Demounting Doegen

Next Saturday 30th July, the Cera Project will present at their space in Hanbury Street near the famous Brick Lane in East London, another live performance event part of their program that focuses on female performance based artists in dialogue with the global south.

An evening that will share the work of the incredible international performance based artist Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro. Born in 1985 in Libreville, Gabon. Nathalie's practice explores cultural dialogues within and across continents and communities, on the discourses of histories, post-colonialism, migration, body politics, using archival material to reconstruct fractured social narratives. She is currently based in Berlin and will be in London to perform live Demounting Doegen. The performance will then be followed by a discussion with the artist.

This live performance will consist of 234 black balloons as transmitters to voice recordings between 1910-1941, prepared by the German colonial project commissioned by the Sound Prussian Commission and directed by Wilhelm Doegen, a German linguistic responsible for creating the project of the first Museum Of World Cultures in Germany. In the span of 2 wars, German reconciled with its identity and political world position by considering the cultural and technological advances through African heritage and migration. They called it the ultra-modernism that would re-map Germany's political and most importantly colonial power. Doegen was responsible for the gramophone recordings of over 8,000 African prisoners of war in detained in colonial camps in Germany. The soldiers' pleas for help were heard across the country in exhibition galleries to fund the resettlement of colonies abroad. However a large archive of these voices are missing; those of the women.