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Die Schweiz hat keine Kolonien, aber war Kolonial

2017

 

HD Video, 30 min

 

Knowledge transfer and production usually take place in a hierarchically structured field, in which interpretive sovereignty and the positions of speakers must be subjected to critical reflection. The artist Sally Schonfeldt starts with such questions and presents in her works extensive archival research in various film-based formats, for example as a documentary, as a desktop view of an internet research or in extensive displays embedded with images. and text documents. In the work Die Schweiz hat keine Kolonien, aber war kolonial (2017) uses and alienates the image practices of PowerPoint, the prototypical demonstration tool of scientific teaching. On the basis of a decolonial research into the Zurich Museum Rietberg, which specializes in non-European art, the film highlights problematic hierarchies in the transfer of objects and the corresponding knowledge transfers resulting out of it. It not only names the museum's colonial intertwinings, but also develops a concrete proposal for the repatriation of a Papuan-Guinean mask from the Museum Rietberg collection. In doing so, Schonfeldt uses image and film material from a wide variety of sources, as well as the typical PowerPoint tools as argumentative vehicles, which purposefully strains them and thus raises questions about the power of interpretation in processes of knowledge transfer.(Text Yasmin Asfchar and Gioia dal Molin)

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