Bundeskunsthalle presents STUDIO BONN think tank

June 15, 2022, 7pm

Indigenous economies have existed for millennia and are increasingly being considered as climate change solutions. The Bundeskunsthalle’s think tank, STUDIO BONN, presents three forms of global cooperation that integrate sustainability and social justice as part of its ongoing series Exchange Values on the potentials of crypto.

Julia Watson, a design expert, studied indigenous structures all over the world for her acclaimed book Lo-TEK, which was published in 2021. Radical Indigenism created the design (Taschen). She has created a new economic model to ensure that knowledge transfers do not lead to one-sided exploitation: an oral smart contract, established with indigenous law experts, enabling enterprises that employ indigenous knowledge to share profits with the communities that created it via blockchain. At STUDIO BONN, Watson will show and discuss the project “The Symbiocene.”

On a former palm oil plantation in Lusanga, Congo, Ced’Art Tamasala and Mathieu Kasiama of the Cercle d’art des travailleurs de plantation congolaise (CATPC) engage with the ramifications of colonial exploitation around palm oil and cocoa plantations. CATPC’s chocolate sculptures, which redirect the art world’s capital back to its origins, have been exhibited at the SculptureCenter in New York and elsewhere. Their OMA-designed museum White Cube has been featured in Renzo Marten’s 2021 film White Cube. One day before STUDIO BONN, on June 14 at Art Basel, CATPC will sell 300 NFTs of a Diviner’s Figure carved in 1931 during the Pende uprising against Belgian colonial rule, now held by the Virginia Museum of Fine Arts in Richmond. The proceeds will serve to buy back land and revitalise cultural life and sustainable agriculture. Tamasala and Kasiama will expand on what they call the first instance of digital restitution. CATPC work with artist Renzo Martens, who will also be present.

Having served as a diplomat and climate change negotiator for ten years, the diplomat and computer scientist Youssef Nassef went on to coordinate resilience work in the United Nations system for 23 years. Disillusioned with the impact of the post-industrial-revolution war on the biosphere, he and the new Bonn-based UN initiative Resilience Frontiers are using the knowledge of writers, film directors and data analysts to gear our attitudes, thoughts and actions towards the impending destruction of the planet.

STUDIO BONN is the public think tank of the Bundeskunsthalle, the Art and Exhibition Hall of the Federal Republic of Germany. All previous talks – for example with Eva Illouz, Hito Steyerl, Eike Schmidt, Ville Haimala, Joseph Vogl, Henrike Naumann, Andreas Reckwitz, Clémentine Deliss, Harm van den Dorpel, Sahraa Karimi and Monika Grütters – are available on studiobonn.io. Watch the last Exchange Values event, where Hito Steyerl, Department of Decentralization, and Other Internet had the audience vote on blockchain-based governance models for cultural institutions, here.

The event will be held in English and French with simultaneous translation into German.

10 EUR / concessions 5 EUR

Bundeskunsthalle
Director: Eva Kraus
Curator: Susanne Kleine
Press Officer: Sven Bergmann, [email protected]

Also on view
The Brain: In Art & Science
Until June 26, 2022

Color as Program
Until August 7, 2022

“Identity not proven”: New Acquisitions for the Federal Collection
Until October 3, 2022

Simone de Beauvoir and The Second Sex
Until October 16, 2022

Bettina Pousttchi: The Curve
Until October 23, 2023 on the rooftop of the Bundeskunsthalle