Events
English / Deutsch

11.8.2018 | KW Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin

I'm Not Who You Think I'm Not #24: Gentle Dust

Performance

And so, gently the dust will fall, upon the carelessly wrapped paintings.
And gently the colours on the canvas – they will fade away.
Images of soup cans, guns and flowers – they will fade away.
And gentle dust will fall upon the seamless glass vitrines, scattered pedestals, high-security cameras.
Gentle dust, upon the long forgotten sculptures, abandoned in the corners of the white, quiet cubes.

(Und so wird leise Staub fallen auf die achtlos eingepackten Gemälde.
Und leise werden die Farben auf der Leinwand verblassen.
Bilder von Suppendosen, Pistolen und Blumen – sie werden verblassen.
Und leiser Staub wird fallen auf die Glasvitrinen, die herumstehenden Sockel, die Hochsicherheitskameras.
Sanfter Staub, auf die längst vergessenen Skulpturen in den Ecken der stillen weißen Zellen.)

– Dorine van Meel

Gentle Dust is a collective project in which a number of artists, writers, and activists imagine and stage the desertion of the museum of modern art through performative readings, a video installation, and music. The museum of modern art is understood here as an emblematic expression of the colonial matrix of power, to which it is linked both historically and at present. Live and recorded readings respond to the question of how we can disengage from the narratives that are told and taught by these museums.

Gentle Dust is initiated by Dorine van Meel and co-curated with Rianna Jade Parker. It includes performances by Abdel-Rahman Hassan, Alina Jabbari, Dorine van Meel, Isaac Kariuki, Rianna Jade Parker and Ibrahim Cissé together with Sami El-Enany; texts by Imani Robinson, Natasha Jacobs, Susu Amina, Thato Magano, and Yakari Gabriel as well as a video animation by Dorine van Meel with original music by Sami El-Enany.

Gentle Dust has been made possible through additional financial support from the Mondriaan Fund.