Friday, January 4, 2013: 9:10 AM
Roosevelt Ballroom IV (Roosevelt New Orleans)
Is a pictorial language able to convey a juridical abstraction such as the geo-political division of Africa after the Berlin Africa Conference that conceptualized colonial rule in 1884/85 – and its manifold consequences—as a historical by-product of Europe’s political and aesthetic modernity? Is there any potential in the image of a genocide, while acknowledging the “impossibility” of its role in representation? With one main focus on possible parallels between abstraction in painting and abstraction in international law, the project discussed in this paper dealt with the following questions: Which socio-political and normative abstractions did the appropriation of land and the genocide in former German South-West Africa apply? How can an artistic examination of this highly complex historical configuration attain more than just retracing? How can it avoid an affirmative function? Can contemporary artistic practices learn from the scientific criticism of the past decades, which were in particular inspired by postcolonial studies? Proceedings for reparation have to deal with an inherent contradiction: they rely on the law, which was originally meant to legitimize the colonial strategy of a deprivation of rights. When placing the aspects of legal discourse and reconciliation at the center stage, the question arises: Is the international law able to reflect and discuss its own colonial impetus or is it rather merely legitimizing a colonial strategy of deprivation as a “perfect crime”? The long-term process of developing and discussing the paintings was guided by the general question concerning the “adequacy” of images. This paper follows these questions and limits, with a focus on the translation into the medium of painting as well as an overview of their reception and the inherent facets of a complex discussion in Germany, Namibia, and South Africa.