To Revolutionary Type Love is the name of an exhibition celebrating queer love in Kenya and beyond. It is a toast, and it is coming to Braunschweig. Artists Kawira Mwirichia, Malcolm Muga and Faith Wanjala from Nairobi will present the group’s exhibition, making use of the medium of photography in many ways, as well as of the East African textile, the kanga, using symbols and quotes unique to the triumphs and stories of the queer movements from Kenya’s and international communities.

Exhibition and symposium, 13.06-15.06.2018, HBK Braunschweig

Wednesday, 13.6.2018

Venue: Gallery of HBK Braunschweig

17.00 Opening address by HBK’s president, Vanessa Ohlraun

17.15 Welcome, Ulrike Bergermann and Rena Onat

17.45 Introduction to the exhibition: Q&A with Kawira Mwirichia, Malcolm Muga and Faith Wanjala (Nairobi)

18.30 ARKESTRATED RHYTHMACHINE KOMPLEXITIES. Soundperformance by Johannes Ismaiel-Wendt (Hildesheim) and Malte Pelleter (Lüneburg)

19.30 Dinner

Thursday, 14.6.2018

Venue: Aula of HBK Braunschweig

Symposium « To Revolutionary Type Love – appropriation and other practices »

Appropriation is making use of the world in changing the world. It can be a Revolutionary Type Love. Appropriation can be corporate power turning culture into capital, or it can be queer art turning heteronormative structures inside out. It is the potential and inevitable condition of any expression – but under conditions of huge inequalities.

Today, cultural appropriation is part of an ongoing colonialist disposession, hegemonic grabbings of discourses as well as of material culture, extraction of raw material, land grabbing, ecological and economical exploitation. In the wake of the entangled and violent history of Europe and Africa, the symposium looks at other practices and possibilities.

Of course, in a networked digital media world, questions of copyright and the commons intensified with sampling music, questioning the status of ownership and creativity. Pop music commodified Black beats, and cultural minorities hijack the entertainment industry. But this does not happen within a symmetrical power relation, as the distribution of wealth and technologies are extremely uneven.

The symposium will discuss artistic and theoretical strategies to resists the grab. We refer to TRTL’s queer photographic expressions and the usages of the traditional kanga cloth through queer histories and communities, we reflect on different time frames in afrofuturism and post-black art, we talk about possibilities of diasporic un/belongings, resistance, anger, and love.

Panel 1: Media, materiality, time

09.30 Welcome by the organizers; introduction into the panel by chair Maja Figge (Linz)

10.00 Ulrike Bergermann (Braunschweig): The Desire for Appropriation and Histories of the Kanga

10.30 Henriette Gunkel (London): Speculative Intimacies: On Photography and Time

11.30 Coffee

Panel 2: Trans/forming Images of Blackness in Media and the Arts

12.00 Introduction into the panel by chair Nanna Heidenreich (Köln)

12.15 Nana Adusei-Poku (New York/Berlin): From Post-Black Art to Performances of Nothingness

13.15 Lunch

14.30 Samanea Karrfalt (Bayreuth): Making Up for Lost Time: The Importance of Contemporary African Art

15.30 Stacie Graham (London): Reshaping Image: Cross-genre and Intersectional Examples within the Media Industry

16.30 Coffee

Panel 3: Transnational and diasporic perspectives

17.00 Introduction into the panel by chair Anja Michaelsen (Berlin)

17.15 Maureen Maisha Auma (Magdeburg), Katja Kinder (Berlin): Knowledges of (Un)Belonging – Transnational Queer Afrodiasporic Conversations

18.30 mahlOt Sansosa (Zanzibar/Santiago/NYC): minha língua materna é parte integral dois, aproxime-se… (my mother tongue is full: part ll – come closer…)

19.00 – venue: gallery –

Nadine Siegert (Bayreuth): « Utopian Sighs: Make Love to the Future ». A walk through the exhibition with some thoughts on the power of images for future-making

20.00 Dinner

Friday, 15.6.2018

Venue: Aula of HBK Braunschweig

10.00-12.00 Revolutionary appropriations? Wrap up, moderated by Nana Adusei-Poku, and open space for discussion

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Contact: Nielab Juyanda-Nassery, n.juyanda-nassery@hbk-bs.de

Web: trtl.hbk-bs.de

Twitter: https://twitter.com/trtl_bs

Organizers: Ulrike Bergermann, Rena Onat, Institute for Media Studies

HBK Braunschweig
Johannes-Selenka-Platz 1
38118 Braunschweig

Funding by: PRO*Niedersachsen, HBK Braunschweig, in cooperation with Iwalewahaus, University of Bayreuth, and Schwules Museum Berlin.