Campus Westend, Casino, Cas 823
“Whom do we choose to remember? And whom do we choose to forget, in the public spaces? What is memorialise? And what is forgotten? Whom is forgotten? Whose history? And which memories? And can we recall the memories of an imaginary Black Venus?” These questions are at the very center of Grada Kilomba’s closing lecture-performance. Kilomba guides us into her unique artistic practice of performing knowledge, in which she gives body, voice, form, movement and image to her own writings. In her ouevre knowledge is translated into visual and sculptural language and becomes performative storytelling, to raise questions around violence, repetition and post-coloniality. In this final part, Kilomba transits from the gallery room into public art and monumental architecture. “Is a monument a form of storytelling? And how to interrupt it?” In this lecture-performance titled Opera to a Black Venus, Kilomba uses the metaphor of the Black Venus, to explore the concepts of Middle Passage, historical amnesia, displacement and water surveillance, public art, hybridity, narratives of remembrance and resilience.