Publication CRACKS ON THE FAÇADE_on Performance AI, Desire and Public Intimacy

CRACKS ON THE FAÇADE

This text is about the ongoing events at the Open Air Museum of Decoloniality. Cracks have appeared in the media, at Alexandrplatz, in many places, and beautiful façades. Spaces of conversation about german, russian, french colonialisms are confronted by spaces of “beauty”. Dr. Chang Gao @gao.chang_rca and Jess Aszodi @jessicaaszodi made a performance Desire, AI and Public Itimacy working with hegemonies of public spaces and ideologies.

A person walking into a square in Berlin in 2024 and uttering the word “decoloniality” finds themselves in the following political landscape: German clubs (Süld, Fulda) sing the song “Deutschland den Deutschen, Ausländer raus” [Foreigners out, Germany for Germans], right-wing parties and politicians win European Parliament elections, an elderly woman passing by demands only German words on the fence of a square in Berlin and curses at migrants, Berlin’s mural artists demand conversations only in German and talk about the oppression of “native Germans”, and Germany as a whole has corrupted right of speech by Islamophobia.

Can art today do nice beautiful things? Can Fanon and Foucault wake up today and write odes to contemporary power relations? No. They can’t. They won’t wake up. They won’t write odes. Their texts now sound like a dystopian elegy to society. And to be able to hear this, it is enough just to stand in the center of Alexanderplatz for 30 minutes.

Read full text at @syg.ma.editorial
link: https://syg.ma/@de_colonialanguage/cracks-on-the-facade