Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, * 1957 in Dakar (Senegal), lives and works in Berlin (DE) and Dakar (SN)
Baruch Gottlieb, * 1966 in Montreal (CA), lives and works in Berlinand Seoul (KR)
Christian Hanussek, * 1953 in Frankfurt am Main (DE), lives and works in Berlin (DE)

Le Laboratoire Déberlinisation, 2008–2011

Founded in Berlin in 2001 by Mansour Ciss Kanakassy together with Baruch Gottlieb and Christian Hanussek, the Laboratoire Déberlinisation is an artistic project with the aim of fostering dialogue between North and South and sparking debate on Africa’s postcolonial conditions. By diverting financial and political issues into art concepts and works, the Laboratoire Déberlinisation acts on the thin line between art and social activism, “where the idealism of the arts meets the realism of geo-politics and economics”.

For the exhibition The Global Contemporary, Le Laboratoire Déberlinisation realized the “Mobile Exchange Office”, a public intervention in Karlsruhe's central station designed to spread the Afro project among the local community and the exhibition’s audience. The Afro was first launched at the 2002 Dak’Art Biennial and is the collective’s prototype for a truly pan-African currency, recently joined by the AFRO Express Card and the Global Pass. With video screens displaying Afro exchange rates and slogans such as “Exchange your money with the money of the future,” this project wishes to invite reflection on the populations’ right to financial and political self-determination and on the value of contemporary art. (SG)

The performance was realized in cooperation with Karlsruhe Hauptbahnhof

Le Laboratoire Déberlinisation, 2008–2011