Moderated by Marie-Hélène Gutberlet
April 23, 2015, 7pm
ifa—Institute for International Cultural Relations
Linienstr. 139/140
10115 Berlin
Free admission, in English
www.future-memories.org
www.ifa.de
On April 23, ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen—Institute for International Cultural Relations) will be hosting the exclusive launch of the online publication Future Memories initiated by ifa and presented by the editor-in-chief Marie-Hélène Gutberlet at the ifa Gallery in Berlin. The presentation will also feature a lecture titled “Between History and Apocalypse: Stumbling.” delivered by Premesh Lalu, renowned professor of history and director of the Center for Humanities Research at the University of the Western Cape in South Africa.
The event in Berlin is a lively tie-in to the successful Future Memories conference of last September, which was jointly conceived and organized by ifa and the Alle School of Fine Arts and Design and with the kind support of the German Federal Foreign Office. At stake is the need for a specific African debate on globalisation, urbanisation, and structures of power.
The Future Memories conference, held in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, brought together an extraordinary range of expertise from artists, academics, curators, historians, and architects coming from all parts of Africa to discuss cultures of memory in urban spaces, their potential to contribute to the development of manifestations of collective cultural memory, and their various forms in contemporary urban realities.
At the international conference, the Federal Republic of Germany also announced its donation of the Peace and Security Building to the African Union, to open in 2015 in Addis Ababa. Around an inspiring conference program with keynotes, performances, panels, excursions, and film programs, Future Memories laid the groundwork for the judging procedure to choose a site-specific work of art to be displayed permanently at the Peace and Security Building.
The winner of the competition is the Nigerian-born sound artist Emeka Ogboh, who has also been chosen by this year´s Venice Biennale director Okwui Enwezor to present his work at the main exhibition. For the African Union Peace and Security Building in Addis Ababa, Ogboh will produce a unique piece with local points of reference: The work is based on an adaptation of the hymn of the African Union, which highlights the principle of “unity in diversity.”
The discussion will be moderated by Marie-Hélène Gutberlet, freelance curator, writer, film scholar, and editor-in-chief of the online publication Future Memories. The online publication aims to address the concepts of sustainability and sharing in the form of a dynamic archive on memory culture. The conference gave rise to original pieces of writing that the publication will disseminate in three languages for interested readers around the world. The roster includes authors from Ethiopia, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Germany, Cameroon, Kenya, Morocco, Senegal, and South Africa, all of whom are directly and actively involved in artistic production and will share their artistic, curatorial, or scholarly experience with the public.
The online publication Future Memories is published by Elke aus dem Moore, ifa and Berhanu Ashagrie Deribew, Alle School of Fine Arts and Design, Addis Ababa University in tandem with the curator Marie-Hélène Gutberlet as editor-in-chief.
About ifa
Ifa (Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen—Institute for International Cultural Relations) promotes art and cultural exchange in exhibitions, dialogue, and conference programs. As a competence center for foreign cultural diplomacy, it facilitates links among civil societies, cultural practice, art, media, and research. It initiates, moderates, and documents discussions on international cultural relations.
