Changes in Direction
– a Journal
Digital book launch

10.04.2021

Changes in Direction – a Journal provides multivocal and transnational African-European statements to current decoloniality debates from different perspectives. The Finnish-German artist Laura Horelli engages with the traumatic and complex histories of colonialism and international solidarity between East Germany, Finland and Namibia, staging micro-historical interventions in public spaces. Her films transform the archive into a space – and publication – of reflective engagement. The artist’s compilation of research, interviews and discussions in this bilingual German-English volume are enriched by contributions by the Namibian performance artist Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, the German curator-theorist Doreen Mende and the Finnish writer Olli Löytty. Initially an exhibition project and film screenings shown in Berlin, Freiburg i. Br., Malmö, Helsinki and Windhoek, Horelli and the curator Heidi Brunnschweiler put together a volume that celebrates and critically reflects on art as a process.

 

Following the screening of Laura Horelli’s works Namibia Today, Interviews, and Newstime which offered an insight into Horelli’s practice an online gathering was held to discuss the publication. At the online gathering curator Heidi Brunnschweiler introduced the project, while Laura Horelli spoke about the structure of the publication and referred to the works featured. Nashilongweshipwe Mushaanja discussed his text “’Making Love’: Solidarity in Decolonial Times” and Doreen Mende talked about her contribution “The Image-Complex of Modernity’s Grandchildren”.

Documentation of the event will soon be available on this page.

HEIDI BRUNNSCHWEILER is a Swiss curator, art scholar and art critic. She has conducted scholarly and curatorial activities in Switzerland and the UK. Since 2014 she has been the Head of Visual Arts and a curator of Galerie für Gegenwartskunst, E-WERK, Freiburg i. Br. She has curated numerous exhibitions, among others by Jorinde Voigt, Jananne Al-Ani, Theo Eshetu, Natasha A. Kelly, Sven Johne, Laura Horelli and Jaki Irvine. In her dissertation, she examined the significance of the photographic in the work of Christian Boltanski. As an editor she published among others Futures of the Past, Annette Amberg, Asier Mendizábal, Yelena Popova in Dialogue (2013) and Perpetually Transient, Anahita Razmi, Basim Magdy, Florian Graf, Bernd Behr (2015).

LAURA HORELLI is a visual artist and filmmaker interested in representations and mediations of the past taking a micro-historical approach. Her work has been shown at numerous exhibitions and festivals internationally. Her films and video installations include Newstime (2019); Namibia Today (2018); Jokinen (2016); A Letter to Mother (2013); The Terrace (2011); Haukka-pala (2009); You Go Where You’re Sent (2003); Helsinki Shipyard / Port San Juan (2003). Her previous publications are Laura Horelli: interviews, Diaries,Reports (2006) and Laura Horelli: n.b.k. Ausstellungen Band 12 (2012). Horelli was born in Helsinki, grew up partly in Nairobi and London and lives in Berlin since 2001.

DOREEN MENDE, a curator, researcher, and theorist, is currently professor of Curatorial/Politics and director of the CCC Research Master and PhD Forum at the Geneva University of Art and Design (HEAD). In 2015, she founded the Harun Farocki Institute in Berlin with Tom Holert and Volker Pantenburg. Her projects include Hamhŭngs Zwei Waisen (Für Konrad Püschel) (2018–2019) in the context of bauhaus imaginista in Moscow, Berlin, Bern and Istanbul; Navigation Beyond Vision (2019– 2020) with the Harun Farocki Institute and e-flux Journal at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin; The Undutiful Daughter’s Concept of Archival Metabolism (2018) for e-flux Journal. Her work has also been published, among others, by Sternberg Press and in the Oxford Handbook for Communist Visual Cultures (2020). Mende is the initiator of the research project Decolonizing Socialism, Entangled Internationalism, funded by the Swiss National Science Foundation (2019–2023). She lives in Berlin and works in Geneva.

NASHILONGWESHIPWE MUSHAANDJA is a performer, educator and writer with practice and research interests embodied in spatial archives and in movement formation. Mushaandja is also a PhD artist at the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies at the University of Cape Town studying Queer Praxis in Oudano Archives. His recent performance Dance of the Rubber Tree is a cross-disciplinary critical queer intervention in museums, theatre and archives in Germany, Switzerland, South Africa, Cameroon and Namibia. He is also involved in curative projects on public learning and culture, such as the John Muafangejo Season (2016– 2017); Operation Odalate Naiteke (2018–2020) and Owela Festival (2019).