Participating artists:Speaker: Prof. Dr. Dieter Daniels, Frederike Moormann, Angelika Waniek
Venue:HGB, Raum 2.41
Wächterstraße 11
04107 Leipzig
Partner:Haus der Brandenburgisch- Preußischen Geschichte (HBPG) in Kooperation mit dem Hartware MedienKunstVerein (HMKV) Dortmund und dem Goethe Institut Lomè, Theater Die Rampe, Stuttgart
Project presentation with acoustic and visual examples from the artistic-scientific process.
The presentation is aimed at students who are interested in collaborating on the project.
The artistic-scientific-curatorial project Black Noise / White Noise examines, visualizes and circulates knowledge and experiences about colonial telecommunication structures and their continuation today in power relations and narrative perspectives. This knowledge about the (re)use of colonial infrastructures is developed in a dialog between Togo, Namibia and Germany. The starting point is the history, largely unknown today, of the wireless radio link established by Telefunken in the German Reich between 1910 and 1914 between the large transmitter station Nauen (Brandenburg) via Kamina (Togo) to Windhoek (Namibia) and the use of radio technology in the genocide against the Herero and Nama in 1904. Knowledge of the "Radiotelegraphic World Project" initiated by Telefunken at the time, with Nauen as its starting point, has so far been accessible primarily from a European perspective. Intercontinental radio technology, which was considered cutting-edge technology at the time, was used as a colonial instrument of power. This resulted in land expropriation, experiences of violence and forced labor of the indigenous population.
Extraction and telecommunications have a violent relationship with each other. As real-time communication, radio technology is one of the precursors of the internet. The extent to which today's infrastructures are based on wireless telegraphy can be seen, for example, in the data transport of the Internet: the global network of deep-sea fiber optic cables follows the former colonial telegraph cable routes. The central Google access point for the whole of Africa is located in Togo, named after the Nigerian author and pioneer of abolotionism Olaudah Equiano.
Black Noise / White Noise releases archive material on this little-examined history and sets it in motion: A new connection is being created between Nauen and the ruins of German colonialism in Kamina and Windhoek one hundred and ten years after their commissioning: artistic approaches and digital, artistic-informative material are intended to keep the sensitivity and understanding of the multi-perspectivity of these histories alive in the participating countries. The aim is to make the jointly developed and researched material permanently available in Togo and Namibia as well as in Germany.
See also: From Windhoek to Kamina to Nauen. A workbook, 2023, with contributions by Mèhèza Kalibani, Tuli Mekondjo, Dieter Daniels, Frederike Moormann, Frieda Mukufa, Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja & Angelika Waniek
