H(A)UNTING: Tracing the Unresolvable
摘要
This contribution provides an insight into an artistic research process that deals with the remnants of the colonial past, in particular with two historical constellations—a case of ethnographic research in the then Belgian colony of the Congo in 1929/1930 and a human display that took place in nineteenth-century Vienna, Austria. The main sources are a set of photographs of Austrian-Czech missionary, ethnographer, and educator Paul Schebesta (1887–1967) and Ashantee (1897), a book by the Austrian writer Peter Altenberg (1859–1919). Addressing the implications of moving within the logics of the colonial archive while acknowledging the lack of and desire for original sources by African and African Diasporan people, Belinda Kazeem-Kamiński, visual artist and writer, develops and employs three artistic methodologies: hunting, haunting, and h(a)unting. Drawing on scholars and thinkers like Christina Sharpe, Nicola Lauré al Samarai, and Avery Gordon, she addresses the lingering effects of an ongoing past while making space for the suppressed to appear.