From Past to Present Tense
With: Quinsy Gario, Rudsel Martinus, Nancy Jouwe, Anousha Nzume
The Netherlands has tended to downplay the colonial legacy of its once vast mercantile capitalist empire in favour of its historical status as the birthplace of liberalism, yet old ways of thinking persist in innumerable ways, from the jokes we hear, the stories we are told, to the folk wisdom of “spreuktegeltjes”. While the country has undergone substantial political and demographic transformations, reflections on the question of national identity have often been parochial as opposed to cosmopolitan, especially compared to some of its neighbours. This event stages a screening and dialogue on Dutch identity with a particular focus on the value of symbols and storytelling from histories and perspectives that may not typically receive the attention that they are due.
IMPAKT has the pleasure to host the online premiere of Karnaval 1983, a video work by artist Rudsel Martinus. The screening will be followed by a discussion between Quinsy Gario, Rudsel Martinus, Nancy Jouwe (BAK Utrecht, Mama Cash) and Anousha Nzume (Dipsaus, author of Hallo witte mensen).
Karnaval 1983 (NL/CW 2020) by Rudsel Martinus
In the summer of 2019 Quinsy Gario and Glenda Martinus, his mother, went to St. Maarten and Curaçao to produce new work. In Curaçao Rudsel Martinus, his uncle, gave him a bag of Super 8 film shot by him. The footage shows Martinus’ burgeoning family in the 1980’s Netherlands, his studio space at the art academy he was studying at the time, family members on Curaçao at the end of the 1970’s and the beginning of the 1980’s. It also included rare footage from the second and last Caribbean Carnival in 1983 in Utrecht. The footage shows a unity of people from the islands that have continued Dutch occupation in common and who were about to lose that unity. The process of the dismantling of the political entity under which they were grouped since 1954 was already underway with Aruba about to gain a status aparte in 1986. This made it a country within the country. Now looking back at this moment in 2020, ten years after the dissolution of the Netherlands Antilles as a political entity, the video offers a vision for a decolonial future. One in which the relationship between the islands isn’t solely centered on Dutch occupation but on cultural ties and migration histories.
In the conversation with Nancy Jouwe and Anousha Nzume we will touch upon decolonisation, Black cultural production, Blackness in the Dutch context, intersectionality and much more.
This event is part of the new IMPAKT series: The Grand Narrative. In The Grand Narrative IMPAKT will unpack the kind of new insurgent grand narratives that are challenging the long-held “business-as-usual” assumptions of 20th century liberalism, whether in politics, art or pop culture, and show that narratives remain the most powerful technique of making sense of reality.
As part of this series IMPAKT will open its new exhibition, Abducting Europa, on Friday August 7th.