Considering Monoculture | Olivier Marboeuf

(c)Olivier Marboeuf - Foto: M HKA / Bram Goots, 2020
28 February - 28 February 2020
deBuren, Brussel

Title: Decolonial Suites

Revisiting ‘Decolonial Variations’, a short essay in the form of an interview with Joachim Ben Yacoub, published in May 2019, that pointed to strategies of absorption of Black bodies by Western art institutions, Olivier Marboeuf will share diverse feedback and interpretations, sometimes unexpected, concerning the piece. Readings of the text that sometimes expressed the confusion as well as the tensions that emerged in recent years around identity politics for those who hoped to invent a common culture, in which the racial foundations of capitalism would be forgotten in favour of a politics of surface reconciliation. If ‘Decolonial Variations’ pleads notably for an escape from identity as a market value and a distancing from the desire for recognition, it is with the objective of establishing minority bodies as sites of the particular and invisible history of the West and as matter(s) capable of disturbing, via their transformative power, the economy and ecology of cultural institutions.

Bio: Olivier Marboeuf is a writer, storyteller and curator. He founded the independent art centre ‘Espace Khiasma’ (www.khiasma.net), which he has been running from 2004 to 2018 in Les Lilas, on the outskirts of Paris. At Khiasma, he has developed a programme addressing minority representations through exhibitions, screenings, debates, performances and collaborative projects across the North-East of Paris. Interested in the different modalities of transmission of knowledge, Olivier Marboeuf’s proposals, at Khiasma and elsewhere, broadly inscribe themselves in practices of conversation and speculative narratives. He currently produces films within Spectre Productions, based in Rennes, and contributes to the cinematic distribution and research unit, Phantom. Khiasma closed in October 2018 but a new collective project is now developed at the same place in Les Lilas: Un lieu pour respirer. Read recent Olivier Marboeuf’s texts on his blog: Toujours Debout (www.olivier-marboeuf.com).