International Symposium: Colonial Memory, Wounded Civilisation
In his essay Discourse on Colonialism, Afro-descendant poet and politician Aimé Césaire pointed out that a civilisation that chooses to close its eyes to its most crucial problems is a wounded civilisation. For him, in two centuries of bourgeois rule, Europe had been incapable of resolving the two major questions that had given rise to its existence: the question of the proletariat and the colonial question. More than seventy years have passed since the publication of that essay and Europe has still not resolved either of these issues. In the European imaginary, decolonisation continues to be undercut by wilful loss of memory, erasure and political nullification. One need only look at the role that the European Union is playing in the various conflicts arising from old and new colonial processes, genocide, apartheid and plunder. It is enough to analyse how the dynamics of racial capitalism are set in motion in European migration policies and in the political and economic agreements signed with countries in the global south.
Within this framework, the symposium Colonial Memory, Wounded Civilisation seeks to extend the welcoming gesture of the Museo Nacional Thyssen-Bornemisza by engaging in a deep, dispassionate dialogue on the role of museums and cultural institutions in the reproduction of colonialism as a structure of thought that governs, orders and organises a large part of the world. Regarding this issue, the meeting will bring together different experiences of critical reflection, at institutional level and within artistic practice itself; experiences whose common thread is the utopian aspiration of democratising our memory by lending an ear to subjectivities and narratives that have historically been silenced. Reflecting about memory from a utopian standpoint allows us to break with established geopolitical borders and generate alternative relational frameworks in which the circulation and constant flow of ideas, knowledge and practices is a priority. It also implies strengthening and promoting strategic political alliances in the art world, from an anti-colonial and anti-racist perspective.
Directed by curator Andrea Pacheco González and by political scientist and anti-racist researcher Yeison F. García López, the symposium Colonial Memory, Wounded Civilisation aims at contributing to the conversation that is taking place in many museums around the world about the colonial character of European art institutions, an issue that the Thyssen Museum has already begun to address through its exhibition Colonial Memory in the Thyssen-Bornemisza Collections, which is currently open to the public. Linked to the exhibition, the symposium comprises a series of lectures, panel discussions and artistic presentations based on the critical work and experience of an extraordinary group of professionals.
