Crusoe

Installation and performance "Crusoe" in the frame of the exibition "Territory" (26. März–27. Mai 2018) at galeries COPYRIGHTberlin and Uqbar together with Yvon Chabrowski. Curated by Kira Dell.
The litterary motive of "Robinson Crusoe" (1719), as well as its multiple follow-up versions, the so-called Robinsonades are at the center of focus of this installation.
Two archive images and a poem written by the artist refer directly to the motive of Robinson Crusoe. A multitude of faces forming trails, like pages of a book or journal, are hanged on the wall.
The window of the galerie is covered from a one-way miror. When light diminish outside, the word Crusoe appears.

The illustration on the cover of the French edition of Daniel Defoe's Robinson Crusoe shows different moments of the life of Crusoe on the island. On the wall his first encounter with Friday: „Robinson receives the tributes of Friday who offers himself as a slave. A picture of the German artist Hans Lichtenecker in Namibia (then South West Africa) in 1931, place of the Herero and Nama genocide committed by the German Empire (1904-1907), photographs and measures faces and records voices to send them to European museums and universities. He produces imprints of faces and heads in order to create an "archive of vanishing races.

A „reading in performance“ of the poem hapenned at the opening of the exhibition.

In relation to the exhibition, the artist has lead a Theater of the Oppressed workshop „IMAGES and BODIES“ that led to a Forumtheaterplay. The work is based on the Brazilian theatre director Augusto Boal’s method. In cooperation with KURINGA and the festival „Aesthetics of Justice“ in Ufer Studios.

Picture from the book cover: Robinson Crusoé Daniel Defoe / Le Livre de Poche (2003), photo credits: RMN-Grand Palais (MuCEM) / Jean-Gilles Berizzi.
Pictures and excerpt from the book: What We See. Reconsidering an Anthropometrical Collection from Southern Africa: Images, Voices, and Versioning. Anette Hoffmann, Britta Lange, Regina Sarreiter / Basler Afrika Bibliographien (2012), photo credits: Namibian Scientific Society in Windhoek.