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Duet for Cannibals

Films, videos and talks at the Royal Tropical Institute of Amsterdam

  • 15 Jan 2010  –  18 Jan 2010
    KIT TropentheaterKIT Tropentheater, Linneausstraat 2, 1090HA Amsterdam
    Map
    Linneausstraat 21090HAAmsterdam, 

Duet for Cannibals is a screening and discussion program bringing together a selection of works by contemporary artists and filmmakers, as well as footage from the Tropical Museum archive. It deals with colonialism and cannibalism as forms of cultural appropriation.

Curated by Inti Guerrero

With:
Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster

Encouters with Empires

15 January, 20.00 hrs
Wendelien van Oldenborgh (NL), Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster (FR) & Jose A. Resptrepo (CO)

Cannibalizing Popular Culture

18 February, 20.00 hrs
Ming Wong (SG), Christodoulos Panayiotou (CY) & Raimond Chaves (PE)

Contributions 
Rosa Ronsdorf 
Comments (1)

Duet for Cannibals no. 1 | 15 January 2010

agentur presents:

'Duet for Cannibals'
15 January, 18 February, 31 March, 28 April 2010
Films, videos & talks at the Theatre of the Royal Tropical Institute in Amsterdam

'Duet for Cannibals' brings together a selection of works by contemporary artists and filmmakers as well as footage from the Tropical Museum's archive. Comprising videos, films, slideshows and performative talks by Raimond Chaves, Dominique Gonzalez-Foerster, Ossama Mohammed, Wendelien van Oldenborgh, Christodoulos Panayiotou, Jose Alejandro Restrepo, Andy Warhol and Ming Wong among others. Curated by Inti Guerrero

Anthropologic and ethnographic institutions in European colonial power centres, like the former Colonial Institute of Amsterdam (nowadays the Royal Tropical Institute), were founded to study and exhibit the culture of 'overseas people'. Their role was to appropriate, classify, and display cultural artifacts and sometimes even human beings. Though they claimed to reveal the pre-supposed cultural essence of the non-European other, such displays further entrenched the stereotypes of a eurocentric scientific and cultural status quo. In other words, it was by means of inclusion of other cultures rather than their exclusion, that the colonial power constructed and affirmed itself within the enlightened modern institution, enhancing a privileged position from where it could unilaterally represent the rest of the world. The works in 'Duet for Cannibals' present a wide range of approaches to this debate by departing from historical strata of colonial archives, post-war cultural imperialism and countercultural forms of metropolitan creole-subcultures. The screenings are accompanied by Q&A sessions with guest artists, lectures and discussions.

The title is borrowed from a 1969 film directed by American author and critic Susan Sontag.

For more information on the works, please visit: www.agentur.nl

b&w image above: Opening Koloniaal Instituut in Amsterdam door HM de Koningin, 9 oktober 1926. © KIT, Amsterdam.

Photographs below were taken by Anu Vahtra:

19 Jan 2010, 22:47
Comments (1)