Unearthing. In conversation, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński
Austria, 2017
13 min

In Unearthing. In Conversation. Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński attempts to confront the violence of history contained within images. In the figure of the archivist, she asks: how can we remember these stories without transposing and echoing their violence into the present?

“Unearthing. In Conversation is an attempt to come to terms with violent pasts, to find expressions for the unspeakable. Working with photographs that Paul Schebesta (1887-1967), Austrian-Czech missionary, writer and ethnographer, took in what is nowadays the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński’s work deals with the violent history of archival material and the trauma of colonization. Bringing to the forefront the haunting qualities of colonialism she engages in an uncanny dialogue that negotiates strategies of representation, the reproduction of specific ways of looking, and the trauma of being made other in the here and now, while at the same time problematizing strategies of artistic research.”

Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński is a writer, artist, and scholar. Rooted in Black feminist theory, she has developed a research-based and process-oriented investigative practice that often deals with archives, specifically with the voids in public archives and collections. Interlacing the documentary with the fictional, her works manifest themselves through a variety of media and dissect the present of an everlasting colonial past: a past without closure.

CINÉ-CLUB ON SATURDAY 11.03 AT 17:00
COLLECTIVE SCREENING of Unearthing. In conversation + Se faire sentir by Sybil Coovi Handemagnon (part of the current exhibition Quiet Refusal)
FOLLOWED BY A CONVERSATION with Fallon Mayanja & Sybil Coovi Handemagnon
in French, with the possibility of translating into English
WELCOME!

With the support of the French Embassy in Belgium and the French Institute in the framework of EXTRA, a support programme for French contemporary creation.