Uncertain States – DISKURSE Grada Kilomba: "Luanda, Lisboa, São Paulo – A Post-Colonial Trajectory"

In her lecture, Grada Kilomba will discuss her three-act video installation "The Desire Project", presented at this year's São Paulo Art Biennial, in which she explores the trajectory of silenced narratives and examines the importance of subverting artistic standard practices.

Grada Kilomba is a Portuguese writer and interdisciplinary artist living in Berlin. Her work draws on memory, trauma, race, and gender, and has been translated into several languages and presented internationally. She is the author of "Plantation Memories. Episodes of Everyday Racism" (Unrast 2008). She has been lecturing at several international universities, and last was a Professor at the Humboldt University, Berlin; since 2014, she holds the acclaimed series "Kosmos²" at the Maxim Gorki Theatre in Berlin.

Her work is best known for her intense writing and her unconventional use of artistic practices, using a variety of formats from publications to staged readings, to video installations, and performances. Bringing an experimental and provocative voice into contemporary art, she creates a hybrid space between the academic and artistic languages, to explore forms of decolonising knowledge. In 2016, two of her works were featured at the 32. Bienal of São Paulo, first "The Desire Project", followed by the piece "Illusions", both receiving extraordinary praise from the international press "as one of the strongest art work". Currently she is preparing a new production for the "South South" exhibition, at the Goodman Gallery in Cape Town.

DISKURSE, a series of lectures and discussions, addresses today's key issues. Europe is facing challenges such as xenophobia, Islamophobia and anti-Semitism. What are the causes of this new fundamentalism? How can the growth of right-wing populism and racism be curbed and overcome? How can immigration policies be improved? And what role does art have to play in coping with the crisis?

The 12 lectures by prominent representatives of migration studies, political science, sociology, philosophy, and art scholarship will be accompanied and commented on by the young team from Polis180, the grassroots think tank for foreign and European policy. The series will be available online at www.adk.de/uncertain-states.

In cooperation with the German Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb) and Polis180. All dates of the series can be found here.