PAPER
with commisioned writings by:
TOMKE BRAUN
NOLAN OSWALD DENNIS
ZARA JULIUS
ZAYAAN KHAN
MAHRET IFEOMA KUPKA
LINDIWE MNGXITAMA
MAGNUS ELIAS ROSENGARTEN *
KATHY-ANN TAN
un I der I min I ing
From the moment I received the request to write a text for the exhibition "Soil Conversations", I was met with autobiographical associations. The essay was to aim at relating to the curatorial and artistic stance of the exhibition and also to create space of contemplation for new perspectives and approaches to the multi-layered motif of soil. The exhibition’s core themes belonging, the relationship between humanity and nature, spirituality and geographical connectivity led me to my own roots in Germany and my relationship to this country. It made sense, given my family history, to look at my point of reference to soil and ancestry through this lens.
My associations in connection with the essay assignment were primarily autobiographical because the white German side of my family comes from a rural background meaning soil and agriculture naturally played a central role in their lives and their survival for many generations. Because I only spent the first few months of my life on my ancestor’s farm in Münster (North Rhine-Westphalia) and later, regularly, the summer vacations, my childhood memories are fragmented. As I was socialized in a medium-sized, West German city, it left a gap between myself and the rural background that shaped the history of my German family so clearly and that continued to expand over the years. So I was surprised that the title and curatorial approach of "Soil Conversations" immediately had me ruminate over these rather personal associations, spending a few days understanding where these images emerged from. Knowing that the aim of "Soil Conversations" also explicitly correlates notions of soil and identity made me both curious and - especially from the position of an Afro-German person - quite uneasy. How could I explore this connection in Germany as someone who shares lineage with German whiteness and at the same time is incessantly excluded from the national narrative? This text digs deep, looking at layers of personal and collective experience and dissecting historical constructs that extend into the present. The mapped area of the farm was identity-forming and, because it was cultivated, it also provided direct breadwinning across generations. It defined a home that was in direct exchange with and depended on the surrounding nature. As all these visual impressions flooded my memory, I became aware of my ambivalent and conflicted relationship to them. The question of belonging, of personally belonging to my family and heritage was made present. These images, impressions, moments, experiences, summer vacations and family celebrations centering belonging left traces in the subconscious, always making me question whether I actually did belong? A kind of foggy perception that produced a void or undefined space between my body and my family ties. Adrian Piper and other contemporary artists negotiate the aforementioned physical and mental state in their oeuvre through performative practices but also with motion pictures. In one of her earliest series, Mythic Being (1973-75), the artist, a Black light-skinned cis woman wearing afro and costumed in large sunglasses and workman's clothing, takes on the cliché embodiment of a Black cis man, filming herself on the streets of New York. Piper is particularly interested in the reactions and palpable projections of passers-by and how these influence their self-image; how gazes and the clichés they reveal about minoritised groups in majority-white spaces often stereotype individuals and force them into certain roles.
"Mythic Being"* is a series of works consisting of drawings, photographs, texts, and video that draws attention to the construction of race, gender, and class in social interaction. In his work "The Wretched of the Earth"**, psychiatrist and intellectual Frantz Fanon describes the phenomenology of racism in Western societies as "atmospheric", i.e. omnipresent, inherent in them and thus impossible to escape.
Germany, with its legacy of the Völkisch movement and the resulting inhuman chapters of National Socialism all the way up to groupings of today's extreme right, is a prime example of a territory atmospherically contaminated with racism***. The obsession with whiteness, a collective subconscious deeply anchored in the belief that Germanness and phenotypical characteristics are linked, the categorical evasion of a colonial legacy and the vehement denial of the fact that Germany is a country of immigration are all symptoms of missed opportunities to come to terms with history. A central belief of nationalist propaganda is the blood and soil ideology, which claims a "unity of racialized people"**** and space and describes a physical, spiritual, mental and psychological imprint of "racialized individuals and collectives" given by "nature". The deeply questionable and racist imagination of a unity of (white) bodies and space, claimed as naturally given and unquestioned, persists to haunt this country’s present and its definitions of nationality. Here, the land is seen as nurturer of white bodies and producer of a norm that excludes and literally suffocates anything deviant. The self-declared white supremacy is the perfect execution of Western hubris. The question "Where are you from?" is a brilliant example. It claims to be an innocent question and is amply discussed amongst people who experience racism. Non-white German people find themselves in a boundary crossing question game on a daily basis and have to experience what it means when being German is exclusively defined by being white. The white questioning side thus reinforces its own "natural" belonging while simultaneously excluding the questioned person by means of arbitrarily chosen physiognomic features.
To this day I am fascinated by my relationship to Germany, by my physically and psychologically deeply anchored knowledge of belonging and not belonging at the same time. This liminal state is schizophrenic in nature because I am simultaneously there and not there, at least for the majority of the society that surrounds me. I’ve long been wondering what this does to us Black, brown, and non-white bodies who had to go through white (educational) institutions, and grew up surrounded in a social climate that is institutionally, structurally, and spiritually designed to erase us?
Fortunately, centuries of work by Black and PoC activists in a wide variety of German social spheres, in politics, literature, culture, and the visual arts, attest to the fact that an erasure is not possible. The exhibition "Trotz Allem: Migration in die Kolonialmetropole Berlin"***** (Despite Everything: Migration in the Colonial Metropolis of Berlin), recently organized at the Stadtmuseum Friedrichshain-Kreuzberg, presents its own historiography of various migration flows in and around Berlin, ranging from the present to the Kaiserreich. It attests to a constantly persistent presence and participation of non-white communities in various spheres of urban society, and at the same time testifies to an incredible resilience to the toxic climate of white German supremacism. The exhibition traces the lives of various families, from West Africa, Egypt, and China in the late 19th and 20th centuries, ending a human and emotional depth to academic debates about migration and immigration that this discourse often lacks.
One photograph****** in the exhibition burned itself into my memory: The two young Black women Leni Garber and Ejanga Egiomue, daughters of colonial migrants who came to Berlin at the turn of the century, walk elegantly and fashionably dressed on the streets of Berlin around 1939. A few meters behind them, an older white woman turns her head in surprise. Leni and Ejanga move so carefree and casual in public space. I am interested in whether there is also fear behind the happy facade, especially in the year of the outbreak of war. How do the two women experience the first years of World War II, with all the racist and inhumane rhetoric and propaganda in Germany? What does it do to their self-image and the question of belonging?
As a curator, writer, and performer, I situate my work within a globally connected Afro-diasporic art world that I have helped shape over the past five years from Germany and specifically Berlin. My interest in the body, embodiment and corporeality as a medium and carrier of diverse identities’ narratives, whether they are cultural, gendered, sexual or spiritual and religious, aims to subvert the white gaze and offer spaces for previously denied ourstories and bodily presence to unfold. I use the verb to undermine in two ways, metaphorically as an action that "work(s) little by little on the destruction of something,"******* and literally "to remove the earth in the soil underneath something".********
It describes an almost surgical intervention that requires a lot of precision, perseverance and a microscopic vision to allow a re-location and an act of inscribing self in the soil. During this process of extraction, we must replenish the ground with new soil, because its current composition destroys the presence of our bodies, creativity, beauty, and potential.
While reflecting on my origins and my work present the im-possibilities in which Black German cultural producers, artists, curators and authors, etc. are made to work and convey their content. The burning question arises, how conditions and systemic power imbalances can be altered to, especially in the German art and cultural landscape, help provide a “fertile ground” that allows a multiplicity of identities, bodies, and movements to “germinate and sprout”? A ground that is historically, discursively, and politically made incapable of sustaining diverse creativity, narratives, and embodiments must inevitably undergo a reassessment and understand its hostile composition in order to then reorganize itself, hopefully successfully.
Audre Lorde's conceptualization of the "eros"********* or "erotic" can help understand how an aforementioned change management can be initiated. Far away from purely sexual associations, the U.S. poet, feminist, and activist, who was also instrumental in shaping the Afro-German movement in the 1980s, particularly in Berlin, understood the "erotic" as a deeply feminine force that resides in all of us and manifests itself primarily in the power of our unexpressed and unrecognized feelings. Approaching and facing them is an essential step in the process of self-confrontation. Patriarchal structures prohibited accessing self-awareness for centuries, especially for female identified people, because those in power naturally knew about what kind of a catalyst of strength self-connectedness is and that unconscious, ignorant people have always been more compliant. I believe that white German people must truly face their history, face the emotional truth that their legacy includes contempt for non-white existance and that these fascistoid ideologies continue to work into current structures of social coexistence. They must actively choose to build a different, new society that resolutely rejects white supremacy and uplifts and appreciates all human life. In this new society being German cannot and can never again be equated to being white. So far notions of coming to terms with historic legacy have often been approached intellectually and academically, thus avoiding emotional confrontations with the past. A more holistic healing process, however, decontaminates the ground this country is built on and prepares it for a true celebration of human diversity.
Those undergoing a healing process need to face their deep-seated existential fears, unresolved traumas and crises of one’s own sexuality, and unprocessed potential for violence being projected onto created "others." Lorde's appeal to nurture a sophisticated relationship with oneself as a way of accessing a primal source of personal happiness, reflects this very process of self-reflection in order to ultimately enter into healthier relationships with fellow human beings and the environment.
My thoughts and associations in this text are not only addressing necessary steps and tasks aimed at the white German society. My main concern in this essay are all the Black German cultural workers. This is an attempt to address questions like, how we can position ourselves in a landscape of political upheaval, but also of continued hostility to our talents, abilities, strengths, and beauties; How do we plant ourselves with confidence in soil that is intent on our disappearance rather than our deserved appearance, which thoroughly upends the maxim of Germanness that still holds true today.
My biographical reference to soil and agriculture in West Germany and the closeness to German whiteness and its inherent gaze have given me a specific perspective on West Germany and especially on its deep identity crises. I was and am a disruptive force in an environment that resists understanding blackness as belonging to it, far off seeing it as inherent. The surroundings only dare to observe from a distance, with a scrutinising gaze and a judgmental sovereignty. This behaviour creates and maintains a norm in which one's own position of being "right" and "natural" is confirmed repeatedly. The fundamental weakness of a viewpoint coined by whiteness is its lack of imagination and a lack of knowledge about strategies of resistance. These strategies can help overcome fears that are projected onto the supposed "other" and enable a deeper understanding of power-critical coexistence.
It is a privilege, in my opinion, to be able to undermine this questionable white, German prerogative of interpretation. Planting oneself and inscribing oneself in hostile soil requires strong abilities of resilience and a self-awareness that can withstand daily hostilities. Training this “muscle” from a much to early age on, became a necessity for a lot of us, fighting for visibility and credibility within society. In times of worldwide strengthening of the political far right especially in Europe and Germany, who refer to the perverted idea of blood and soil ideology, our bodies and voices existing is more important than ever. Our existence alone is testimony for a resistance to historically racist and colonial Europe. That I can have ancestry in Münster, Addis Ababa, Toronto, New York and L.A. all at the same time is beyond the imagination of many white Europeans. And yet we are growing in number.
*A https://adrianpiper.weebly.com/mythic-being-1973-1975.html
**citation from German version Die Verdammten der Erde, Suhrkamp 1981 (translator’s comment)
***https://www.bpb.de/themen/rechtsextremismus/dossier-rechtsextremismus/230022/die-voelkische-bewegung/
**** the same
*****https://www.fhxb-museum.de/index.php?id=267
******https://www.fhxb-museum.de/index.php?id=267
*******www.duden.de/rechtschreibung/untergraben_untergraben
******** www.wortbedeutung.info/untergraben/
*********www.fredandfar.com/blogs/ff-blog/the-erotic-as-power-by-audre-lorde
*Magnus Elias Rosengarten primarily works as a writer and curator in the fields of performance, discourse, and film/video, recently at the Gropius Bau and Berliner Festspiele in Berlin. He has written and produced for ContemporaryAnd Magazine (C&), Artforum, Berlin Biennale, and arte/ZDF, among others. Magnus Elias Rosengarten also presented work at the Kraine Theatre, New York City (2016), the California African American Museum, Los Angeles (2018), and Ballhaus Naunynstraße, Berlin (2023).