WANING CRESCENT

MOON PHASE

The film ‘(Pas) Mon Pays, Part I and II’, is an integral part of the project ‘Memory of Congo, in Congo and in Mechelen’, together with the installation ‘The Copy’, that will be shown in the exhibition of Contour Biennale 9.

Bie Michels was born and raised in Congo, in a house on the campus of the current University of Kinshasa (former Lovanium, the first university in the country, 1954-1971). As the title indicates, ‘(Pas) Mon Pays, Part I and II’, is in two parts. The first talks about a colonial monument in Mechelen and Michels’ efforts to decolonize this statue with a group of Belgian citizens with Congolese roots. The second shows the artist’s visit to Congo and is based on her personal history. The film is an attempt to let the past encounter the present and see further into the future of the postcolonial situation, in both Congo and Mechelen.

Curator Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez and artistic coordinator Fleur van Muiswinkel welcome you at the start of the biennial's closing weekend, * 'the phase of the waning moon' *.

Contour Biennale 9 will enter its closing phase in the weekend of 18 to 20 October. The programme curated by Nataša Petrešin-Bachelez is very diverse: film premieres, exhibition, music, lectures and presentations. The last weekend will focus on the screening of premieres, especially made for this 9th edition but will have a lot more to offer. Want to have more background and get to know more about the focus of this biennial? Be there.

Film, 60’, 2015-2019 (work in progress)

For the Contour Biennale, Bouba Touré and Raphaël Grisey present the first rough cut of the film ‘Crossing Voices – Xaraasi Xanne’. Through rare cinematographic, photographic and sound archives, it tells the story of the exemplary adventure of Somankidi Coura. This is an agricultural cooperative founded in Mali in 1977 by West African migrant workers living in France, in the migrant worker housing spaces called foyers.

The history of the improbable utopia of a return to the homeland follows a tortuous path that reveals ecological issues and struggles on the African continent from the 1970s to this day. To tell this story, Bouba Touré, one of its principal actors, returns to the heart of his personal archives. They document peasant struggles in France and Mali as well as following the personal stories of migrant workers over many decades. Furthermore, the film is a story of transmission, kinship and cinematographic geographies. It is the story of Bouba Touré with filmmaker Raphaël Grisey, who became Bouba’s spiritual son, but it also chronicles Bouba’s relationship with militant filmmakers such as Sidney Sokhona, Safi Faye or Med Hondo. Throughout the film, voices come to accompany Bouba and bring forth the narrative of a forgotten memory leading towards the future.

The artistic practice of the collective Greyzone Zebra has emerged from a need to reflect on colonial history. Their practice developed around family archives, making it possible to engage in collective reflection on the processes of memory and oblivion through images shot mainly in 8/Super8 and 16mm. The interest of this little-known film production lies in the diversity and spontaneity of its gestures and in the places and meanings given to those images. Greyzone Zebra set up their artistic research for Contour Biennale 9 in two stages. In January 2019, the collective organised an initial session. They launched a call for films gathering dust in people’s attics in Mechelen and the surrounding region. Family films from European colonies, dating from the 19th century to the first years of these colonies’ independence, raise many questions that form the starting point for a dialogue.

The second intervention by Greyzone Zebra at the Contour Biennale 9 is jointly curated and performed with Andrea Stultiens, a researcher and artist from the Netherlands. As part of a work in progress, Greyzone Zebra and Stultiens will activate a selection of clips from a collection of 8mm film amateur films produced in the Belgian colonies during the 1950s, bought in a thrift store in Mechelen in early 2019.

video, colour, 16:9, stereo & 5.1, Dutch spoken (EN st), BE, 2019, 19'

‘the wasp and the weather’ is Robin Vanbesien’s new film that focuses on Rzoezie, a former youth centre in Mechelen, Belgium. Rzoezie was founded and organised in 1978 by young people of Moroccan and Amazigh descent. Inspired by Paulo Freire’s ‘Pedagogy of the Oppressed’, the centre focused on education and organisation by the youngsters, for the youngsters: bottom up and from the inside. “Rzoezie” is the Arabic word for “wasp”.

In the centre the youngsters wrote poetry. These poems preserve to various extent the activist history of the moment in which they were written and dedicated to (1990-2000). In ’the wasp and the weather’, some of the original authors (M’Hamed El Ouali, Abdelhay Ben Abdellah) and contemporary poets (Samira Saleh, Mathieu Charles, members of the Post Collective) revisit, recite and discuss these poems.

’the wasp and the weather’ (2019) is part of an ongoing study of the imaginary which holds together self-organized social practices (starting with the film ’Under These Words (Solidarity Athens 2016)’ 2017).

The premiere on Sunday October 20th (20:30 - 22:00) is followed by a conversation between the artist and M’Hamed El Ouali, Samira Saleh and Mathieu Charles, Abdelhay Ben Abdellah, Mirra Markhaeva, Elli Vassalou, Hooman, Mohamed Tawfiq, Fatma Alomrani and Muhned Bnana

Film, 80', English, Croatian spoken, 2019

As a medical term, aphasia refers to the inability to speak or to find the right words. Jelena Jureša’s film ‘Aphasia’ consists of three chapters, each focusing on the collective silence surrounding crime and the compartmentalisation of historical events, and tracing the line between Belgian colonialism, Austrian anti-Semitism and the wars in Yugoslavia.

In ‘Aphasia’, Jureša digs for the roots and preconditions for state-sponsored violence, but also seeks out the reasons why such collective crimes keep being repeated. The film zooms in on processes of objectification and dehumanisation, among other themes, whilst shedding light on the roles played by photography and film.

The media are not shown as mere silent witnesses to a twisted worldview, but as active instruments in preparing and executing different crimes against humanity. However, ‘Aphasia’ aims to show their positive force as well. When law and politics fail to bring justice and facilitate collective healing, these same media (photography, film, television) can break the silence, and art may lead the way to justice.

On March 11, 2011, a magnitude 9 earthquake on the North East coast of Japan generated a tsunami of exceptional force. These natural disasters, which caused more than twenty thousand deaths, provoked another tragedy: the Fukushima-Daiichi nuclear accident. After this triple disaster that plunged the country into an unprecedented social, political and ecological crisis, artist and film director Hikaru Fujii initiated an ongoing project, taking the Futaba Town Museum of History and Folklore as a starting point and grounds for speculation. Futaba, situated 4 kilometres from the power plant, was entirely evacuated and most of it still remains a “Difficult-To-Return Zone”. To avoid radioactive contamination and biological damage, the museum collection (dioramas, traditional objects, tools, stuffed animals, etc.) was removed little by little from the area. Uprooted from their place of origin, these artefacts nevertheless continue to represent the foundations and collective memory of this community. The catastrophe, which called the nature of Japan’s infrastructure as well as the ecological consequences of capitalism into question, has at least partly – if not totally – lost its potential for socio-political alterity.

‘Les nucléaires et les choses’ attempts to examine this situation and create a platform of research and discussion for everyone, as the subject remains one of the most pressing issues in current society. The lecture performance includes extracts of a film that the artist has been documenting in Fukushima since 2011, and extracts of a round table discussion. This debate was organized and filmed by Fujii in the Amphithéâtre de Morphologie at the Ecole des Beaux-Arts, Paris, in collaboration with the KADIST Foundation on 21st May 2019.

For the final phase of ‘The Wish List’, our guest is the world renowned bassist and creative visionary Melvin Gibbs, a musician whose respect for the art and craft of music is equalled only by his will to overturn the externally drawn boundaries between musical and other artistic forms. The evening will include a live multimedia performance and a lecture by Melvin Gibbs and it ends with the film "Dreams Are Colder Than Death" by Arthur Jafa.

20:30 – 21:00: Solo multimedia performance

21:00 – 21:15: Short lecture on Recombination

Melvin will present a lecture on the subject he calls Recombination: Modes of Creativity in the Age of the Meme. His talk will examine the idea of recombination, both “naturally occurring” and “artificial”, as the primary force behind human evolution. He will address the theme in the current context of firstly remix culture and transhumanism, secondly social media as a tool for social recombination, and finally the collapse of difference between the “real” and the “fake” in the current culture of fake news.

On-Trade-Off: Routes and Roads' is a lecture performance by Alexis Destoop and Mi You. The ongoing artistic research project On-Trade-Off investigates the emergence of lithium – a volatile and unstable metal known as the “new black gold” – in the current energy transition to a green economy. The closure of the major mining operations in Manono, a town in the Tanganyika Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the early 80s, left an altered landscape whose logistical equipment has slowly fallen into disarray. Recent geological exploration has confirmed vast amounts of lithium to be found in the abandoned mining pits, making for new interest and investments from foreign corporations, which could alter the town’s destiny.

Following the trajectory of the raw material from its point of origin in Congo, via trading posts in Australia to the production hubs in China, artist Alexis Destoop and scholar Mi You explore the stages of its transformation and, speculatively, envision the future mapped out by this new trade route. What are the mechanisms behind these trade routes? What laws legitimate this “extractive” mindset? What future is paved out along the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) that China is about to roll out? Does the new economy spell a future that will redistribute some of the accumulated wealth back to Manono?

Initiated by:
Picha (Lubumbashi, DRC) and Enough Room for Space (Brussels, BE)

Participants:
Sammy Baloji (BE/DRC), Jean-Pierre Bekolo (FR/CM), Alexis Destoop (AU/BE), Marjolijn Dijkman (BE/NL), Gulda El Magambo (DRC), Femke Herregraven (NL), Jean Katambayi (DRC), Frank Mukunday (DRC) & Trésor Tshibangu (DRC), Musasa (DRC), Georges Senga (NL/DRC), Daddy Tshikaya (DRC), Maarten Vanden Eynde (BE)

On-Trade-Off: Routes and Roads' is a lecture performance by Alexis Destoop and Mi You. The ongoing artistic research project On-Trade-Off investigates the emergence of lithium – a volatile and unstable metal known as the “new black gold” – in the current energy transition to a green economy. The closure of the major mining operations in Manono, a town in the Tanganyika Province of the Democratic Republic of Congo (DRC) in the early 80s, left an altered landscape whose logistical equipment has slowly fallen into disarray. Recent geological exploration has confirmed vast amounts of lithium to be found in the abandoned mining pits, making for new interest and investments from foreign corporations, which could alter the town’s destiny.

Following the trajectory of the raw material from its point of origin in Congo, via trading posts in Australia to the production hubs in China, artist Alexis Destoop and scholar Mi You explore the stages of its transformation and, speculatively, envision the future mapped out by this new trade route. What are the mechanisms behind these trade routes? What laws legitimate this “extractive” mindset? What future is paved out along the “Belt and Road Initiative” (BRI) that China is about to roll out? Does the new economy spell a future that will redistribute some of the accumulated wealth back to Manono?

For Contour Biennale 9, Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Ashkan Sepahvand present ‘Carbon Theater. A Planetary Drama Around Life and Non-Life. Act III: Dark Loops.’ ‘Act III’, the third part of their study ‘Carbon Theater’ is ongoing since 2016. It unfolds from the site of Fort van Walem. The work consists of a 33-inch vinyl record, an installation and a listening session.

‘Carbon Theater’ is an ongoing study that has been conducted since 2016 by the institute for incongruous translation, originally founded by Natascha Sadr Haghighian and Ashkan Sepahvand to investigate the discrepancies between sensing and knowing. Each iteration of ‘Carbon Theater’ unfolds from a found site. The project challenges the anthropocentric narratives that inform current discussions on planetary climate change. These carbon imaginaries valorise a specific biological definition of life as the protagonist of a drama where non-life is held in tragic opposition, with profound political consequences. Rather than asking whether “we” will endure or be extinguished, it seems necessary to disorient and displace human perspectives altogether, making space for non-visible, sonorous formations to resonate.

Fort van Walem, located north of Mechelen, serves as the found site through which the project’s research will unfold. Originally built in 1878 as part of the historical network of military forts defending Antwerp, Fort van Walem was maintained during the Cold War as a NATO nuclear fallout centre, and briefly used as a deportation holding site for asylum seekers in the early 1990s before its formal decommissioning. Since 2006, the organisation Natuurpunt has owned and run the fort, taking care of the ruins as a habitat for various creatures including bats, dragonflies, sand bees and owls. Exploring a large fire in 2017 at a production facility located right next to the fort, which specialising in fusing rubber and metal parts for military tanks, the study loops around displaced timelines and incongruous networks where inhuman forms come and go, repeat and return, with minor variations. Zooming in and out of scale, from the wavelength of a bat’s call to the size of the war machine, the site is sounded out for unexpected signals, inaudible frequencies, and distant echoes that transport the ear from the fort through the factory and the museum to the globe.

Special thanks to Antonia Alampi for her support at SAVVY Contemporary (Berlin) and Extra City (Antwerp).

Night is high, the sky has darkened. Pleased that the moon’s glow is kept from showing, Coyote howls to a black night. Imbued in darkness, the animal retraces its steps and sniffs the imprint of the past, spelling it back into the pressing present.

Under the influence of the Waning Moon Crescent, COYOTE re.member and re.assemble the many facets of their research in Mechelen with a performative and polyphonic conference. By bringing together seeds and transplants, forms and protests, tales and letters, hopes and howls, COYOTE will resume and expand on their work around the Youth for Climate Movement, the community of organic growers in Mechelen, and Louis de Bruyn’s circular agriculture.

Through words, sounds, images and signs, COYOTE activates and enlarges 'Environments', their open-ended environmental lexicon as an attempt to think, feel, act and remain in an increasingly devastated and contaminated world. Each member of the collective will engage in a short individual presentation, juxtaposing and sequencing together the manifold aspects of their travels to and from Mechelen through this year of thirteen moons.

In the last Live Book Club, artist Laura Nsengiyumva will engage in conversation with two readers. This time she has chosen Mireille Tsheusi Robert and Eline Mestdagh to join her at the table. You may know Robert as an author on racism and an activist. Mestdagh is an academic researcher who analyses the role of history in the struggles of the sub-Saharan African diaspora living in Belgium. The starting point for this conversation is the book "Pietpraat", edited by Bambi Ceuppens.

PIETPRAAT

The same debate comes up in Belgium and in the Netherlands every year: Should ‘Zwarte Piet’ be banned? The figure of Saint Nicholas’ servant is discussed annually but validation of this character casts a shadow on the oldest tradition for children. In this book, Bambi Ceuppens has gathered various authors to feed the social debate: historians and activists such as Dalila Hermans, Heleen Debeuckelaere, Mireille Tsheusi Robert and the inviting artist Laura Nsengiyumva, with the "Legend of Queen Nikkolah". Together they answer the following questions creatively and scientifically: why is this figure internationally criticized? In what sense is it racist and how did it become such an emotional subject? The book was published in 2018 in the midst of the controversy about the Royal Museum of Central Africa, and has failed to echo the voices of the authors. This book club is a chance to start the annual celebration afresh with their valuable contributions.