Anonymity vs. Positioning

Internationally advertised art-in-architecture competitions are not that common. Beyond the necessary funding, this certainly depends on an important characteristic and a significant selection criterion: contextual relevance. Specifically for the competition to realise a decolonial memorial, the inclusion of international narratives, thoughts, descriptions, stories... was absolutely crucial. The perspective of the observing, narrative, description, etc. was particularly important here.

Convinced that the way we see something depends heavily on how we relate to it, Kenyan writer and cultural scholar Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o embarked on a ‘search for relevance’ – as he calls his search for a ‘liberating perspective’ in African literature that enables African people to define themselves in relation to themselves and, from there, to other people in the world. Ngũgĩ notes that African children and young people, through their encounter with literature in colonial schools or universities, learn about the world as it is defined and reflected from a European perspective, so that their worldview is Europeanised and Africa is not at the centre, but exists as an appendix or satellite, on the “periphery”. (Ngũgĩ 2017, 152-162)

His central question is then:

‘From what foundation do we view the world?’ (Ngũgĩ 2017, 160)

And specifically in the field of literature:

‘If there is a need to study the historical continuity of a single culture, why can't it be African? Why can't African literature be the focus, so that we can view other cultures in relation to it?’ (Ngũgĩ 2017, 155)

Ngũgĩ is outraged that long after independence, Kenyan and African students are uncritically exposed to foreign cultural values that are not only meaningless to their needs, but also devalue African cultural heritage. And this goes beyond literature to all other areas of culture and school subjects.

His ‘search for relevance’, published with other essays in the volume Decolonising the Mind, is a plea for national or regional liberation as a prerequisite for genuine international and democratic equality among people, which brings with it justice, progress and peace. (Ngũgĩ 2017, 170-174)

Ngũgĩ's reflections and calls to action are definitely not only relevant to the African continent, nor are they limited to literary studies, as he himself notes. They are eminently valid in all former colonies where “internal colonialism” continues to take hold.

In the first phase of the globally open, anonymous, two-phase competition, we as the jury were confronted with the question of whether we could decolonise our own understanding of art and follow Ngũgĩ's appeal with our expertise in this specific process of selecting a “decolonial” symbol of thought. On the other hand, we were confronted with a large number of submissions that, as will be shown, turned out to be expressions of internal colonialism. By “we”, we mean the high-calibre international jury and the experts and guests.

The competition entries for the first ideation phase had to be submitted digitally by 13 August 2023. Of the 273 submissions, 244 designs were reviewed in the preliminary round and admitted to the competition. The remaining 29 submissions were either submitted too late or were incomplete and were therefore not admitted. The jury met for the first time on 16 and 17 September 2023.

One of the major difficulties in the selection process was to counteract the structural disadvantages created by colonialism, which are reflected in art as in every sphere of our society. The jury therefore unanimously decided to find out the continent of origin of the applicants during the preliminary review in order to ensure a balanced selection, and that approximately 30 per cent of the designs selected for the second phase should come from the Global South. However, explicit care was also taken to ensure that the diaspora in Europe and North America was not disadvantaged by a higher percentage.

I first encountered the term ‘internal colonialism’, which is used worldwide to refer to structural political and economic inequalities within a state/former colony, through the Bolivian sociologist Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui. It refers specifically to the distinguishing feature of colonised populations' internalised submission to the hegemony of Eurocentrism and the imitative repetition of Eurocentric patterns. From the 16th century onwards, Black, Indigenous and People of Colour (BIPoC) were forced by European colonisers, first in the American colonies and then worldwide, to imitate a foreign culture and even to be ashamed of their own culture, with the result that internalised power and domination relations continue in the colonies to this day. As in colonialism in general, in “internal colonialism” the justification for unequal power and domination relationships is underpinned by racist arguments.

“Internal colonialism” has many different faces or forms of expression that make it invisible. Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui, for example, talks about how the hypocritical discourse of multiculturalism in former colonies contributes to the hegemony of (white) elites by, for example, illegalising and destroying the legal coca leaf markets of indigenous populations, who are already excluded by being labelled “indigenous peoples”, through forced deforestation. ‘For a long time now, my work has dealt with the idea that we are currently facing a case of ongoing internal colonialism in our countries,’ writes Rivera Cusicanqui. In “internal colonialism”, words take on a special role, she says, because they are not there to name something, but to conceal something – such as talk of equality when a large part of the population is denied its rights as an “indigenous people”. (Rivera Cusicanqui 2018, 82, 42)

Of the 244 designs that were meticulously presented to us during the preliminary review on 16 September, many bore witness to an unreflective internal colonialism in which representations of revictimisation stood in the way of our own efforts to question colonial continuities in the understanding of art and made our task as judges even more difficult. One jury member commented that they could no longer bear to see chains or depictions of enslaved people. I myself could no longer bear to see Mercator's world map – with its claim to include the ‘whole world’, this representation reproduces a profound form of 16th-century Eurocentrism.

And suddenly, after a second round of judging, we were left with only thirteen selected designs, even though the goal of the first idea phase had been to select up to 20 designs and four alternates, for a total of 24 designs, for the second phase of the competition.

Of course, the jury could have opted for only thirteen designs, but we were aware that art in architecture was created as a means of promoting artists and should continue to function as such today, so that requests for reinstatement had to be submitted and a further round of judging scheduled in order to give up to 20 artists or artist groups and four alternates the opportunity to participate in the second phase of the competition.

On 27 January 2024, the jury convened for the second phase of the competition. The events that had unfolded in Germany and around the world since the first meeting in September 2023 had heightened the urgency of the competition in the meantime.

In this second phase, the focus was on developing the original idea, so that the artistic quality of the design had to be assessed in terms of its feasibility and compliance with all technical specifications.

The development of the designs was particularly pleasing in this respect. While many of them were only utopian ideas in the first phase, in the second phase they were incredibly well developed in terms of their feasibility.

Nevertheless, the challenges facing the jury remained extremely demanding in the second phase. While the first phase of the competition was dominated by questions of decolonising our understanding of art and internal colonialism, the second phase required the jury to strike a balance between the anonymity required in competitions and the need for context in order to better understand the individual designs. In 2024, we can no longer ignore the relevance of context in art production, precisely because, as mentioned at the beginning, ‘How we see something – even with our own eyes – depends very much on how we relate to it.’ (Ngũgĩ 2017, 153)

In the very first chapter of Staying with the Trouble: Making Kin in the Chthulucene, Donna Haraway recounts that she learned from social and cultural anthropologist Marilyn Strathern in The Gender of the Gift (a study based on ethnographic research in the highlands of Papua New Guinea) that ‘it matters what ideas we think with.’ (Haraway 2018, 23)

Donna Haraway takes the idea further: it is not just about the ideas that think ideas, but about concerns, narratives, thoughts, descriptions, connections, stories...

Evaluating twenty drafts in the second phase (244 in the first phase!) that explicitly dealt with decolonisation remained extremely challenging without knowledge of their context.

Despite everything, participating in the jury meeting in both phases was very exciting and incredibly enjoyable, thanks in part to the thorough preliminary review and intensive discussions among the aforementioned group of experts, and in part to the excellent support provided by the Berlin Global Village team. In this context, I would like to mention a very personal experience that made me very happy during those days: The catering reminded me of childhood meals... I simply felt ‘at home’.[1] Fried plantains, manioc, beans... even a chickpea and vegetable filling wrapped in banana leaves that tasted intensely like the Colombian tamales of my childhood. When I asked the cook where these dishes came from, she pointed me to Gambia. But they could just as easily have come from the Caribbean coast, I thought to myself. As a result of the transatlantic slave trade, there are amazing connections within the Global South.

[1] I deliberately avoid using the word ‘Heimat’ because it is regularly used by conservative and right-wing extremist groups to promote a closed, homogeneous and static understanding of culture, which must be counteracted.

References

Haraway, Donna J. 2018. Unruhig bleiben. Die Verwandtschaft der Arten im Chthuluzän. Frankfurt / New York: Campus Verlag.

Ngũgĩ, wa Thiong’o. 2017 (1986). Dekolonisierung des Denkens: Essays über afrikanische Sprachen in der Literatur. Münster: UNRAST Verlag.

Rivera Cusicanqui, Silvia. 2018. Ch’ixinakax utxiwa. Eine Reflexion über Praktiken und Diskurse der Dekolonisierung. Hg. von Sebastian Garbe, María Cárdenas, und Andrea Sempértegui. Münster: UNRAST Verlag.

Realisierung eines dekolonialen Denkzeichens im Außenraum von Berlin Global Village, Am Sudhaus 2, 12053 Berlin Neukölln