period 1990 to 2001, for many other moving-image installations, including a retrospective of the work of the well-known Japanese filmmaker Takahiko Iimura; that space still exists, but is now used to host corporate events and receptions. The first installation of Lovers belongs to a particular moment in the development of Japanese digital art, from the early 1990s on, in which technology corporations such as Canon and NTT actively sponsored work, or provided environments for performance-focused experiments with emergent digital moving-image and virtual-reality technologies, often working closely with digital artists and performers to provide them with funding and technical support which were otherwise scarce. By 1998, NTT had opened a large-scale arts museum of contemporary digital technology, the InterCommunication Center, in Tokyo’s Shinjuku district, and Lovers was also exhibited there, as part of the exhibition Possible Futures. My own experience of being a spectator of Lovers was at its installation within another Tokyo venue, Spiral Hall, in 1998, three years after the death of Furuhashi, and also at the end of that distinctive period of arts-curation that encompassed performance and experimental moving-image technology. The Canon ArtLab would dissolve in acrimony, after a curatorial dispute in 2001, and the NTT InterCommunication Center also experienced severe operational difficulties in the same era, though it still exists. Digital arts curation then became subject to entirely different imperatives across the following decade, the 2000s, and into the current moment.

Teiji Furuhashi’s “Lovers” (1994), co-produced with Canon ArtLab

In an interview from 1995, Furuhashi evokes the theme of Lovers in the context of its projection technologies: “In conventional terminology, the piece is called a multi-media installation. It uses lifesize images of nine naked performers which circle the room round the viewer; five laser discs; and seven video projectors. It deals with the theme of contemporary love in an ultra-romantic way.” Two of the most significant elements of the design of the installation are, firstly, that its projected sequences surround or immerse its spectator (intimately so, since Lovers was usually exhibited within relatively constrained confines), and secondly, that the spectator’s body and eyes actively participate in determining the projection of walking and intersecting figures. A short promotional film by the Canon ArtLab, made at the time of the Hillside Plaza installation, emphasises this second aspect of the work: “Sensors in the centre of the space are activated by the visitors’ presence, triggering words and images to move and react on the wall. Sensors that dot the ceiling are triggered to project messages down on to the floor, creating boundaries.”

As a spectator of Lovers, in 1998 at Spiral Hall in Tokyo – within that soundscaped environment of slow-motion bodies that walked, ran, and embraced while simultaneously evanescing – I was struck by the sense of a volatile process of infiltration between the projected and spectatorial bodies in that space, especially during the moments at which, as the spectator approached those projected bodies, they abruptly vanished, and another figure, that of Furuhashi, moved towards the spectator, before falling backwards. I noted among the English-language texts that appeared within the projections one that read: “Do not cross the line,” and another: “A jailbreak across ordinary fields is harder than over walls and wire fences.” That second text brought to mind – within the projection-space of Lovers – the experience of Jean Genet (a great hero of transvestite and transsexual culture in Japan, from the 1960s onwards), during his incarceration as a child, in the 1920s, at the French rural prison of Mettray (a prison surrounded by open fields, rather than by walls). In one of his texts, Genet wrote: “One of the finest inventions of the [Penal] Colony of Mettray was to have known not to put a wall around it – it’s much more difficult to escape when you have to cross a bed of flowers.” Genet’s final book is titled Prisoner of Love – the same title as a love-song associated with James Brown. The preoccupation in Lovers with ‘prisoners of love’ and ‘love-songs’ interconnects that work with dumb type’s S/N performance of the same era, with its focus on the potential forms of future love-songs. That ‘love-song’ preoccupation materialises in the S/N performance in the form of a song performed by Barbra Streisand, People who need people, as well as inciting the spectator’s eye – and body – to traverse boundaries. Genet filmed the eyes of prisoners and wardens, peering through spyholes, in his 1950 film, with the same title, Un Chant d’Amour, or A Love Song. Fearing that a needle, directed from the far side of the cell-door, will pierce his eye and blind him, the character of the warden in that film is still compelled by sexual desire for his prisoners to look through that aperture. What he sees are not prisoners in misery, but instead, prisoners who are engaged in a choreographed sexual frenzy – they dance wildly, or are masturbating – and two prisoners communicate with each other via the wall between two cells, through which a hole has been drilled, and cigarette smoke is blown from mouth to mouth through that aperture. A future ‘love-song’ may involve an opening-up of flesh, in the cutting of two wrists, and the mixing of blood, as in S/N, or else the piercing of an aperture, as with that of a film-camera lens, in conjuring into existence the intersecting and intercrossing bodies of Lovers, which then intimately surround their spectators.

The contemporary status of Lovers is a potentially precarious one; it must be projected, in order to exist. It holds sparse traces, as a future ‘love-song,’ since it is now exhibited and projected with relative infrequency, at least in contrast to its international prominence in the second half of the 1990s. But since it was acquired as an ‘art work’ by several museum collections in that era, it therefore exists multiply, in editions of its constituent materials and sequences, and the corporeal presences they hold, ready for revivification. Its originating materials may also be stored archivally, but archives of projection-experiments are notably fragile ones that risk undergoing transmutations and disintegration. The current interstitial status of Lovers connects with an alternative title (or sub-title) sometimes used for its 1990s projections: Dying Pictures, Living Pictures.

Good morning, and thank you for being here today. It was a great pleasure to be asked to speak at this symposium, and I have to admit, I was fairly surprised to be invited in the first place.

A few months ago, I attended a similar three-day symposium at the Goethe-Institut in London, mainly because I was intrigued by the title of the event: “Postmigrant Perspectives on European Theatre.” I was unfamiliar with the term “postmigrant,” and in all honesty, my first reaction was a vague sense of disapproval and discomfort towards the word. I maintain this same feeling today, and I hope my intervention will clarify why this is the case.

My name is Omar Elerian, and I am a third generation migrant. I was born in Italy to an Italian mother and a Palestinian father. My father was born in Egypt to Palestinian parents who fled Jaffa, now in Israel, in 1948. My mother was born in Gorgonzola, near Milan in the north of Italy. Her father had settled there, after leaving the central region of Umbria, to work as a carpenter, bringing his wife (my grandmother), who had migrated before him from even further south in Calabria. During my childhood, we continued to practice the family’s favourite pastime: moving homes and countries. We lived in Kuwait, Egypt, the United States, and a number of different places in Italy. One of the most vivid memories I have of that time is my brother and I waiting to open the two gigantic steel trunks that moved with us around the world. They held our most treasured toys, books, clothes, and at least 25 sets of duvets and bed sheets, which my mother was never willing to leave behind. Today, those trunks are still taking up most of the space in my parent’s cellar. I have no idea what they contain anymore, and my parents haven’t moved in the last 20 years; but I suspect my mother might still have a spare set of blankets in there, just in case.

At the age of 23, I moved from Milan to Paris to pursue my study of theatre. In 2009, I moved from Paris to London, following my ambitions to confront a different theatre culture. I am now 35 years old, and the one thing I’ve learnt so far is: “there’s no such place as home.”

Home, in my experience, has always been a state of mind.

This is very practical, since I don’t need two giant steel trunks to carry it with me.

I like defining myself as a migrant, and I am blessed to have (had) the luxury to be able to travel and work freely across Europe, thanks to my Italian passport. I love being able to define my identity every day – a layering of experiences and encounters, decisions and inputs, actions and reactions. Who I am is what I make of myself.

But.

Who am I in the eyes of others?

This is an Equal Opportunities Monitoring Form. You have to fill out one of these for almost anything official or work-related in the UK. I’ve always had problems with these forms, mainly because I never find a box to tick for myself.

Just a couple of years ago, though, my freedom to define my identity was indelibly violated in Tel Aviv airport. Entering Israel for the first time in my life, I walked up to the immigration officer and handed over my Italian passport. He opened it and read my name. He then asked me for my father’s name, to which I answered: “Mostafa.” Next he asked for my grandfather’s name: “Eissa.” By the time I had finished pronouncing his name, my passport was withheld, set to the side, and another officer quickly escorted me to a waiting room in the arrivals area. The rest of the theatre company made it through Israeli immigration, except for two colleagues: Gabeen Khan and Nazanin Armin. Their ancestors’ names had succeeded in identifying them more prominently than their British passports and their laid back East Londoner looks. We were held in the waiting room for 4 hours, asked to repeat our family genealogies every hour, and were forced to accept parts in a play for which we didn’t – and never would – study. Who and what I thought I was became irrelevant in this context. I was the “other,” the enemy, the uninvited. And there was nothing I could say or do to contradict that.

Black artists, indeed all artists of color, are traditionally underrepresented in contemporary German theatre. In my paper I will deal with the debate on blackface in a broader context. I will argue that the criteria used to justify blackface are similar to those explaining the underrepresentation of artists of color in German theatre in general. I will focus on the structural and institutional aspects of the debate. The three major questions posed are: Who is represented on stage? Whose perspective is shown? And for whom is this art made? I will discuss the question of equality in German cultural institutions by questioning the power of definition.

2. Overview

The debate on blackface included aesthetic as well as structure-related arguments. The proponents argued that blackface is a neutral theatrical device with no racist connotation in the tradition of German theatre. While the discussion focused on the aesthetic aspects of blackface and the freedom of artistic expression, it also caused a controversy concerning the participation and representation of black artists.

Besides the aesthetic debate, the supporters of blackface – mainly white artistic directors, theatre professionals and journalists – claimed that there are not enough black artists in Germany. Moreover, since there were not enough black roles in the Western European canon, the companies saw no need to employ black artists. These arguments imply one clear assumption: black artists can only play “black” or “ethnic” characters.

In my research I encountered similar arguments with regard to the representation of post-migrant artists at German national and city theatres. My research focuses on “post-migrant theatre,” a term coined by Shermin Langhoff, former artistic director of Ballhaus Naunynstraße. In 2007 she curated the festival “Beyond Belonging” at the theatre Hebbel am Ufer in Berlin. The term “beyond belonging” was a first attempt to overcome the notion of nationality-based identities and to place the criteria for art above those of ethnicity. When she was appointed as artistic director of Ballhaus Naunynstraße in 2008, she needed something to appropriate the discourse on migration and integration by referring to the common term “Migrationshintergrund” (German for “having immigrant roots”). The term post-migrant was coined to describe a social state no longer defined by the process of migration but in which migration was recognized as a phenomenon of social developments. Post-migration is based on the heterogeneity of society and the diversity of the experiences of its individuals.

Ballhaus Naunynstraße is the first and so far only venue addressing these questions concerning German society by dealing with the intracultural context, and it has quickly become the place where innovative and politically relevant theatre by black artists and artists of color is shown. I would argue that Ballhaus Naunynstraße is a theatrical space in which art can exercise a subversive force that is transforming German society.

3. A matter of quality?

For several years, Ballhaus Naunynstraße was the only institutionalized post-migrant theatre in Germany. This changed when Shermin Langhoff was appointed the new artistic director of the Gorki Theater. But what about other venues? Since there are still hardly any artists of color in the national and city theatres, change has to happen not at an individual but at a deeper and all-pervasive level. While a few venues have started shifting their focus to get involved with artists of color, most of the city and national theatres remain ‘white’ when it comes to artists, productions and audiences. This brings us back to the arguments put forward in the debate on blackface, i.e. that the paucity of black artists and artists of color in theatre companies refers to a lack in “ethnic” characters, thus implying that artists of color are confined to their own ethnicity. Moreover, this argument contains an unspoken judgment of quality. The decision-makers at these venues obviously do not use the word “quality,” but when they reword it by saying that there are not enough artists of color, it suggests that artists of color do not satisfy their concept of artistic quality.

A discussion on artists of color in Vienna comes to mind. One of the panelists was the manager of the famous Austrian theatre school Reinhardt-Seminar. At the beginning of the discussion he read out a list of artists of color who had successfully graduated from his school. But when someone in the audience asked why these artists were not part of the German-speaking theatre companies he remained silent and could not provide an adequate answer.

Of course, there are a number of artists, directors and curators of color in Germany. But they are not part of the German system of national and city theatres and therefore not part of mainstream German theatre companies. They mostly work as artists in independent theatres. It is important to mention the difference between national/city theatres and independent theatres. The independent theatre scene is international, and a mixed cultural background forms a constitutive part of the identity of almost every artist. Yet there is a huge difference in funding between those two theatre systems. Being a part of the official companies and institutionalized venues comprises a number of benefits – not just in monetary terms but also regarding the power of definition.

4. Authenticity vs. self-representation

One of the more problematic arguments in this debate is that of authenticity. While opponents of the practice of blackface in contemporary theatre demanded self-representation, their arguments aroused criticism concerning the issue of authenticity. My stand is that self-representation cannot be equated with a demand for authenticity. Self-representation claims a space for artists of color within institutions and on stage, but it does not refer to the casting of roles with “authentic” or “ethnic” actors. I think it is very important to distinguish between these two arguments.

In the debate the opponents questioned the need to represent a “black figure” through the construction of skin color. However, if there is a need to deal with ethnicity on stage, why can’t it at least be done by a black actor? Yet, suggesting that a certain dramatic figure could be played by a black actor should not be equated with the demand for an ‘authentic’ cast. It merely indicates that the discussion on ethnicity should be shown on stage from different perspectives. And a black actor could represent one of these.

While anti-blackface activists were lamenting the lack of self-representation, the artistic director of the Deutsches Theater, Ulrich Khuon, complained that this would lead to an unwelcome focus on authenticity.

In an interview with DeutschlandRadio Ulrich Khuon stated: “Artists nowadays argue that the idea of theatre representing the Other should be challenged. And that, instead of representation, participation of speech and performance should be privileged. But not every part must be cast authentically. This would undermine what theatre can actually afford: alienation as a new way and an extrinsic point of view enabling an irritating perspective on the subject.”

I would completely agree with Ulrich Khuon’s argumentation, except that I would reject his criticism of the debate. Authenticity would demand that Hamlet could only be played by a young, white, Danish actor and not, for example, by an old, white actress, while self-representation opens up a space for reflection on stage.

5. The audience: For whom is this art made?

When we talk of blackface as a neutral theatrical device this suggests marking the difference between the Other and Khuon’s statement on the alienation effect of blackface thus only refers to white spectators. Audience members of color are excluded. This once again resembles the broader discussions on the representation of artists of color in German theatre.

My previous research dealt with the participation of immigrants in German theatre. In my dissertation thesis I questioned second and third generation immigrants about their experiences being part of German theatre audiences. Most of the interviewees – and sometimes even their parents – were born in Germany. The interesting conclusion I could draw from their statements was that almost everyone described the theatre space, especially the city theatre, as a place where there was no room for them as people of color. I should probably mention that the typical – at least statistically – audience of the German national and city theatres consists of mostly white, well educated fifty- to sixty-year-olds. The interviewees not only described their exclusion from the audience body but also from the performance, because their perspectives and stories were not represented on stage. When asked what they would prefer, they always mentioned a production or venue that included a post-migrant perspective, where the diversity and heterogeneity of German society would be reflected in the story, the aesthetics and also through the cast on and behind the stage.

A few national and city theatres are trying to reach a more diverse audience by offering educational programs. They – I again feel compelled to point out that these artistic directors are white and lack any migrant experience – base these programs on the image of the uneducated immigrant who needs a pedagogical introduction to the arts and to theatre in general. By contrast, the audiences at Ballhaus Naunynstraße are diverse, with at least one third composed of people of color.

6. Conclusion

A ‘white’ perspective dominates the power of definition at theatres and cultural institutions in Germany. There is a blatant representational imbalance at German theatres. By and large, artists of color and black artists are still not given the chance to represent their perspectives on the stages of these venues. As a result, the debate on blackface and on whether it is a neutral theatrical device cannot be discussed in earnest and with sincerity. Who is represented on stage and how and for whom this art is made should be discussed by taking into account diverse perspectives and by creating the possibility of self-representation for artists of color at these cultural institutions and theatre venues.

Bibliography

R. Aareen, Art history as a common heritage. „Whose Heritage?“ Conference, London 1999.

K. Amine, “Double Critique: Disrupting Monolithic Thrusts,” Textures. Online Platform for Interweaving Performance Cultures, 27 Mar. 2013, web, www.textures-platform.com/?p=2800, last accessed: 18 Dec. 2013.

R. Appignanesi, “Introduction. ‘Whose culture’ Exposing the Myth of Cultural Diversity,” in ibid, Beyond Cultural Diversity. The Case for Creativity. A Third Text Report, London: Third Text Publication, 2010, n. pag.

H. K. Bhabha, “The Postcolonial and the Postmodern: The question of agency,” in ibid: The location of culture, London, New York: Routledge, 2004, pp. 245-82.

J. Bloomfield, “Crossing the Rainbow. National Differences and International Convergences in Multicultural Performing Arts in Europe,” IETM international networkforcontemporary performing arts, 2003, web, ietm.org/sites/default/files/crossing_the_rainbow.pdf, last accessed: 18 Dec. 2013.

M. Brauneck, Ausländertheater in der Bundesrepublik Deutschland und in West-Berlin. Arbeitsbericht zum Forschungsprojekt ‘Populäre Theaterkultur,’ Hamburg: Pressestelle der Universität Hamburg, 1983.

R. Bharucha, Thinking Through Theatre in an Age of Globalization, Hanover: Wesleyan University Press, 2000.

D. Chakrabarty, “Postcoloniality and the Artifice of History,” in: Representations, vol. 37, no.4, 1992, pp.1-26.

D. Chakrabarty, Provincializing Europe. Postcolonial Thought and Historical Difference, Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 2008.

E. Fischer-Lichte, Das eigene und das fremde Theater, Tübingen: Francke, 1999.

K. N. Ha, Hype um Hybridität. Kultureller Differenzkonsum und postmoderne Verwertungstechniken im Spätkapitalismus, Bielefeld: Transcript, 2005.

N. M. Haakh, Islamisierte Körper auf der Bühne. Identitätspolitische Positionierung zur deutschen Islam-Debatte in Arbeiten des postmigrantischen Theaters Ballhaus Naunynstraße Berlin, MA Thesis, Berlin 2011 [unpublished manuscript].

K. Lornsen, Transgressive Topographien in der türkisch-deutschen Post-Migranten-Literatur, Diss., University of British Columbia, 2007.

E. Said, “Reflections on Exile,” in ibid., Reflections on Exile and Other Essays, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2002, pp. 173-98.

S. Sappelt, “Theater der Migrant/innen,” in: C. Chiellino (ed.), Interkulturelle Literatur in Deutschland, Stuttgart: Metzler, 2000, pp. 275-93.

A. Sharifi, Theater für Alle? Partizipation von Postmigranten am Beispiel der Bühnen der Stadt Köln, Frankfurt/Main: Lang, 2011.

On the other hand, there is a strong resistance to engage with that very history and the ways in which those practices, images or words have been and still are part of what is constituting German contemporary society. The recent discussion about the elimination of racist terms from children’s books strengthens the impression that what we are really dealing with here, is a struggle about the power over the black body. Mainstream positions that keep surfacing in these debates are based almost without exception on a deep lack of critical knowledge about Germany’s colonial past as well as the history of blackface, but also the complete underestimation of the power inherent to images and words. At the same time, the intensity of the reactions to anti-racist criticism in the cultural domain suggests, that there is indeed a, if subconscious, awareness of a historical “right” to psychological and corporeal violence against (former) colonial subjects that is now being endangered.

In this essay, I want to challenge four of the most popular misconceptions about this subject by taking a deeper look at the intrinsically linked mechanisms of identity, race and representation in Germany.

The first is the idea that what happens on stage/in a movie/in a book is inspired by, but does not impact, everyday reality.

The second is the notion that the protest against, and the rejection of, white actors painting their faces to portray Black characters is rooted in the problematization of blackface in the United States – whether or not this problematization is seen as legitimate by those using this line of argumentation shall be secondary here. More importantly, according to this theory, white German actors performing in black make-up today are really isolated incidents that are not in any way connected to the history of blackface in the United States or the history of racism in general. Merely an undue connection is constructed by the protesters.

The third is based on the overrating of intent: this position may even acknowledge the original, racist function of blackface but claims that it will be erased as soon as an author intends a neutral or antiracist meaning.

The fourth regards the repetition of racist practices and images as a means to commemorate a past that should not be forgotten. Here the reenactment or simple continuation of colonial imagery presumably constitutes in itself a critical engagement with this past. Racism and the embeddedness of racist practices in the everyday are projected onto previous, vague historical eras, while their ubiquitous presence in contemporary German society is denied and conveniently ignored by a white majority. The violent experiences of Black people are rendered invisible and insignificant.

What will follow is an attempt to unravel the inner contradictions and the incompleteness of such argumentation by reconnecting the practice of Blackface to the stereotype that is at its origin and redrawing the linkages between the historical development of imagery, colonialism and our contemporary moment – linkages that belie the idea that Blackface could exist in total isolation and neutrality on a German stage.

I

Cymothoa exigua, the tongue-eating fish louse is an amazing little animal. It is a parasitic crustacean which attaches itself to the tongue of fish, slowly making the organ wither away and eventually becoming it. This Cymothoa is the only known parasite that can replace a living organ. As probably most people, the first time I saw a picture of one of these little fellas, I was repulsed and fascinated at the same time. For days I could not get its image out of my head. What a wonderful metaphor this is, I thought, for the meaning and impact of racist imagery on our mind and body.

For if you happen to be a Black person in a predominantly white society like Germany, you will most likely be aware of the fact that your body constantly speaks with somebody else’s tongue. It is communicating false information about you and there is often nothing you can do about that. This is due to the uncanny interplay of the absence of representations of Black people as normal, possibly German individuals, and the overwhelming presence of racist and exoticizing stereotypes. Blackface is only one of many vessels containing this stereotype which is based on a very limited set of negative and dehumanizing ideas about Blackness. Thus, whether Blackface is used within the traditional framework of a minstrel show in the US or within the staging of a presumably anti-racist play at the German Schlosspark Theater, it can never be an independent means of expression. It comes with a baggage and is inspired and influenced by, or at least connoted with, racist images of Blackness.

Anyone who has ever watched a horror movie at night and caught themselves double checking whether the door is locked properly hours after knows that images do not stay with us only for the moment in which we are looking at them. They will nest in our minds, whisper in our ears and influence our actions beyond our better knowledge. They will speed up our heart rate, make us sweat, steal peaceful hours of sleep from us. As in the case of Blackface, they will become haunting ghosts, remote-controlling the mechanisms of a whole society, most of whose members do not remember why.

II

The blackface used in the version of Dea Loher’s Unschuld (Innocence) staged at Deutsches Theater, for instance, is quite obviously citing the American minstrel tradition: pitch black face, bright red and exaggerated lips, emphasized by the unnaturally widened eyes of the actors. The casual use of a classic minstrel blackface as a reference apparently comprehensible to a German audience testifies to the familiarity of the image in this context. The functionality of the image depends on the apparent universality and established knowledge of what it contains. Its content has been fed into it for more than 200 years. From the mid-19th century on, advertisement, a domain that relies more than any other on the power of imagery, began to play an important role in the way that black people were seen in Germany. Minstrel shows were indeed touring in Europe and along with the “human zoos” constituted in themselves a powerful practice of creating and propagating a derogatory image of “the African” and other POCs. However, what had the greatest impact were not the shows themselves but the Posters that promoted them. Their particular style was picked up by advertisers, artists and musicians and found its way into various spheres of German cultural production. With the import of goods from the US and the growing of the advertisement industry in Germany, images of Black people became common signifiers for certain products, such as ink or toothpaste. One particular image though that enjoyed a special popularity nicely links up with the idea of Blackness involuntarily evoked in the Deutsches Theater’s staging of Unschuld: the idea that Black people are after all not really black but just painted or, worse, dirty. Growing up as a Black child in Germany, I am all too familiar with this concept that one can encounter in everyday interactions with white Germans or in movies or children’s books like Pippi Longstocking, etc. It emphasizes the notion that there is something fundamentally wrong with being black and that Whiteness equals normalcy, purity and cleanliness.

The paint on the faces of the two white actors in Unschuld dissolves as they move around on stage, interact with other characters and sweat. In the end, the make-up is gone. What has apparently been meant to signify a racist projection rather than “actual Blackness” brings back a haunted image that begins to march to its own rhythm.

The “Mohrenwäsche” (washing of the moor) is also a figure of speech that has traditionally been used to describe the futile attempt to clear someone’s culpability by using false evidence.

And in Germany the image became hugely popular especially between 1905 and 1911 to advertise soap. In Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany, David Ciarlo demarcates the interrelation of the ever heavier use of this and other racialized images during this period and the political developments in the colonies:

It would take a political event, however – an event of extreme violence – to provide an impetus for the adoption of racialization across all imagery in the consumer imaginary. That event was war.

The resistance against the German colonizers and the later genocide of the Herero and Nama in what is today Namibia (formerly German South-West Africa) intensely impacted the way in which Blackness was depicted in German advertisement.

The internal conflicts of an imperial German government, the atrocities committed by it in the colonies, and the tremendous amount of tax money eaten up by the colonial enterprise necessitated a propaganda that would make the war seem legitimate and mandatory, and portray Africans as less than human. It is therefore hardly surprising that the genocide that was accompanied by, and executed through, the use of concentration camps and horrific “scientific experiments” – practices that would be directly transferred into national socialism – correlate with an increase of imagery suggesting that Black people needed “cleaning”.

While this violent history has been mostly erased from the collective memory of German contemporary society, the images, whether conceptual or literal, have survived and await us, sometimes in the most curious places.

In 2007, the German branch of UNICEF picked up the image of the “Mohrenwäsche” for a fundraising campaign for schools in “Africa”. Posters showed white children with brown paint smeared over their faces. The uneven way in which it was applied suggested dirt rather than makeup. Clearly, here, too, viewers were expected to automatically make the connection between brown dirt and poor, African children. It took an intervention from UNICEF USA to withdraw the posters. Former protests from Black people in Germany had been ignored at best. The incident left me pondering. Why did German fundraising for Black children in „Africa“ require a campaign featuring white children in the first place? Why did these white children require (a really dirty looking) make up? The UNICEF campaign, the discussion around Blackface and racist language in children’s books are probably excellent moments to reflect upon what constitutes white German identity and what it relies on. What happens, when the Cymothoa exigua dies?

III

The Afro-German artist Philip Metz carried a German carnival costume all the way from Munich to Dakar to slowly stroll down the streets of the Senegalese capital. What would have been familiar to anyone who has grown up in Germany engendered nothing but incomprehension among the local population. Philip Metz was dressed up as what – in many incidents – is still understood to represent an “African” in the West: a grass skirt, a curious leather vest, a strange “afro wig” and a baton with a scull sitting on its top.

In the course of this artistic intervention, Metz asked shop owners and street venders to advise him about what to wear to fit in and adopt the look of a “typical Dakarois”. Piece by piece, he dropped the racist costume and ended up in sneakers, jeans, a wax print shirt and a rather short haircut. One can probably look at this work as an experiment, as an investigation of the correlation of images and context. I see it as an exorcism that confronts a stereotype rather than simply repeating it and even goes beyond merely deconstructing it by exporting it into another epistemic realm, thereby making visible the short-sightedness and restrictedness of the white gaze.

Philip Metz’s own position as a Black German, the consideration of the existence of different perspectives on history as well as different epistemological approaches to subject matters and, lastly, the critical investigation of the stereotype itself are absolutely fundamental for the success of this artwork.

In the end, cultural producers decide which images they want to pick up. They do not decide, though, where these images come from, and how, and by whom, they are read. Blackface, in the German context, has a meaning. This meaning needs to be consciously examined and reflected upon. It cannot simply be replaced. So, the one question we should always ask ourselves before using an image is: who will be in charge of our tongue?

Bibliography

N. Badenberg, “Mohrenwäschen, Völkerschauen: Der Konsum des Schwarzen um 1900,” in B. Tautz (ed.), Colors 1800 / 1900 / 2000: Signs of Ethic Difference, Amsterdam and New York: Rodopi, 2004, pp. 163–84.

D. Ciarlo, Advertising Empire: Race and Visual Culture in Imperial Germany, Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2011.

This keynote lecture was presented at the opening of the conference DANCE/BODY AT THE CROSSROADS OF CULTURES, which was held between 16–18 June 2011, in Nicosia, Cyprus. The conference was organized by Dance Gate Lefkosla, Cyprus, in collaboration with the the Dance Programme of the University of Nicosia.

An abridged version of the lecture is available for download here.

What I love about this city are its wholly unexpected combinations. I had been introduced to them by the sentence: My name is Fatma and I work for Solidere. Which for us would be the equivalent of: My name is Matthias and I work as an investment banker for Deutsche Bank London. One half of the family supplies Lebanese Prime Ministers, the other half played an important part in the PLO. The minute she orders a hamburger or I make saltimbocca, she asks for ketchup while tugging her evening gown into place.

We spent the weekend at an old hotel in the Chouf Mountains. As Katrin and I walked through the restaurant, I was given very chauvinistic glances. I was looked up and down by each of the establishment’s 20 guests: There is no way this twatty tramp can afford this. What has become of our values. The pleasant colonialist arrogance of the French-speaking bourgeoisie. May it be placed under wildlife protection – if such a thing existed here.

Now the Hezbollah fighters are fighting in Syria; there are 10 casualties every week in Tripoli; or fighters pass through the city centre. During the civil war, the country was paralysed. Now the civil war is simply happening in parallel. One notices as much of it in Beirut as one does in Berlin. Only on television, on the Hezbollah channel, we see burials of fallen fighters in an incessant loop; yet it seems unlikely that the Ashrafieh shiksas are watching the Hezbollah channel.

It is the same thing with the fruit: it looks like nothing, yet tastes great. They are fruits from before the EU reform. Sprayed, but all of them original species.

Spiegel online is yakking about Taksim Square, writing that Turkey cannot be accepted into the EU under these circumstances. They don’t seem to notice that the point has long been the Sunni-Arabic union, and that goddamn fucking Europe has long fallen by the wayside.

–
Translated by Maude Capelle

Two years ago, the public bus system was abolished. And now these buses are rusting away at the bus terminals. Most of them have a flat tire; or nocturnal visitors have taken what they needed.

Nobody gives a thought to scrapping or selling the vehicles. A strange thing, this neo-liberalism. All of Beirut’s pavements are fully parked up at all times. And over the course of four months in this city, I have never seen anybody issuing parking tickets. However, short-distance transport by share taxi works perfectly.

Together with my students, I am working towards a May edition of X Apartments, a project in which artists create installations in private homes. A project that makes the artistic gaze voyeuristically meet private reality. I developed X Apartments at the Theater der Welt festival in the Ruhr region; later versions were staged in Berlin, Istanbul, Warsaw, São Paolo. Spectators walk from one flat to the next. On each tour, they see seven pieces, each lasting around ten minutes. I don’t know how spectators in Beirut are supposed to walk from one flat to the next. It is impossible to manoeuvre on the pavement. And on the street one is grazed fondly by cars’ wing mirrors.

Searching for venues, we visited a very friendly Palestinian camp – Mar Elias. But I also want to see the camps in Sabra and Shatila. In 1982, Christian militias, covered by the Israeli army, perpetrated a horrific massacre. Jean Genet and Oriana Fallaci wrote about it; the Israeli animated film “Waltz with Bashir” is concerned with it.

The market in front of the camp is full of people. We eat warm hummus and foul for a song. One enters Sabra through a round arch. A few metres in, one’s nose fills with the stench of rubbish, the whole facility is totally run-down. Visitors are greeted with hostile glances. A few youngsters are sitting at the intersection and playing with their guns. We don’t really disturb the drug trade, but aren’t quite welcome either.

In the camps, the Lebanese police and the military hold no authority. We are happy to be back outside. Nobody has said a word. We can forget about staging our project here. For the Lebanese, it conforms to the cliché of foreign observers that they are always edging towards these camps. Anyway, no matter what a piece might tell here, it is just impossible, way too dangerous.

We go back to our bohemian ghetto. The weather is beautiful. We want to go to the sea, to a café. As we are driving through Downtown Beirut, I think: actually, the Palestinians should be resettled in this neighbourhood, in these fancy houses. The total lack of life on the streets seems absurd.

Palestinians have only been allowed to work for a few years, although not as doctors, architects, or lawyers. They have been living here since 1949. The Hezbollah may be fighting against Israel, but it wants no civic rights for the Palestinians: as fully-fledged citizens, they would shift the delicate balance in favour of the Sunni.

We want to form a party: the Palestinian Bohemian Party. Civic rights for all Palestinians, public beaches for all – and the introduction of sewage treatment plants!

–
Translated by Maude Capelle
The German version of the text can be accessed here.

At the Research Center – on the occasion of a Workshop with Homi K. Bhabha, 10 May 2012 © Thomas Martius

First meeting with the students. There are fourteen of them. A third comes from the Middle East, a third comes from Western countries and has Arabic roots, and a third is – if one may say so – purely Western.

All have come to the Ashkal Alwan Home Workspace for postgraduate studies. That very evening, there’s a bash; the old cliché of Beirut as the capital of parties and social butterflies. In a way it is, in a way it isn’t.

Together with the students, we tour the city’s neighbourhoods. The more they approach things from a foreign perspective and overemphasise the situation, the more interesting it becomes. Wrecked cars are lined up behind the Peugeot salesroom. One can see where the heads crashed into the windshield. The car graveyard as a metaphor for the city. We are told to leave, not to take any pictures.

A few weeks into the programme, the students have gotten used to the fact that I mainly invite visual artists. Phil Collins has beguiled and enthralled them. He flirts with everyone. In his workshop, he screens films, engages with dance. He says that this year of studies offers the rare opportunity to view oneself as part of a collective; something that is so difficult to find later on when working. His departure feels like the end of a love affair. All of us feel hung over without having drunk.

I am sitting in my office, on the phone to Germany. There is a loud bang. I hear myself say: sounds like a bomb blast, but shouldn’t be anything serious. Students and colleagues are standing transfixed at the windows. A cloud of smoke rises over the central square of the Christian neighbourhood of Ashrafieh. Initially, the attack appears to have been directed at the Christians. Then we hear that it was targeting the head of secret services. The Lebanese are depressed. They think: it’s coming back, the thing that dominated and destroyed the country for 22 years – bomb attacks, civil war, the spiral of violence.

On a Sunday – it is still warm – I go to the Sporting Club, a pool by the sea. There are tanks and soldiers everywhere; protesters are going to the funeral. Am I mad to be going swimming while these people are fighting for survival? Yet joining the demonstration is too dangerous, I don’t know my way around the dozens of political groupings and their agendas. In the distance, I keep hearing ambulance sirens. A phone call: stay where you are, don’t go outside, not a good idea. Half a day of civil war. The protesters have marched to the seat of government and have called for the government to resign. We are watching a kitsch sunset, eating overpriced chips, and contemplating the decrepit swimming pool and its concrete architecture, built in the seventies just before the civil war.

The force of the blast pressed open my window. During the night, some neighbourhoods remain agitated, then life goes on as if nothing had ever happened. The next day, I am taking a Pilates class with long-haired Ashrafieh shiksas, getting it all wrong, and I cannot imagine that it has ever been any different. Welcome to Beirut! Bloody decadence!

–
Translated by Maude Capelle
The German version of the text can be accessed here.

Takao Kawaguchi: The Foyer
Short Video.

Concept & editing: Thomas Martius
Camera: Benjamin Bayer
Assistance: Nils Ramme

On the occasion of the “Dumb Type Symposium: The Birth of New Media Dramaturgy” (2–4 April 2013, Freie Universität Berlin), which was initiated by Peter Eckersall and organised in cooperation with Performance Studies international (PSi), the International Research Centre “Interweaving Performance Cultures”, School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne, and the Australian Research Council.