Page 103 - ARTE!Brasileiros #38

questioned to what extent this sort of gesture, even symbolic, also This trauma would indeed be the topic of the visit the following
resulted in privileged castes. If someone died for a cause, how is it day, the second of the trip, to the Robben Island Museum, the
possible to assess who is more heroic than the others? old penitentiary where the insurgents against the Apartheid
Questions like this sprouted during lunch, in the park’s restaurant, were held, including Nelson Mandela, who spent there 18 of his
again incited by Murinik. It was in the restroom there that Matthias 27 years of incarceration.
Mühling, director of the Lenbachhaus, the oldest modern art museum The guide to the visit was Lionel Davis, himself a former inmate,
in Germany, in Munich, took a photograph that would be the theme what shows the institution’s concern to keep the history of the
of his talk in a debate at the Goethe Institute in Johannesburg the place alive. “All guides here have some living relationship with
following day. Robben Island,” Davis explained.
He photographed one of these cheap liquid soap dispensers placed “It was the most emotional moment of the visit, when we saw
on the sink when the similar accessory installed on the wall is out of how a historic site can keep its memory alive,” Pablo Lafuente,
order, showing afterwards a similar image of the Tate’s restroom. a Spanish curator living in Bahia and part of the team of the
With this, Mühling pointed out the importance of paying attention 31st São Paulo Bienal, would later claim. Besides Mandela, two
to details and to what is left out of the official story. other presidents of South Africa were kept there, including the
He wasn’t speaking on behalf of the group, but in a certain way current one, Jacob Zuma.
indicated a common practice in this third stage of the Museal Episode, “This project originated from the requests of many members
one of the segments of the Episodes of the South, a three-year- of this group,” said Katharina von Ruckteschell-Katte, director
long project (2015–2017) organized by São Paulo’s Goethe Institute of the São Paulo’s Goethe Institute, explaining that the idea of
(ARTE!Brasileiros, issue 36). network is intrinsic to the conception of the Museal Episode. For
Initiated in Salvador in October of 2015, and hosted by Bahia’s Museum six years, in fact, she was the director of the Goethe Institute
of Modern Art (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aQlsglN_CO0), in Johannesburg.
the Museal Episode is basically a gathering of the same group of The person in charge of the program in South Africa was Gabi
directors and curators from Latin American and German museums, Ngcobo who, during the period of our visit, inaugurated the new
in addition to the Greek Marina Fokidis (director of the Kunsthalle headquarters of the NGO (Nothing Gets Organized) cultural
Athena and part of the curatorial team of documenta 14) the South space, with a concert of the group Vocal Museum, which sings
African Gabi Ngcobo (one of the co-curators, of the 32nd São Paulo historical South African songs, from jazz to gospel.
Bienal) and the Slovenian Zdenka Badovinac, director of Ljubljana’s There, with a diverse audience – young and elderly, blacks and
Museum of Modern Art. whites –, one of the issues raised by Marina Fokidis in one of the
The Museal Episode, whose subtitle is “On the global future of group’s debates became clear: “The entire South is different,
museums,” one of the thematic axes of the debates, has the support every individual is different.”
of the German Federal Cultural Foundation. The project is not aimed
at a practical, specific goal, what in times of neoliberal efficiency 1 | GROUP COMPRISED OF MUSEUM DIRECTORS, IN A MEETING IN SOUTH AFRICA
already sounds like an anti-hegemonic project.
The second meeting of the group was in Bolivia, hosted by the 2 | FREEDOM PARK, NEAR JOHANNESBURG
National Museum of Ethnography and Folklore, under the direction
of Elvira Espejo, also part of the group since the beginning. “I was 3 | INAUGURATED IN 2004, THE PARK PAYS TRIBUTE TO YOUNG MEN WHO FOUGHT FOR
touched by the way through which Elvira involves communities DEMOCRACY AND FREEDOM IN SOUTH AFRICA
in the museum, and this has been an inspiration for my work in
public museums, a position she’s held for four months – in earlier OPEN RELATIONSHIPS
Dresden,” says Marion Ackerman general director of Dresden’s
episodes, she was the director of the Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-
Westfalen, in Dusseldorf. MONICA NADOR TAKES PART IN A PROJECT OF A COLOMBIAN MUSEUM
Despite not having a specific purpose, there is no doubt that the WITH THE PARTICIPATION OF PROSTITUTES
experiences of the Episodes, by rallying cultural agents in museums
of the so-called Global South and enabling an open dialogue between BY FABIO CYPRIANO
them, has been transforming practices and attitudes, such as
Ackerman’s statement on the first day of the trip to South Africa, in One of the issues crossing the debates of the Episódio Museal
Cape Town. Another example is Mühling’s talk, on the video about (Museal Episode) is the relationship between museum and
the immersion in Bolivia: “We started out with the issue of how to their contexts, and recently, the Brazilian artist Monica Nador
decolonize or democratize museums, and wound up thinking on performed an action in direct connection to this topic in Medellín,
how to decolonize ourselves.” Since the episode in South Africa was at the Museum of Antioquia.
the third meeting, the mood of the group was amiable, which the Directed by the Venezuelan Nydia Gutierrez, the Colombian
intimacy of the other two meetings had helped create. However, it institution has a program titled Museum and Territories, which
was clear that the goal there was not tourism, but to truly experience seeks to involve nearby communities.
the context as openly as possible. Another good example of this With Nador, the program had the involvement of around ten
experience was when the group visited a new museum still under prostitutes who worked near the museum but “had never been
construction, the Zeitz MOCAA, a place dedicated to contemporary inside,” she says. “We created printing designs and painted on
art, scheduled to open this year in Cape Town’s waterfront. It is fabric that was later sewn and hung in a huge banner outside the
one of those typical undertakings that use culture to promote real museum,” the artist explained by phone, now back in São Paulo.
estate projects. “Our collection will comprise artworks created from “I was very happy with the way Monica approached the
the year 2000 on,” claimed the director of the institution, Mark community, and how her work goes beyond the social, being
Coetzee, during the visit to the museum still under construction. It very aesthetic as well. I really wished she could come back next
would soon be clear to the group that forming a collection only with year,” said Gutierrez, in South Africa.
works of the 21st century was a way of not contemplating South For Nador, one of the program’s distinctive features is to go
Africa’s traumatic 20th century past. beyond the boundaries of the art world: “I found it amazing that

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