ZKM | Museum of Contemporary Art, 09|17|2011 – 02|05|2012
 
Networks and Systems. Globalization as Subject

AFROs for Euros – The Laboratoire Debérlinisation in Karlsruhe

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AFRO Edition 2011 for The Global Contemporary. © Mansour Ciss Kanakassy & Baruch Gottlieb

In 1991, 52 African states signed the Abuja Treaty. One of the treaty’s clauses stipulates: an African currency comparable to the Euro should be in place by the year 2028. The Laboratoire Debérlinisation did not wish to wait so long: the Berlin artist’s combo began introducing utopian currency bills of a unified and independent Africa since 2002, namely, the so-called AFRO. Meanwhile, this art currency has also been circulating in Karlsruhe. A discussion with Baruch Gottlieb. Continue reading ...

 

„Karlsruhe, You‘re Not Even Trying!“ – Ghana ThinkTank at ZKM

 

“Karlsruhe has Problems? Ghana ThinkTank has Solutions!” claimed the text on the postcard with which the artist’s collective

Ghana ThinkTank went in search of problems in advance of their workshop in Karlsruhe. Video, 1:45 min. © ZKM

The arrogance, or even cynicism of Western industrial nations when issuing prescriptions to other nations in the name of ‘development aid‘ as to how they could solve their problems, is something that has been occupying Christopher Robbins and John Erwing.
Since the founding of Ghana ThinkTank 2006, they have regularly interviewed an oppositional radio team in El Salvador, a group of Spanish teachers in Mexico, a Cuban revolutionary and a circle of artists from Tehran about how, from each of their perspectives, the small and larger problems of the West may be solved before going on to implement their proposals on-site. In the Blog, founding member Christopher Robbins, himself a former member of an international aid organization, presents a problem which was solved for Karlsruhe by the Mexican ThinkTank. Continue Reading ...

 

Who’s Afraid of Art, Pinky Show?

 

Pinky Show »Banked Into Submission (The Globalizationist's Guide to Developing Poverty)«, 2007. Video, 3,19 min.

They describe themselves as a 'super low-tech hand-drawn educational project' and are, above all else, uncomfortable contemporaries. Pinky Show has been broadcasting since 2006, and never lets up being like harsh static in the ear of the American political and media mainstream. In the colorful world of cartoons and comic-zines, the artistic collective treats of the forgotten, the suppressed and the outrageous: a conversation with the no less twee and leftist-progressive cat-protagonists Pinky and Bunny. Continue reading ...