S4E9: Our Histories are not Missing

Decolonization in Action Podcast

In this episode Edna Bonhomme is in conversation with Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro. Mba Bikoro's work analyses processes of power & science fictions in historical archives critically engaging in migrational struggles & colonial memory focusing on queer indigenous and feminist biopolitics. The artist creates immersive performative environments for alternative narratives and future speculations of colonial resistance movements led by African women of the German diaspora and indigenous communities. Sedimented in narratives of testimonial Black queer experiences of sonic nature archives, revolt, queering ecologies and postcolonial feminist experiences towards new monuments which reacts to the different tones of societies shared between delusions & ritual. The work offers complex non-binary readings pushing new investigations about the architectures of racisms in cities, the archeologies of urban spaces & economies of traditional systems by exposing the limitations of technologies as functional memory records. She has developed frameworks of rituals and healing in performance work that often reveal the entangled colonial histories of migration at site-specific spaces to dismantle prejudices and organise accessible levels of consciousness through testimonial archives of local communities to build independant emancipatory tools for liberation, education, consciousness, intimacy and healing. She is lecturer in Curating Black Visual Cultures & Philosophy at TransArt Institute New York & Fine Arts practice at the University of Liverpool, artistic & curatorial supervisor of the Artists in Training Programme at the UdK and the University of Bergen Norway. She is Artistic Director of Nyabinghi_Lab Collective, recently curating the performance programme 'Radical Mutations' at Hebbel Am Ufer Theatre Berlin with Wearebornfree! Empowerment Radio and "Free State Of Barackia: 150 Years of Decolonial Urbanisms, Solidarities and New Berlin Utopias". She moderates the annual Berlinale Film Festival & currently has an Artistic Fellowship from the Goethe Institute In Bahia Salvador and is the TURN2 Award Fellow Curator at NCAI Nairobi. Her work was recently published in ARTE Twists series "Our Colonial Heritage" and Deutsche Welle TV in a series of short films on German Colonialism and Black Resistance. Her work has been featured in several international exhibitions and Biennales including the Havana Biennale (2019), Dak'art Biennale (2012; 2018), Venice Biennale (2016) and La Otra Biennale in Bogota (2013) and RAVVY Performance Biennale Yaoundé (2018).