Decolonising Lens-based Practices

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yeah it might be the worst time
in human history to be a “white
straight male”, but tbh, if you
look at the data of poc or other
“marginal” groups like women,
the big time majority of the cake
is in the hands of WSM. colonial
power hierarchies structure not
only lens based media, but the
global economy. globalization
and the internet is tbh more
for Jeff Bezos & commodities
than for ppl. as seen before
during the vietnam war and
now covid19 & the black lives
matters pro- tests in 2020
image circulation is strong and
accelerating constantly. this is a
responsibility for professionals,
mediators and educators in the
field to do their part to share
that cake.

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Let's start with acknowledging my
impossibility of dismantling the
whole shebang of centuries on
the gram.a proper start tho is the
realisation of postcoloniality as a
condition that is EQUALLY impor-
tant for the identity construction of
the coloniser. every art education-
al institution in the West needs to
make postcolonial studies central
to their curricula and stop
ghettoising it.

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If you are neutral in situations of
injustice, you have chosen the side
of the oppressor - desmond tutu

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focalizing museums and photogra-
phies colonial history in curricula
is the basis. lens based practic-
es could have the potentiality of
beingone of the most supportive
tools for decolonial action. so far
they havebeen overtly complicit
in maintaining Western hegemony.
we need what achille mbembe calls
the “planetary curriculum”
most universities & academies
in the West are not teaching visual
art, media art, photography or lens
based practices, but Eurocentric
art - ya’ll better include some posi-
tions out of the anglosaxon or you
change your degree name!

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ppl involved in lens-based prac-
tices OUTSIDE of Western Europe
or Colonial Settler States are so
aware of photography as the
central tool to enable
colonialism, they just b fkin
bored by the
perpetual repetition of the well
known dynamics.

ppl in here do the diversity talk,
cause NIKE like’s it too
but often keep it
solely
#woke

to achieve a polycentric
future
we need to renarate
what and who
constitues knowledge

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images are the foundational
language of the global ecology.

yet contemporary circulation
of photographic imagery is
helping BIG TIME to maintain
the construction of racism and
colonial power assymetries

it is NOT about people only
being ALLOWED to work with
their own identity group it is
about - what hierarchies - are
you complicit with this fuckery?

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lets look at google’s image
search for the two societies
that influenced my personal
identity construction most,
since I ping ponged between
the two.

Albania people - fist page:
46 Images
18 Images ppl in ethnic wear
6 Images criminals or ppl
searched by interpol
7 Images ppl in poverty or
disaster

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do you know
A SINGLE PERSON
from the african continent who
thinks this is a diverse and legit
representation
of their people?
in 2020?

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the only thing that mixes up
mug shots, red, white and earth
quake is mother theresa, rita
ora & kim kardashian

(Btw she’s Armenian and not
Albanian, but tbh I don’t know
the difference be-tween the
two myself, lmao)

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Germanny people - first page:
41 images
2 people in ethnic wear
5 relate to germanies problem
with xenophobia / racism
no poverty or crisis in Germany,
but climate strikes and beer

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ok. dat beer ting is a true
colonial stereotype,
Tsingtao is china’s largest
beer producer & was actually
founded by German colonisers
in the German colonial city
Tsingtau - LMAOROFLCOPTER

it is not about simplification,
it is about WHO dictates the
simplyficafiction

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no space is legitimate, that does
not represent the population of the
city it serves. if your whole
institution does not have a single
black teacher and ya course solely
talks about practitioners from the
global north, the reason is not a
“lack of diversity” - the reason is
racism.
stop using pretty words for
ugly things.
if you think of yourself as
antiracist you have to commit to
be PROACTIVE. it is not enough to
not be runnin around killing people
with a swirling swastika

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i have studied photography
for 6 years and media art for
another 2 years in germany,
guess what the results of not
centralizing racial politics are.

steroetypocalypse.

shall we play how many white
saviours can u imagine?
or to put it into Eli Cortiñas
words
United Colors of UNICEF.

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the construction of race is a spec-
trum in which it’s structural con-
sequences reach from people
murdering to the academy lacking
a multiplicity of voices. it is time to
normalise calling out racism. it is
NOT about telling white people to
stop work with the subaltern, but
about the hierarchies and meth-
odologies WHILE doing it. it is NOT
about telling Western folks they’re
inherently bad, but feelings of
guilt are needed and healthy. it is
NOT about a stuck cancel culture.
it is just NOT enough for people in
visual arts to think that they don’t
have a problem with asians, mus-
lims, black, brown and subaltern
folks. it’s about focussing on this
issue of recalibrating modernity
being as much yours as it is theirs.
about learning the theory and put-
ting it into action.

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last week I had an exhibition
opening in berlin
and a german historian told me,
that it is really sad for
albanian studies, that there
aren’t many Westerners / Ger-
mans making the effort to
learn Albanian.
the reason this is sad,
is because, he said,
it ends up in too many Albanians
writing about Albanian history -
they would be emotional and
because of this could not narrate
their history without bias.
i pissed my pants laughing
and crying at the same time.

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not a single person of us is without
bias or emotions, but some groups
have been told so long that their
knowledge is neutral, objective and
universal
that discussing with them about it
is
like
speaking to a brick wall.

I have written articles bout this
specific german-albanian neu-
trality (dm me if u wanna read one)
& how books that are amazons first
result @ search “albania history”
(what will a german photographer
or journalist read when he just
starts a new project
in albania?) are inherently racist.
but the attitude he got from
studying as “a neutral person”
in “a neutral surrounding” keeps
everyone “not neutral” constantly
in the position of proving.

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try to imagine how this
conversation went along; did
the dude trust this emotional,
albanian, angry young women?
or the twenty years of neutral
education he received?

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It’s 2020 bitches and about
time to give up the fragility.
we all have racial bias and we
all vocalise and do things that
are motivated by this bias.
I come from a muslim family
that says islamophobic shit all
the time. me2!!! I am working
to deconstruct it. stop cry-
ing when someone points out
something is racist. tell your
fellow curators, editors, pro-
fessors and artists that we
just work on sustaining the
effects of colonial violence,
if we don’t come to over and
over centralise the political
conjectures of racial politics
and imagery.

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many years of movements
and organisations are doing
the daily labour of tryna bring
postcoloniality as a central
condition to the Western
table, but it can not stay the
sole responsibility of single
individuals.

if you think you dont have
enough time,
money, space.. think 2

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we are in a moment in
time where planetary
inequality draws lines of
2k years between the life
reality of ppl.
fascism, covid19s eco-
nomic aftermath &
ss2040 climate crisis
could lead to a dystopi-
an near future planetary
apartheid regime. pho-
tography has been re-
designed fully by solely
twenty years of digitisa-
tion into a transmission
- based networked image
economy. BATCHING!!
that was a quick one!
our relation to sharing,
teaching and exhibiting
the racial politics of im-
agery ALSO needs to be
redesigned. as quick as
dis. bit by bit.

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‘Those who identify the problem
become the location of the prob-
lem’ Sarah Ahmeds quote on the
struggle of “diversity workers” in
institutions is what many artists of
color also experience when they
try to do their artistic work. in the
end THEY are called out as prob-
lematic, by the same structure
that assigned difference to them
in the first place. tropes of “the
angry black women” “the angry
brown man” are some of white
supremacies mechanisms to sus-
tain the structure of control. hey!
also! fascism is not a global north
thing, don’t get me wrong, issa big
time issue of the global south too
and often worse in art educational
contexts

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