“for free, decolonised, intersectional education…we riot and write at the same time…We riot and write and record and film and tweet so that we can transform our society.”
Simamkele Dlakavu (Witwatersrand University)
Facilitator: Nicholas Mirzoeff
Capsule Statement
Visual activism takes its name from the practice of the engaged photographer Zanele Muholi in South Africa’s LGBTQ communities. Since 2015, visual activism has engendered first the Rhodes Must Fall campaign, leading to the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes from the University of Cape Town, and now the Decolonize the Curriculum campaign. This workshop in decolonial visual activism engages with the intersection of decolonizing and the colonial monument. It brings together “theory” and “praxis”– aka “writing” and “rioting”–intersecting key theoretical materials, activist campaigns and the material legacies of colonial culture. As a course outcome, students will propose a visual activist response to the issue of the monument/museum and (de)colonized knowledges.
Introduction
Decolonizing media studies is to engage media and mediation as part of decolonization. It takes the perspective of the global South, whether in that South or looking from the North. It follows the lead of South African students and activists in seeking to decolonize the curriculum. From this optic, the “object” of study is not the dominant media forms of racial capitalism but decolonial action and organizing and their relationality.
There have been colonial and decolonial ways of seeing since 1492. Plantation slavery required permanent surveillance. Exogenous colonialism demands “you, work for me,” requiring permanent availability; while settler colonialism says “you, go away,” creating invisibility. Decolonizing visuality is to erase the pattern of classification, separation and aestheticization these systems rely on.
The workshop alternates study of racial capitalism and decolonial methodologies with specific actions, including:
- collaborative working groups
- walking/institutional critique
- participating in social movement actions
- visual research: including pattern recognition and visual archaeology
- media forensics: using media as archival material
- Internet-based social justice research
Its goal is, in short, to learn how to undo the mediation of settler (neo)colonialism, from Standing Rock to Palestine and South Africa.
It’s about shaping questions not prescribing answers; about making tools to do that work; always remembering that decolonizing is a material process not a metaphor. Here’s an interview with Nick Mirzoeff that discusses all this by way of introduction
If this is new to you, begin by getting a sense of the South African context from where Decolonize the Curriculum emerged:
Meetings
- September 4: Introductions and community agreement
We’ll introduce ourselves, discuss facilitation and form a community agreement.
How do we decolonize media? See the Decolonize Media Collective dossier
legacies of colonization and enslavement
- September 11: Fence Worlds: workshop with Leonidas Martin (Barcelona University)
Prof Martin is our guest today. He writes: “The world has become a fence. A large fence made of many other fences. Fences that exclude, fences that lead to clandestinity, exploitation, constant danger, racism. A multitude of control systems classify and order the mobility of people displaced over the surface of this Fence World. Sometimes, it happens that a body does not accept the condition or place that is assigned to it. In such cases there occurs what we call a short-circuit, an interruption in the operation of the Fence World.This workshop explores the possibilities of creating these short circuits through art, design and performance. The ultimate goal is to create a set of creative actions that can face the control systems of Fence World.”
Background reading: let’s define “colonialism” in its various forms using the schema of the journal Settler Colonial Studies. Here’s the introduction to Coloniality At Large, which provides useful distinctions between de/coloniality and post/colonialism.
- September 18: Slavery dérive
Visit the Metropolitan Museum in groups. Undertake a “slavery dérive”: view the collection from the point of view of racial capitalism and enslavement. Where are the products of slavery (cotton, silver, coffee, indigo, hard wood, sugar)? How are they used in “art”? Where are they depicted in visual media? How are enslaved human beings depicted or absent (noting that Cedric Robinson begins this history in medieval Europe )?
How does plantation slavery create “oversight” as a way of seeing? see chapter one of The Right to Look. How does the legacy of enslavement also structure the future? see Kathleen McKittrick, “Plantation Futures.“
Background reading
Cedric J. Robinson’s classic Black Marxism deserves to be read in full, slowly and carefully. I recommend especially chapter six “The Historical Archaeology of the Black Radical Tradition,” and chapter seven “The Nature of the Black Radical Tradition.” Supplement by reading Robin DG Kelley’s essay on “What did Cedric Robinson Mean by Racial Capitalism?’
Systemic Coloniality and its Discontents
- September 25 : On Decoloniality.
What does it mean to decolonize? Read Eve Tuck and K. Wayne Yang, “Decolonization is not a metaphor,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 1, No. 1, 2012, pp. 1‐40. What does it mean to open theory to racial capitalism? Read Walter Johnston, “To Remake the World” and note his six principles of justice and racial capital. In On Decoloniality, Walsh and Mignolo argue for a combination of “theory” and “praxis,” which Simamkele Dlakavu calls “writing” and “rioting” in the context of decolonizing South Africa (ps: nervous about “rioting”? See Joshua Clover, Riot, Strike, Riot (Verso, 2016).
- October 2 Indigenous Perspectives
Indigenous perspectives demand a rethinking of how critical practice should be engaged and performed.
Start by watching Winona LaDuke, “Economics for the Seventh Generation” https://youtu.be/7XCi6_7plUo.
Read Layli Long Soldier’s poem “38” about the execution of 38 Dakota people in 1862, which also invokes Sam Durant’s disastrous artwork Scaffold. Visit the Taino exhibit at the National Museum of the American Indian
Eduardo Viveiros de Castro shows how contemporary Amerindians create intersectional perspectives between humans, animals, and the ancestors. “Perspective” here is not at all one-point perspective, it’s more like a world-view.
Silvia Rivera Cusicanqui’s essay “Ch’ixinakax utxiwa: A Reflection on the Practices and Discourses of Decolonization” is a wide-ranging reflection on the challenge of decolonization to modernity.
Audra Simpson in her book Mohawk Interruptus challenges conventional forms of identity politics by showing that Native peoples are not seeking “recognition” from settler colonialism but are instead refusing it.
Xochitl Leyva Solano introduces the Zapatista cosmology from the Indigenous perspective, using their famous slogan “Walking While Asking Questions,” and Scott Lauria Morgensen asks what the consequences of these Indigenous methodologies should be within the colonial university structure. Jaskiran K. Dhillon points out the importance of feminist approaches: “Indigenous girls and the violence of settler colonial policing,” Decolonization: Indigeneity, Education & Society Vol. 4, No. 2, 2015, pp. 1-31.
- October 9 Indigenous Day
On October 7-8, there is an Indigenous People’s Celebration on Randall’s Island. On October 8, there will be an action for Indigenous Day at the American Museum of Natural History on Sunday October 8 at 3pm. Indigenous Day action at Columbus Circle 12-2pm, October 8. Groups should make plans to attend one or both, in order to “write, record, film and tweet” what happens. Workshop meeting is report backs and action discussions.
Reading:
Emily Martin, “Anthropology Now and Then in the American Museum of Natural History: An Alternative Museum” in Anthropology Now vol. 9 no.2
Nicholas Mirzoeff, “For Anti-Racism, Against the NYC Monuments Commission,” The Situation
- October 16 Frantz Fanon, The Wretched of the Earth
This meeting will engage in a close reading of the opening pages of Fanon’s classic text with special attention to his concept of the “aesthetics of respect for the established order” and especially how this pertains to monuments.
Supplement and update with: Nelson Maldonando Torres: “Outline of Ten Theses on Coloniality and Decoloniality,” available here
Militant Research
- October 23 Decolonize Monuments and Museums
How do we decolonize the museum? What is the decolonization of monuments?
A. Rhodes Must Fall (2015)
South African students achieved the removal of the statue of Cecil John Rhodes–Rhodes Must Fall (RMF). What can we learn? What remains to be done, here and there?
Check out the demands of RMF–note what has and has not been achieved
Chumani Maxwele describes how the first RMF action was planned and carried out
Reflections on RMF:
Achille Mbembe “Decolonizing Knowledge and the Question of the Archive” (2015) RMF in Conversation with Achille Mbembe PART 1 filmed by Wandile Kasibe https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g-lU4BCsL8w
“Decolonization as Art Practice” (RMF) by Thuli Gamedze
“Bad Education,” by M. Neelika Jayawardane
In 2016, the Trans Collective occupied and disrupted a RMF photo exhibit as transphobic and erasing their role in the movement. How can intersectionality be practiced more than referenced?
B. Confederate and White Supremacist Monuments in the US
Confederate Monuments: Bree Newsome, “Go ahead, topple the monuments. All of them,” Washington Post.
On the Robert E. Lee statue in Charlottesville: https://hyperallergic.com/395627/robert-e-lee-confederate-monument-charlottesville/
Nicholas Mirzoeff, “All the Monuments Must Fall #Charlottesville” http://bit.ly/2hX3VQh
Silent Sam Falls at UNC 8/20/18: watch the video for tactics
C. Decolonize The Museum
Indigenous activist-curator Amy Lonetree reports on her efforts to decolonize the museum: preface and Introduction
NB Much much more at All the Monuments Must Fall Syllabus
- October 30 In the Wake/Fall-ism
How do we think “fall-ism” in the wake?
African-American scholar Christina Sharpe’s book In the Wake creates a new set of intersections and ways of thinking around being ‘woke,’ mourning (the wake), transatlantic slavery (in the wake) and the recoil of weapons (the wake). Please read the Introduction and chapter 4 (access via Bobst)
After Rhodes Must Fall came the successful student movement Fees Must Fall (FMF), forcing first cancelation of a tuition increase and later the announcement of free higher education.
Fall-ism is the result of RMF+FMF: a decolonizing movement that says patriarchy must fall, white supremacy must fall and all relations of domination must fall. Like many US social movements, says Mphutlane Wa Bofelo, FMF has a tension between spontaneity and organization.
Wanelisa Xaba presents a Black feminist perspective on FMF
#Hashtag: a detailed report on #FeesMustFall across South African Universities
- November 6 BDS-Palestine
“Orientalism” and Islamophobia are key components of coloniality. In this workshop, we’ll consider how to countervisualize war zones and refugees via the exemplary question of the Palestinians, the most “invisible” people in the current world order.
Background on migrants, see the catalog We Shout and We Shout But No-One Listens.
If you are new to the issue, begin here with the Scalar project: How To See Palestine.
And the statement “Decolonizing Architecture” from the Decolonizing Architecture Art Residency in Beit Sahour.
Then look at this project from the Beirut-based collective Visualizing Palestine: Freedom Bound
Consider the work of Forensic Architecture in Rafah, Gaza
Read the journal Anenomes.
workshops
- November 13 BKN Museum: Soul of a Nation/African collection
The Brooklyn Museum is a contradiction: it claims to be the most progressive of NYC institutions, and hosts important projects like The Soul of a Nation, but has also been a significant part of the gentrification of the area. Activists have challenged its acquisition of African and indigenous materials. We’ll visit and research.
Decolonize The Brooklyn Museum: Hyperallergic report
- November 20 Met Funding Workshop
Of all New York museums, the Met is the largest and best funded but has not yet attracted activist attention for its funding (other than the Koch Fountain). Many of its funders are too “clean,” meaning that the extractive and pauperizing aspects of their wealth were too long ago to critique. But not all. Here’s the funding list: look at it in groups, do research online, find issues and targets. There are at least two very obvious targets. Take a close look at the Real Estate Council, I would suggest.
- November 27 Decolonize the Curriculum Workshop
In South Africa, the demand is to decolonize the curriculum. An overview is here.
Here’s some practical steps from one institution
In this workshop, groups will study what making a decolonized syllabus would look like.
reflections and presentations
- December 4 Prepare final presentations
- December 11 Presentations