Friday, October 2 –
Friday, October 9, 2020
Visit the "Postcolonialism and the Global Turn" series page on RISD's website
Un-Documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder is committed to show that statues do not die as Alain Resnais and Chris Marker claimed in their film Statues also Die. It’s true, that those who plundered millions of objects and forced them to exist isolated in museums’ showcases ought to be charged with attempted murder, but the objects themselves survived, and stand alert in glass cases (and imperial archives) awaiting reunion with their people, here or there. Plundered objects were uprooted from the communities in which they were made; they were forced to leave the people with whom they shared a world. Their forced migration is not separated from the force migration of people who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of imperial borders and seek their place in places where their objects are preserved. Since the exile of these objects, their people have become endangered. Not that they ceased to produce objects as part of their life, but under the imperial regime, their new objects stood for no objects, which made them objectless of a sort, exposed to different types of violence. On their quests to ensure their unavoidable reunion with their objects, they are often deemed “undocumented” by a different regime, the one that takes care of people at the borders. As “undocumented” they are denied movement in the world and unduly criminalized for attempts to cross internationally imposed borders. Focusing on plundered objects in European museums and listening to the call of asylum seekers to enter European countries, their former colonizing powers, the film defends the idea that formerly colonized people’s rights are inscribed in these objects, that are kept well-documented all these years.
The film is based on the assumption that there is a strong connection between two trajectories of forced migration that are thought as unrelated and are studied separately by scholars from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The first migration is of objects that generated professional care, scrupulous documentation, generous hospitality in museums and archives, and occasional public display. The second migration of people who do not have, never had, or are unable to obtain the documents without which they are banned from access to most kinds of care and hospitality, and from rebuilding their homes and worlds. These objects are those peoples’ documents.
Script and Director: Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Voice and Music Composed and Performed by: Edoheart, Awori & Moor Mother
Camera: Bona Manga Bell
Production: Eyal Vexler
Editing and Graphics: Claudia Yile
Sound editor: Ziad Fayed
Un-Documented: Unlearning Imperial Plunder is committed to show that statues do not die as Alain Resnais and Chris Marker claimed in their film Statues also Die. It’s true, that those who plundered millions of objects and forced them to exist isolated in museums’ showcases ought to be charged with attempted murder, but the objects themselves survived, and stand alert in glass cases (and imperial archives) awaiting reunion with their people, here or there. Plundered objects were uprooted from the communities in which they were made; they were forced to leave the people with whom they shared a world. Their forced migration is not separated from the force migration of people who refuse to recognize the legitimacy of imperial borders and seek their place in places where their objects are preserved. Since the exile of these objects, their people have become endangered. Not that they ceased to produce objects as part of their life, but under the imperial regime, their new objects stood for no objects, which made them objectless of a sort, exposed to different types of violence. On their quests to ensure their unavoidable reunion with their objects, they are often deemed “undocumented” by a different regime, the one that takes care of people at the borders. As “undocumented” they are denied movement in the world and unduly criminalized for attempts to cross internationally imposed borders. Focusing on plundered objects in European museums and listening to the call of asylum seekers to enter European countries, their former colonizing powers, the film defends the idea that formerly colonized people’s rights are inscribed in these objects, that are kept well-documented all these years.
The film is based on the assumption that there is a strong connection between two trajectories of forced migration that are thought as unrelated and are studied separately by scholars from different disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. The first migration is of objects that generated professional care, scrupulous documentation, generous hospitality in museums and archives, and occasional public display. The second migration of people who do not have, never had, or are unable to obtain the documents without which they are banned from access to most kinds of care and hospitality, and from rebuilding their homes and worlds. These objects are those peoples’ documents.
Script and Director: Ariella Aïsha Azoulay
Voice and Music Composed and Performed by: Edoheart, Awori & Moor Mother
Camera: Bona Manga Bell
Production: Eyal Vexler
Editing and Graphics: Claudia YileSound editor: Ziad Fayed