Nightmares, Colonial, Neocolonial

The biggest lie we were ever told was not that god, but that colonialism, is dead. As the long centuries of European hegemony came to a close, its successor imposed new rules, which included the dramatic end to direct military occupation – though exceptions were permitted. The system that the US empire has imposed in its place is what Frantz Fanon astutely predicted in his 1961 manifesto ​“Les damnés de la terre” as a system in which power is shared between local and outside forces. Fanon redefined the term neocolonialism to describe this condition; this understanding of the term is rarely used today. In this program that takes place during the 140th anniversary of the landmark Berlin Conference that had highlighted German culpability in the colonial nightmare, organized by Philip Rizk and Raphael Daibert at the Kunstraum at Leuphana University Lüneburg, we grapple with a past that is maintained in the nightmare that is the neocolonial present.

Bon Voyage, SIM
by Moustapha Alassane (1966, 5 min)

Lumumba, la mort du prophète (OmeU)
by Raoul Peck (1991, 69 min)

This film series is hosted by the Kunstraum and the DFG Research Training Group Cultures of Critique of the Leuphana University Lüneburg and is curated and organized by Philip Rizk and Raphael Daibert, with additional support of Jana Paim.