- The Geu Afrikarro exhibition is exhibited in February at the Montehermoso Cultural Center of Vitoria-Gasteiz and around it various activities have been organized. ARGIA has spoken with one of the participants of the "Colonial Views, Audiovisual Media and Stereotypes" seminar to be held this Friday, about "films that present the colonized as exotic, strange, delayed, fearsome, violent...".
Open talk at the Francisco de Vitoria Institute on 24 February at 13:00. Professors and researchers Tamara Moya, Farshad Zahedi and Miguel Fernández Labayen participate. This has told us that they will talk about the role of cinema and the media in the control and dissemination of the colonial imaginary: “How the media build cultural and ethnic differences, often from ignorance and from the view built in Europe. The goal of the talk is twofold: to think about how little we traditionally know about lands and cultures dominated and spurred by so-called ‘Western’ states and nations and to reflect on the need to change these stories.”
To do so, he has told us, it is important to tell the story of those who have been despised and/or raised: “We naturalize someone talking about experiences, places and cultures they do not have, and present that story as a single perspective, but how are we going to talk about these issues without listening to people who have experienced migration, racism or living in Africa?”
"We have naturalized that someone speaks of experiences, places and cultures that they do not have, and that this report is presented as a single perspective"
Fernandez has recommended an interesting series of documentaries to observe these colonial dynamics and their dramatic consequences: Exterminate All the Brutes, director Raoul Peck. Visible in HBO.
We have told Fernández that there are more and more initiatives to become aware of the colonial view that we have historically had. He says that “we are probably more aware today that these historical accounts have privileged a way of understanding the world and have built the greatness of nations through the discourses of conquests, silencing other stories. But being more conscious doesn't mean more knowledge of other cultures or less racism and intolerance. On the contrary, attacks on other cultures and societies have often increased.”
"Unfortunately, uncritical knowledge predominates in schools, which presents as natural the situations of domination"
School duties: expanding the vision
Although it will be an open talk, Friday will be an activity specially directed to the school community, and the teacher tells us about the challenges that the school has in this topic: “In education, the key is to focus knowledge from a broad perspective, instead of presenting as a reality the cultural and historical accounts that respond to a way of seeing and dominating the world. Unfortunately, the usual is the opposite: a less self-critical knowledge that naturally presents situations of domination predominates. How many schools do we talk about the Spanish dependence on the Sahara or Equatorial Guinea in the twentieth century?”
They also intend to talk to attendees about their rational and colonial experiences: “Sharing experiences and looks, we want to build critical and alternative spaces to understand a world based on exploitation and massacre.”
The Geu Afrikarrok exhibition will remain in Montehermoso until the end of February:
