FOUMBAN IS WAKANDA

We artists, filmmakers, activists, researchers, musicians, scholars, curators cultural promoters, gathered on May 20 and 21 at the Dakar Biennale learned with dismay about the cancellation by the Goethe Institute of the FOUMBAN IS WAKANDA, a collaborative project led by Cameroonian filmmaker Jean-Pierre Bekolo. We believe it is urgent to redefine the nature of the relations that bind us, as creators, with institutions such as the Goethe Institute.

Meeting in Dakar to discuss the issue of archives, we were all the more shocked that the Goethe Institute tried to force the FOUMBAN IS WAKANDA collective to give its important images away to a German filmmaker who was not part of the project. We understand that the Goethe Institute has a mission to defend Germany's interests abroad; we refuse that this mission be carried out on the backs of African artists.

It is needless to point out that without the laborious creative work we do every day as artists who want to transform the world, institutions like yours would not exist. We want to know what makes you think that the decision to break an official contract with a collective of renowned artists who have proven themselves on a global scale can be done unilaterally by your sole will and bear no consequences.

Beyond the legal and moral aspects, this cancellation is especially heavy with meaning in relation to FOUMBAN IS WAKANDA’s central concept of inspiring Africans to project themselves into the future by using their past. What the Goethe Institute just cancelled is this idea that Africa could project itself into the future from its thousands or even millions of years of existence before its fatal encounter with the West five Centuries ago disrupted its trajectory. If the Goethe Institute thinks it has the power to cancel such a project, it is wrong: FOUMBAN IS WAKANDA will continue with or without the Goethe because the idea behind it is much larger than the Goethe Institute.?

Signed by the People's Stories Collective:

Onyeka Igwe - Ali Essafi - Qudus Onikeku - Keziah Jones - Alibeta - Hamedine Kane - Mohanad Yaqubi - Ntone Edjabe - Kamila Metwaly - The Otolith Group - Jihan El-Tahri - Jean-Pierre Bekolo - Joud Al-Tamimi - Nikola Hartl - Omar Berrada - June Givanni - Marie Hélène Pereira