WEBVTT
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(soft music)
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In German, the word schloss means a palace
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and also a lock.
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In English, the word belonging
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means a condition of affinity,
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a secure relationship to a person, place, or thing.
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It also means possessions, as in these are your belongings,
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my belongings, our belongings.
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In 2002, I began living in Berlin
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and writing my first novel based on my ancestors
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who moved across the world in the 20th century
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propelled by the forces of empire.
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They went from India to Kenya to Britain,
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their lives shaped by British colonialism
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as well as the counter struggles
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for independence and redress.
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In 2002, the German parliament
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voted in favour of rebuilding a palace from the Prussian era
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and the Kaiserreich.
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Periods synonymous with militarism and colonialism.
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Back then, I did not know
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that I would eventually settle down in Berlin.
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I did not know I would become a German citizen.
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I did not know that over the coming years
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the sense of what it means to be German
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in Europe, in the world
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and understanding necessarily
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always in flux would start to shift dramatically,
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even shake.
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I did not know that the very idea
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of who counts as a citizen who can belong
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would be brazenly contested
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as illiberal currents, nationalistic, racist,
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misogynistic, swelled in Germany and across the globe.
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Some knew.
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(no audio)
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From the start, many parts of civil society
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from activists to academia
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resisted the building of the Berlin Palace.
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Their critique catalysed a long overdue public debate
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about Germany's pre-Nazi colonial past
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and how it affects present ideas of belonging.
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All the while buildings emblematic
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of a drive to distort history were/are being reconstructed
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or planned in other cities.
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The new old town in Frankfurt am Main,
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the Frauenkirche in Dresden, the Garrison Church in Potsdam.
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(no audio)
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Such neo-national architecture has enthusiastic backers
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amongst the far right,
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people locked into a fantasy of white supremacy.
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The reconstructions also have support
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among some conservatives and moderates.
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People who have perhaps not quite understood
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what such developments really mean.
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The Berlin Palace is only the most conspicuous example
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of a reactionary trend,
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but it is the most problematic
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because of its planned function to house violently looted
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or dubiously obtained ethnological objects
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and simultaneously develop a decolonizing approach
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to itself, its holdings, and its workings with others.
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The central question,
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can a lock also be a key?
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Wait,
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perhaps we should no longer refer to ethnological objects,
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but rather to belongings.
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It moves us away from the tidy abstraction of objects,
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which implies a blankness
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on which anyone can project, objectify.
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Belongings on the other hand,
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intricately inextricably ties up notions
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of possession, being, and longing.
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In December, 2018, two years after the UK
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voted to leave the EU,
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I entered a small ground floor room in the district office
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for Mitte, Berlin.
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Also, there were my husband and the civil servant
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who had overseen my citizenship application
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and checked that I had passed my citizenship test.
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I signed a few final documents and then stood to pledge.
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I solemnly declare that I will respect the constitution
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and the laws of the Federal Republic of Germany
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and will refrain from doing anything that could harm them.
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"I can't believe I've got this," I said,
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clutching my citizenship certificate as we left.
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"With that, you get responsibility for the Holocaust too,"
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my husband said.
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He went on talking.
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I didn't hear a thing.
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I was thinking, "He could have waited a bit longer
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before making that observation."
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At the same time, I was feeling an awful weight.
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The past had acquired a different charge,
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a history I had studied as a guest of sorts
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had become mine to host.
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If there is one advantage
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of the British triumphalist obsession with World War II,
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it's that the Holocaust features prominently
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and therefore, right from my school days,
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this crime had assumed a pivotal place
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in my sense of the past and present.
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Still, the heft of the knowledge had suddenly changed.
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(no audio)
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Germany's memorial culture after the Holocaust
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initially appeared to me to cohere
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around the notion "vida gut machen", to make good again
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through reparation, restitution, remorseful, remembrance.
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This approach seemed exemplary to me.
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It was in Berlin, a city full of memorials
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to victims of Nazi tyranny
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that I began to wonder about the nature
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of public memory in general,
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but especially in Britain.
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For years, I walked over Stolpersteine,
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commemorative stumbling stones set into cobbled streets
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in this country
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and thought about the other country, Britain,
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to which I belonged by dint of chance,
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my birth there, my British passport
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and all the associated opportunities were mine
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only because others had suffered, resisted, paid,
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and died as colonial subjects.
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I thought of that other country
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where there is not a single compulsory school class,
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let alone a memorial acknowledging the crimes
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of its vast cruel empire.
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I was grateful for the contrast Germany offered
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for what it revealed to me,
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but it's also painful to realise
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you have been cheated by your country,
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told a false or incomplete history,
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and also painful to see that you were foolish enough
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to fall for it.
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Wary of being caught out again,
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I paid particular attention
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to critiques of Germany's memory culture
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to flaws in the vida gut machen premise
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to those who said some things
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could never be made good again.
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Those who said some methods of remembrance
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seemed designed more to assuage German guilt
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than respond to the actual needs
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and wishes of a diverse Jewish community.
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I paid attention to how the memorial landscape
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gradually extended to include Roma and Sinti,
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homosexual victims
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and those killed in the euthanasia programme
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of the Third Reich.
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I paid attention to the commemoration
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of German reunification,
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noting how the joining of east and west was reified
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in various ways, even as cultural traces
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of the east were erased.
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I paid attention to the crimes
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of Germany's pre-Nazi colonial past,
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which were less salient in the public consciousness,
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less significant on the political agenda,
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less worthy so far of memorials.
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The genocide from 1904 to 1908
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of around 100,000 Herero and Nama peoples in Namibia,
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the approximately 250,000 victims
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of German atrocities in Tanzania,
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including those who died in the Maji Maji war
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to oust German colonial forces.
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There had been no questions
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related to these latter events in my citizenship test,
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yet it seemed to me there was still much to value
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in the German approach,
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which had locked a commitment to remembering the Holocaust
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to the very core of social, political, and cultural life.
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This has been key to some of the better aspects of Germany.
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Memory is one of the few things in the world
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that can be both lock and key.
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Even if the lock sometimes jammed, stuck fast,
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kept important things out.
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I still believed that Germany's practise with this mechanism
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for holding onto awful lessons from its Nazi past
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would be a key to opening up ways
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to deal with its earlier colonial history,
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key to opening up other ways
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of relating to the world to each other.
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And then came the Berlin Palace.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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Black Lives Matter.
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(crowd cheering)
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In 2020, across the world,
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anti-racist movements bring down colonial statues,
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altering the face of cities, challenging authority.
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And Germany opens its biggest cultural project
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of the 21st century,
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a reconstructed imperial palace
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in the heart of the capital
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soon to be partly filled with the ill-gotten belongings
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of communities all over the world.
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How could this come to pass?
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What kind of remembrance culture is this?
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The palace stands on centre stage like a bodybuilder
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holding that pose known in the sport
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as most muscular, legs spread, arms raised,
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everything flexed,
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not lease the sinuous facades,
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which were recreated almost to the last detail
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and paid for with private donations
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to the tune of 100 million euros.
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An advert for how class
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and money can influence the character
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of public space in democratic Germany,
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even in the 21st century.
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And advert for a very modern form of feudalism
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that can co-opt at least 560 million euros
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of state funds into serving private minority interests
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as well as the interests of the ill-informed.
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The Berlin Palace project was initiated by an association
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comprised of people
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who were presumably steeped in Germany's memory culture,
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yet nevertheless managed to hold by
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and try to recreate an idealised version
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of its imperial past.
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Until summer 2020,
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I had seen the bodybuilder only from a distance,
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glimpsed the east facade, less grotesquely sinuous,
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but equally ominous for its fascist architectural echoes.
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I had held back from going there
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as one intuitively tries to avoid danger.
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What the threat was, I could not quite articulate then.
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Now I know it was the fear
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of having to reconsider once more,
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a history I had for the most part accepted,
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the fear of having to face up to my failure once again,
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to grasp the scale of its incompleteness.
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In Germany, I fell for an idea that was not true,
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never can be.
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The society that knows how to remember.
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Rebuilding the Berlin Palace,
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renaming it the Humboldt Forum and then attempting to undo
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what the palace is from within the place itself.
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Strike me as flawed signs
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of the vida gut machen mentality,
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and yet and yet even now, is this misguided?
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I do not believe the possibility
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of making good again should be discarded,
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just better interrogated.
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Key in this regard are the allies we choose,
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the methods we use.
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I myself now try to practise what Priyamvada Gopal
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in line with many other post-colonial theorists
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calls a sustained unlearning.
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For me, this means being alert to harmful patterns
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in my own thoughts and actions.
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It means listening, staying open, being vulnerable,
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able to change course, to admit error.
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Donna Haraway sums it up well.
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Decolonizing requires a kind of radical not knowing,
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emptying out, a kind of truly not knowing
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so as to somehow be less stupid.
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The first time I went within the palace walls,
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I felt the force field of coloniality,
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it's distorting effect.
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I saw how some of the newly commissioned artworks
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were already misshapen,
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like the sculpture of large letters,
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circling the walls of one room,
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spelling out the names of all the architects
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who had been responsible for erecting something
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00:15:27.720 --> 00:15:30.457
on the site over the centuries.
273
00:15:30.457 --> 00:15:32.880
"Why?" I wondered.
274
00:15:32.880 --> 00:15:37.740
Why in this macho building would you have more men's names
275
00:15:37.740 --> 00:15:40.470
blown up and paraded,
276
00:15:40.470 --> 00:15:42.810
or was that the point,
277
00:15:42.810 --> 00:15:47.810
an accusation to emphasise the long line of male dominance?
278
00:15:48.300 --> 00:15:51.540
If so, it seemed to me an attempt to mend
279
00:15:51.540 --> 00:15:54.720
that only reproduced an ugly trope.
280
00:15:54.720 --> 00:15:58.710
I wished for a line of graffiti sprayed roughly in red
281
00:15:58.710 --> 00:16:01.020
where were all the women.
282
00:16:01.020 --> 00:16:04.620
I wished for meticulous carvings in every wall,
283
00:16:04.620 --> 00:16:08.190
marking the names of all those who had been exploited
284
00:16:08.190 --> 00:16:12.450
or killed to make palaces like this one possible.
285
00:16:12.450 --> 00:16:13.980
At the same time,
286
00:16:13.980 --> 00:16:17.130
I was aware it might add insult to injury
287
00:16:17.130 --> 00:16:19.530
to have such names here.
288
00:16:19.530 --> 00:16:22.500
A monument can't be turned into a memorial
289
00:16:22.500 --> 00:16:24.240
with mere gestures,
290
00:16:24.240 --> 00:16:28.050
especially not when its walls are already inscribed
291
00:16:28.050 --> 00:16:32.850
with the names of the biggest private donors to its cause.
292
00:16:32.850 --> 00:16:36.120
Questions rang through the empty halls.
293
00:16:36.120 --> 00:16:39.210
Whose names do we venerate?
294
00:16:39.210 --> 00:16:41.733
Whose memory do we honour?
295
00:16:42.720 --> 00:16:45.243
Whose lives matter?
296
00:16:46.410 --> 00:16:48.750
And the other eternal dilemma,
297
00:16:48.750 --> 00:16:51.450
how to engage on these issues
298
00:16:51.450 --> 00:16:53.640
without repeating in other ways,
299
00:16:53.640 --> 00:16:56.430
the violence that has already been done?
300
00:16:56.430 --> 00:17:01.430
How to try and repair without inadvertently harming again?
301
00:17:04.680 --> 00:17:07.567
After that visit, I stopped asking myself,
302
00:17:07.567 --> 00:17:09.690
"How could this happen?"
303
00:17:09.690 --> 00:17:12.510
Suddenly, it was perfectly clear.
304
00:17:12.510 --> 00:17:14.670
This is a very truthful building,
305
00:17:14.670 --> 00:17:18.660
a perfect example of a certain kind of dominance,
306
00:17:18.660 --> 00:17:20.730
white, mostly male
307
00:17:20.730 --> 00:17:25.290
that continues very successfully to reproduce itself.
308
00:17:25.290 --> 00:17:28.380
The Berlin Palace expresses that dominance
309
00:17:28.380 --> 00:17:31.860
in its most confident and titled form.
310
00:17:31.860 --> 00:17:36.513
The building is a monumental homage to coloniality.
311
00:17:37.827 --> 00:17:40.577
(truck whirring)
312
00:17:42.480 --> 00:17:46.860
The diffuse architecture of coloniality is everywhere.
313
00:17:46.860 --> 00:17:50.100
That is to say, our relations to each other
314
00:17:50.100 --> 00:17:55.100
continue to be constructed within social, racial, political,
315
00:17:55.110 --> 00:17:58.170
juridical, and economic realities
316
00:17:58.170 --> 00:18:01.893
deformed by the legacies of European colonialism.
317
00:18:04.140 --> 00:18:09.140
The Berlin Palace is coloniality distilled and set in stone.
318
00:18:09.480 --> 00:18:13.668
A stone you don't just stumble over but crash into.
319
00:18:13.668 --> 00:18:16.585
(machine whirring)
320
00:18:19.770 --> 00:18:22.500
The architecture is disturbing enough,
321
00:18:22.500 --> 00:18:24.630
but then there are the collections,
322
00:18:24.630 --> 00:18:28.890
thousands upon thousands of belongings with as many stories,
323
00:18:28.890 --> 00:18:32.700
deaths, traumas, ruptures, questions,
324
00:18:32.700 --> 00:18:34.770
holding onto such belongings,
325
00:18:34.770 --> 00:18:37.410
most of which are the possessions of others
326
00:18:37.410 --> 00:18:38.910
from around the world
327
00:18:38.910 --> 00:18:43.910
must now mean holding yourself accountable to the world.
328
00:18:44.040 --> 00:18:48.780
The Palace has locked Germany into a very public reckoning
329
00:18:48.780 --> 00:18:50.643
with its colonial past.
330
00:18:52.350 --> 00:18:56.520
The strangest thing for me is that on this perilous site,
331
00:18:56.520 --> 00:18:58.920
all my histories collide.
332
00:18:58.920 --> 00:19:00.990
On the ground of the monument,
333
00:19:00.990 --> 00:19:03.870
I understood better the nature of the weight
334
00:19:03.870 --> 00:19:08.340
that had settled in me the day I became a German citizen
335
00:19:08.340 --> 00:19:12.180
and which I had been carrying around ever since.
336
00:19:12.180 --> 00:19:14.340
It was the weight of wondering
337
00:19:14.340 --> 00:19:17.880
how to hold together all the different histories
338
00:19:17.880 --> 00:19:21.660
that were now mine without needing to choose between them
339
00:19:21.660 --> 00:19:23.283
or have a hierarchy.
340
00:19:25.140 --> 00:19:28.890
The Humboldt Forum unsettles all sense of place,
341
00:19:28.890 --> 00:19:30.690
all sense of time,
342
00:19:30.690 --> 00:19:35.690
forces a repositioning of self within entangled histories
343
00:19:36.210 --> 00:19:38.700
that stretch in all directions
344
00:19:38.700 --> 00:19:40.383
from the belongings held there.
345
00:19:43.505 --> 00:19:45.755
(no audio)
346
00:19:53.340 --> 00:19:57.090
It compels us to acknowledge multiple affinities,
347
00:19:57.090 --> 00:20:00.750
dependencies, loyalties, duties,
348
00:20:00.750 --> 00:20:04.140
and obliges us to search together
349
00:20:04.140 --> 00:20:06.543
for ways of negotiating these.
350
00:20:11.790 --> 00:20:14.610
Many of the belongings in Germany's museums
351
00:20:14.610 --> 00:20:19.440
have lane for years in archives, untouched, unseen,
352
00:20:19.440 --> 00:20:24.300
unvalued, and still there is reluctance to relinquish them.
353
00:20:24.300 --> 00:20:26.760
The excuse of obscure provenance
354
00:20:26.760 --> 00:20:30.420
is no reason not to try and know.
355
00:20:30.420 --> 00:20:32.820
Anything else is just a case
356
00:20:32.820 --> 00:20:35.520
of what Ariella Aisha Azoulay
357
00:20:35.520 --> 00:20:39.090
calls imperial repetitiveness.
358
00:20:39.090 --> 00:20:41.940
The ability to retain the outcome
359
00:20:41.940 --> 00:20:45.000
of imperial violence as fact,
360
00:20:45.000 --> 00:20:49.653
as what is, what one is, and what one has.
361
00:20:51.600 --> 00:20:52.433
Wait,
362
00:20:54.780 --> 00:20:59.340
can we really speak of ethnological museums?
363
00:20:59.340 --> 00:21:04.340
Might it not be more accurate to say ethno-illogical museums
364
00:21:04.710 --> 00:21:09.270
for places that have long propagated racist classifications
365
00:21:09.270 --> 00:21:14.070
and hierarchies turned stolen cultural artefacts
366
00:21:14.070 --> 00:21:17.763
into tools for enforcing white domination.
367
00:21:18.930 --> 00:21:22.260
The only option as more experts in the field
368
00:21:22.260 --> 00:21:25.770
are now advocating is complete restitution
369
00:21:25.770 --> 00:21:29.100
of the belongings wanted back by their owners.
370
00:21:29.100 --> 00:21:33.390
Unless we think this is a radical enlightened position,
371
00:21:33.390 --> 00:21:38.160
Azoulay reminds us that it is neither a progressive idea
372
00:21:38.160 --> 00:21:42.870
nor the most advanced phase of our democracies,
373
00:21:42.870 --> 00:21:46.890
so much so that centuries were supposedly required
374
00:21:46.890 --> 00:21:48.633
to reach such a point.
375
00:21:50.610 --> 00:21:55.610
A palace is about defensiveness as well as display.
376
00:21:55.680 --> 00:22:00.270
Palaces kept most people out, held to their treasures close,
377
00:22:00.270 --> 00:22:04.260
yet at the same time showed off to all.
378
00:22:04.260 --> 00:22:07.650
This duality pervades the Humboldt Forum,
379
00:22:07.650 --> 00:22:10.590
which displays readiness to decolonize
380
00:22:10.590 --> 00:22:14.130
and at the same time, defends its collections
381
00:22:14.130 --> 00:22:17.490
simply through continuing to display them,
382
00:22:17.490 --> 00:22:19.620
even if this is supposed to be done
383
00:22:19.620 --> 00:22:22.503
in a more reflected self-critical way.
384
00:22:24.120 --> 00:22:27.360
There's a version of such dualities in me too,
385
00:22:27.360 --> 00:22:29.460
in many of us, I guess.
386
00:22:29.460 --> 00:22:32.370
I want to display my willingness to question,
387
00:22:32.370 --> 00:22:35.130
to change in the face of these challenges,
388
00:22:35.130 --> 00:22:39.660
yet even as I do, defensiveness crowds my thoughts,
389
00:22:39.660 --> 00:22:43.020
nostalgia for things from which I have benefited,
390
00:22:43.020 --> 00:22:45.843
anxiety about what may be lost.
391
00:22:46.770 --> 00:22:51.630
Yet, the ebbing hesitation of someone once enchanted
392
00:22:51.630 --> 00:22:54.780
by what turned out to be criminal elements
393
00:22:54.780 --> 00:22:59.460
in what I took for your my our world culture
394
00:22:59.460 --> 00:23:03.120
sits alongside the growing urgency
395
00:23:03.120 --> 00:23:08.120
of someone who accepts it is time to unlearn.
396
00:23:08.348 --> 00:23:10.598
(no audio)
397
00:23:14.040 --> 00:23:18.060
Part of what defines public spaces like the Humboldt Forum
398
00:23:18.060 --> 00:23:19.890
are the longings of the society
399
00:23:19.890 --> 00:23:24.890
to whom as a state institution it is ultimately beholden.
400
00:23:25.230 --> 00:23:29.190
Like it or not, those of us who live in Germany
401
00:23:29.190 --> 00:23:32.370
are locked into the fate of this place.
402
00:23:32.370 --> 00:23:35.040
It is a kind of citizenship test
403
00:23:35.040 --> 00:23:37.350
that shatters the national frame
404
00:23:37.350 --> 00:23:41.730
in which we tend to understand the term citizen.
405
00:23:41.730 --> 00:23:46.530
It rattles assumptions about rights and responsibilities.
406
00:23:46.530 --> 00:23:50.070
What does it mean to possess rights
407
00:23:50.070 --> 00:23:54.580
that are dependent on the dispossession of others?
408
00:23:54.580 --> 00:23:56.830
(no audio)
409
00:24:04.500 --> 00:24:08.340
Far from healing a wound at the centre of the city,
410
00:24:08.340 --> 00:24:12.510
as initiators of the palace reconstruction project claim,
411
00:24:12.510 --> 00:24:16.170
this edifice brings into stark relief
412
00:24:16.170 --> 00:24:18.120
the extent of an injury
413
00:24:18.120 --> 00:24:21.180
that stretches from the palace at Schlossplatz
414
00:24:21.180 --> 00:24:25.470
to the Holocaust memorial at Cora Berliner Strasse 1
415
00:24:25.470 --> 00:24:28.290
to Wilhelm Strasse 92,
416
00:24:28.290 --> 00:24:31.620
the site of the former Reich Chancellery
417
00:24:31.620 --> 00:24:36.603
where the Berlin conference took place in 1884 to '85.
418
00:24:37.440 --> 00:24:40.170
Their major European powers,
419
00:24:40.170 --> 00:24:43.110
including Britain, France, Belgium,
420
00:24:43.110 --> 00:24:46.260
Portugal, and Germany negotiated
421
00:24:46.260 --> 00:24:50.250
and formalised claims to territory in Africa.
422
00:24:50.250 --> 00:24:53.490
They went on to expand their claims on the continent,
423
00:24:53.490 --> 00:24:57.420
and by 1900, European states had stakes
424
00:24:57.420 --> 00:25:00.180
on nearly 90% of it.
425
00:25:00.180 --> 00:25:04.860
The Berlin conference was the decisive inaugural blast
426
00:25:04.860 --> 00:25:09.063
in what Dan Hicks calls World War Zero.
427
00:25:09.990 --> 00:25:14.160
The period from 1884 to 1914
428
00:25:14.160 --> 00:25:16.590
when the European colonial powers
429
00:25:16.590 --> 00:25:20.160
brutally subjugated African peoples,
430
00:25:20.160 --> 00:25:22.560
exploiting and killing them,
431
00:25:22.560 --> 00:25:26.583
stealing wholesale their resources and treasures.
432
00:25:28.170 --> 00:25:31.650
Today at Wilhelm Strasse 92,
433
00:25:31.650 --> 00:25:35.010
there is a single modest memorial plate
434
00:25:35.010 --> 00:25:37.803
describing the outcome of the conference.
435
00:25:38.760 --> 00:25:40.980
The wound is raw,
436
00:25:40.980 --> 00:25:42.390
gaping,
437
00:25:42.390 --> 00:25:43.233
weeping.
438
00:25:45.356 --> 00:25:46.680
(footsteps tapping)
439
00:25:46.680 --> 00:25:51.450
So what made me enter the palace knowing all this?
440
00:25:51.450 --> 00:25:53.340
I required some reason,
441
00:25:53.340 --> 00:25:56.340
something I could hold onto like a rope,
442
00:25:56.340 --> 00:26:00.690
tug, tie to other knowledges and experiences.
443
00:26:00.690 --> 00:26:02.910
In spring 2020,
444
00:26:02.910 --> 00:26:06.540
I was invited to conceptualise and curate a project
445
00:26:06.540 --> 00:26:09.360
that would involve bringing together writers
446
00:26:09.360 --> 00:26:11.610
and belongings from the collections
447
00:26:11.610 --> 00:26:15.030
to see what kind of narrations could emerge.
448
00:26:15.030 --> 00:26:18.120
I felt cautious but also curious
449
00:26:18.120 --> 00:26:21.390
because it seemed to me that this could offer a chance
450
00:26:21.390 --> 00:26:25.710
to challenge the traditional master narrative of the museum
451
00:26:25.710 --> 00:26:29.227
to disrupt the hubristic script that said,
452
00:26:29.227 --> 00:26:32.220
"Everything should stay here for the sake of the world,
453
00:26:32.220 --> 00:26:36.750
of course, since we are the most qualified locksmiths."
454
00:26:36.750 --> 00:26:39.030
Maybe there's also a presumption
455
00:26:39.030 --> 00:26:42.780
in thinking you can step into the machinery of power
456
00:26:42.780 --> 00:26:44.850
and change anything.
457
00:26:44.850 --> 00:26:48.360
If so, it is a necessary presumption
458
00:26:48.360 --> 00:26:52.620
because power never budges of its own accord.
459
00:26:52.620 --> 00:26:53.619
No justice.
460
00:26:53.619 --> 00:26:54.533
No peace.
461
00:26:54.533 --> 00:26:55.400
No justice.
462
00:26:55.400 --> 00:26:56.233
No peace.
463
00:26:56.233 --> 00:26:57.066
No justice.
464
00:26:57.066 --> 00:26:58.186
No peace.
465
00:26:58.186 --> 00:26:59.136
No justice.
466
00:26:59.136 --> 00:27:00.097
No peace.
467
00:27:00.097 --> 00:27:00.945
No justice.
468
00:27:00.945 --> 00:27:01.850
No peace.
469
00:27:01.850 --> 00:27:02.683
No justice.
470
00:27:02.683 --> 00:27:03.894
No peace.
471
00:27:03.894 --> 00:27:04.895
No justice.
472
00:27:04.895 --> 00:27:05.855
No peace.
473
00:27:05.855 --> 00:27:06.764
No justice.
474
00:27:06.764 --> 00:27:07.597
No peace.
475
00:27:07.597 --> 00:27:08.430
No justice.
476
00:27:08.430 --> 00:27:09.847
No peace.
477
00:27:11.850 --> 00:27:13.950
I imagine a new question
478
00:27:13.950 --> 00:27:15.630
on the citizenship test
479
00:27:15.630 --> 00:27:18.900
with its standard four multiple choice answers
480
00:27:18.900 --> 00:27:21.213
from which I must pick one.
481
00:27:22.230 --> 00:27:24.870
As a citizen faced with the Humboldt Forum,
482
00:27:24.870 --> 00:27:26.433
what are your options?
483
00:27:28.410 --> 00:27:31.023
One, visit and enjoy.
484
00:27:32.640 --> 00:27:34.323
Two, boycott.
485
00:27:35.580 --> 00:27:37.653
Three, inner migration.
486
00:27:38.790 --> 00:27:43.020
Four, ask questions and more questions,
487
00:27:43.020 --> 00:27:45.903
keep asking even if it hurts.
488
00:27:48.930 --> 00:27:53.220
I could tick three of those and justify them elaborately,
489
00:27:53.220 --> 00:27:55.293
but I pick number four.
490
00:27:57.210 --> 00:27:59.880
Those who started working in the Humboldt Forum,
491
00:27:59.880 --> 00:28:01.620
planning the future programme
492
00:28:01.620 --> 00:28:04.290
while the building was still being completed
493
00:28:04.290 --> 00:28:07.740
had to wear hard hats to enter and move around.
494
00:28:07.740 --> 00:28:11.133
I too dawned a bright blue one when I went.
495
00:28:12.120 --> 00:28:13.710
Walking through the space,
496
00:28:13.710 --> 00:28:16.500
confirmed what I had intuited from a distance
497
00:28:16.500 --> 00:28:19.200
and stated in my concept proposal.
498
00:28:19.200 --> 00:28:21.900
The physical building of the Humboldt Forum
499
00:28:21.900 --> 00:28:23.850
may almost be ready.
500
00:28:23.850 --> 00:28:28.320
One day soon, it may even appear complete.
501
00:28:28.320 --> 00:28:32.670
But in truth, this place could never be finished.
502
00:28:32.670 --> 00:28:37.050
The rebuilding of knowledges, of relationships,
503
00:28:37.050 --> 00:28:42.050
of understanding, of repair, to name just a few aspects,
504
00:28:42.270 --> 00:28:46.080
all remain perpetually under construction
505
00:28:46.080 --> 00:28:49.620
and the developments internal and external
506
00:28:49.620 --> 00:28:53.310
had to remain transparent, legible.
507
00:28:53.310 --> 00:28:55.980
Narratives are made from processes.
508
00:28:55.980 --> 00:28:58.533
Every step is part of the story.
509
00:28:59.490 --> 00:29:01.740
All processes are imperfect,
510
00:29:01.740 --> 00:29:05.340
but if they can be read, they can be improved.
511
00:29:05.340 --> 00:29:08.610
I suggested artistic documentation of process
512
00:29:08.610 --> 00:29:12.480
as a central part of the project concept I submitted,
513
00:29:12.480 --> 00:29:15.990
a means to record achievements, discoveries,
514
00:29:15.990 --> 00:29:19.650
misunderstandings, and failings from all sides,
515
00:29:19.650 --> 00:29:21.003
my own included.
516
00:29:21.870 --> 00:29:26.400
That is the true nature of a test after all, isn't it?
517
00:29:26.400 --> 00:29:30.630
To reveal both how much you know and don't know,
518
00:29:30.630 --> 00:29:33.270
and perhaps most importantly
519
00:29:33.270 --> 00:29:37.473
to reveal what you are prepared to do with that knowledge.
520
00:29:38.490 --> 00:29:41.850
Still, no matter the methods you use,
521
00:29:41.850 --> 00:29:43.800
the allies you choose,
522
00:29:43.800 --> 00:29:47.040
always, always with such an institution,
523
00:29:47.040 --> 00:29:50.940
the concerns remain, the rumblings of conscience,
524
00:29:50.940 --> 00:29:52.980
the warnings of allies,
525
00:29:52.980 --> 00:29:55.410
consorting with the enemy,
526
00:29:55.410 --> 00:30:00.410
tainted by association, compromised, naive, deluded.
527
00:30:01.920 --> 00:30:03.240
I hesitate.
528
00:30:03.240 --> 00:30:07.530
I want to retreat, to wait until I've unlearned more,
529
00:30:07.530 --> 00:30:12.090
until I've learned enough, which means waiting forever.
530
00:30:12.090 --> 00:30:14.640
Inner migration is not an effective tool
531
00:30:14.640 --> 00:30:16.860
for political insurgency.
532
00:30:16.860 --> 00:30:19.140
Boycott can be powerful.
533
00:30:19.140 --> 00:30:22.470
My own criticality is sharpened by those
534
00:30:22.470 --> 00:30:26.430
who abstain from anything to do with the Palace.
535
00:30:26.430 --> 00:30:28.770
I can step away from the Humboldt Forum,
536
00:30:28.770 --> 00:30:31.440
but I can't step out of the world.
537
00:30:31.440 --> 00:30:33.420
The dilemmas don't go away
538
00:30:33.420 --> 00:30:36.990
just because I keep a distance from one version of them.
539
00:30:36.990 --> 00:30:40.470
Moreover, I cannot be indifferent to the fact
540
00:30:40.470 --> 00:30:43.020
that there are others amongst them,
541
00:30:43.020 --> 00:30:45.810
initiators of the Palace reconstruction
542
00:30:45.810 --> 00:30:49.830
and some members of their circle of friends who don't wait,
543
00:30:49.830 --> 00:30:52.830
who never hesitate to claim space
544
00:30:52.830 --> 00:30:55.173
to impose their narrative.
545
00:30:56.070 --> 00:30:59.220
What I can do is act to contribute
546
00:30:59.220 --> 00:31:01.710
to a broader effort for change,
547
00:31:01.710 --> 00:31:03.810
an anti-colonial effort
548
00:31:03.810 --> 00:31:06.840
that has been unfolding through all time
549
00:31:06.840 --> 00:31:10.500
and which in our time expresses itself
550
00:31:10.500 --> 00:31:13.143
in many different modes and assemblies.
551
00:31:17.820 --> 00:31:19.710
As I removed my hard hat
552
00:31:19.710 --> 00:31:22.470
after the first encounter with the Palace,
553
00:31:22.470 --> 00:31:26.610
I thought it might be an idea to hold onto the hats,
554
00:31:26.610 --> 00:31:28.380
offer them to visitors
555
00:31:28.380 --> 00:31:31.920
as a symbolic shield against the coloniality
556
00:31:31.920 --> 00:31:34.650
that ambushed from every corner.
557
00:31:34.650 --> 00:31:37.350
And then I thought, "How pathetic,
558
00:31:37.350 --> 00:31:41.130
if this was the only protection I could propose
559
00:31:41.130 --> 00:31:46.130
against the threat and insult and aggression in those walls.
560
00:31:46.380 --> 00:31:49.290
Was there anything you could effectively set
561
00:31:49.290 --> 00:31:51.300
against this building?"
562
00:31:51.300 --> 00:31:53.910
I said aloud, "The programme."
563
00:31:53.910 --> 00:31:57.780
And ally replied, "A dynamic, exploratory,
564
00:31:57.780 --> 00:32:02.130
forensic, collaborative, questioning, restitution,
565
00:32:02.130 --> 00:32:04.617
transnational programme."
566
00:32:07.860 --> 00:32:12.300
There are moments when I wonder if a forum in a palace
567
00:32:12.300 --> 00:32:16.500
might constitute some kind of occupy movement.
568
00:32:16.500 --> 00:32:20.550
A group of clandestine political iconoclasts,
569
00:32:20.550 --> 00:32:23.370
metaphorically pulling down statues,
570
00:32:23.370 --> 00:32:26.370
literally returning belongings.
571
00:32:26.370 --> 00:32:30.060
I picture the bodybuilder with knees shaking,
572
00:32:30.060 --> 00:32:33.900
arms trembling on the verge of collapse,
573
00:32:33.900 --> 00:32:37.440
as these counter forces weigh it down.
574
00:32:37.440 --> 00:32:39.540
It remains to be seen
575
00:32:39.540 --> 00:32:43.530
if a forum can offer a meaningful passageway
576
00:32:43.530 --> 00:32:46.413
from what should not have come to pass.
577
00:32:49.170 --> 00:32:54.170
The Palace packed with your, my, our belongings is there.
578
00:32:54.960 --> 00:32:57.900
If we are to break this colonial lock,
579
00:32:57.900 --> 00:33:02.900
many, many more of us need to find, make, and share keys.