An Uncomfortable Walking tour in the frame of the Intervention
Sugarworks: Architektur, Salonfähigkeit und Exotik um 1773 2023.

“Wir sind hier in Deutschland”
also
“Wer in Deutschland leben will, muss Deutsch sprechen”
denn
“Wer in Deutschland leben will, muss sich an die Regeln halten”

„We are here in Germany.“
thus
“Whoever wants to live in Germany must speak German.“
because
“Whoever wants to live in Germany must obey the rules.“

The german popular press is peppered with these phrases, I recently discovered. They’re close partners to „Ich habe nichts gegen fremden Menschen, aber…“ They can be found, especially, in articles or opinion pieces about racialised and criminalized persons doing language and integration courses. I had only encountered these mottos of xenophobia in my everyday life; working low-paying ‘student’ jobs to finance my visa and MFA, riding my bike to my studio, exiting my therapist’s office, filling out a spreadsheet on the train, and most recently from one of my students at a seminar on Anti-Racist Curatorial Practices.

Thinking of a Sprachheimat – a kind of language home – this city walk begins with my painting intervention in Kiel’s city and maritime museum, which investigates ideas about building and protecting a homeland. What does it mean to perform gender, race and class in a language so bound to often imperialist nationhood? Who is protected in public and institutional space? To which violations do we subject ourselves, in the hopes of gaining security, dignity?

Sunday 13th August, 2023
12:30-14:00
Starting at:
City and Maritime Museum Warleberger Hof,
Dänische Strasse 19,
24103, Kiel

In German, free entry.

A selected Reading List (the hyperlinks are articles or youtube videos):
– Eure Heimat ist unser Albtraum*, Essay Collection, Fatma Aydemir + Hengameh Yaghoobifarah et al. 2019
– Fatherland, Burkhard Bilger, 2023
– Hass, Seyda Kurt, 2023
– Se défendre: Une philosophie de la violence, Elsa Dorlin, 2017
– Afro-Asian Feminist Art: Futurist Genealogies, Essay, Tao Leigh Goffe & Andrea Chung, 2022
– Every Straw is a Straw Too Much, Essay, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, 2023

*English translations of essays, at Transit journal, available here.