Development[s]

In addition to working closely with selected Berlin district museums in the production of annual special exhibitions as part of Dekoloniale [re]presentations , we offer other interested museums advice on the subject of coloniality and decolonization. Our offer originally included on-site visits, needs-based advice and curatorial comments on existing or planned special and permanent exhibitions. However, in view of the great interest shown by museums in 2020, we have expanded this part of the project.

On the one hand, this concerns our participation in the model project "Colonial History in the German Museum of Technology - a New Dealing with the Brandenburg-Prussian Enslavement Trade", which focused on the performative dismantling of an inappropriate art installation on the deportation of West African people to the Americas. This installation had already been sharply criticized years ago by the civil society sponsors of the Dekoloniale .

We worked together with the artists Monilola Olayemi Ilupeju and Philip Kojo Metz. In their performances "Wayward Dust" and "SEK (SORRYFORNOTHING EINSATZ KOMMANDO)" they celebrated the dismantling of the problematic installation and the associated creation of free space for the overdue social debates about colonialism and its continuities. The performances were shown live on the international day to commemorate the abolition of the slave trade and its victims (August 23, 2020) on the big screen at the annual renaming festival for Berlin's M-Straße on Hausvogteiplatz.

This collaboration was continued in four workshops for museum employees with the invited experts Paulette Reed-Anderson, Mahret Ifeoma Kupka and Susanne Wernsing, moderated by Miriam Camara. It was about the history of enslavement in Prussia, the relationship between technology and colonialism, and the search for ways in a sustainable process of decolonization not only of the permanent exhibition area of shipping, but of the entire Museum of Technology.

Together with the Working Group of the Berlin Regional Museums (ABR) we have set up a round table of the Berlin district museums. It meets every three to four months to exchange views on the critical processing of the district's colonial history, on how to convey it and on the networking of corresponding activities of the participating houses.

Finally, there is now a quarterly round table on the topics of coloniality and decolonization for the larger museums in the state of Berlin, in which interested museums from other federal states also take part. So far, in addition to our cooperation partners from the German Museum of Technology, the Museum of Natural History, the Bridge Museum, the Botanical Museum, the Museum of Communication and the Prussian Palaces and Gardens Foundation have also been involved. From further afield, the Folkwang Museum in Essen, the Focke Museum in Bremen, the German Harbor Museum in Hamburg and the Museum of Applied Arts in Frankfurt have also taken part.

A group of Master students in »Museum Management and Communication« from the Berlin University of Applied Sciences (HTW) is currently developing new content for the exhibition »zurückGESCHAUT« as well as their own (online) offerings in cooperation with Dekoloniale and Museum Treptow.

The permanent exhibition at Museum Treptow, which opened in 2017, critically examines the »First German Colonial Exhibition« which took place in Berlin's Treptower Park in 1896. The students explore the themes of »Colonial Continuities in Urban Space« and »Clothing and Resistance.« They are also producing several short making-of videos for the revised exhibition »zurückGESCHAUT», which will reopen at Museum Treptow on October 15, 2021.

The collaborative project will span two semesters. The students will present their results in February 2022 as part of »EinBlicke« at HTW Berlin.

In April 2023, we launched the four-part workshop series »Decolonizing museums« Together with the Mitte Museum, the Botanical Garden / Botanical Museum and the Brücke-Museum, which had applied for the workshop series in advance, as well as twelve museum professionals from different Berlin institutions, we explored the overarching question of how a decolonial practice can be realized in museums. Between April and July 2023, one workshop took place in each of the three museums as well as a final workshop. In these workshops, the participants dealt with issues that were central to the work of the respective museum. At the Mitte Museum, for example, strategies for museum classification, presentation and mediation were discussed using the example of the museum's colonial-racist objects. The workshop at the Botanical Garden / Museum focused on the question of making colonial contexts visible and addressing decolonization processes in current (and actually unchangeable) permanent exhibitions. Finally, the participants at the Brücke-Museum dealt with the question of how the process of decolonization can succeed in an institution that is determined by traditional routines and temporary projects. In the final workshop, the central results of the entire workshop series were compiled and discussed.

The project is a collaboration between the Dekoloniale Development[s] and the Competence Centre Decolonization of the Berlin City Museum Foundation and the Berlin Museums Association.