VAD e.V.

Negotiating colonial and postcolonial architectures and home cultures in African cities

Convenors: Kerstin Pinther Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spambots geschützt! Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie sie sehen können. Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spam Bots geschützt, Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie es sehen können (Frankfurt), Editha Platte Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spambots geschützt! Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie sie sehen können. Diese E-Mail-Adresse ist gegen Spam Bots geschützt, Sie müssen JavaScript aktivieren, damit Sie es sehen können (Frankfurt)

In his latest photographic series Rue Patrice Lumumba, South African artist Guy Tillim focuses on the contemporary condition of architectural projects, which were implemented by the postcolonial states throughout Africa in the 1960s. In those days (mass) housing, furnishing and urban planning projects acquired a symbolic role in the making of new citizens and in the construction of a new society. Special areas of the administrative towns were allocated to civil servants, appropriate houses designed to host the middle class to be and certain interieurs implemented with the intention to form character, mentality and habitus of the residents. Until nowadays these colonial and postcolonial state-initiated urban planning projects feature prominently in many African cities even though adapted, reshaped and remade in often radically different ways.

In this panel we want to approach the colonial and postcolonial architectural legacy of African cities from different angels:

(1) We invite scholars to deal with state-initiated architectural and urban planning projects as well as with ideological implications of colonial and postcolonial architectures as for example discussed and celebrated in local media (journals, photography, film e.g.).

(2) Furthermore the panel seeks to explore the manifold ways people have appropriated and transformed the officially implemented architectures (through the recognition of everyday practices).

(3) The panel also aims to focus on the city’s architectural “heritage” as a subject of reflection and discussion among a multiplicity of local and global agents.

(4) We also propose to consider the positions of contemporary artists like Ângela Ferreira (Maison Tropicale) or photographers as Guy Tillim who reflect critically on colonial building history and its contemporary resonances.

We hope to bring together scholars from different disciplines in order to discuss not only empirical findings but also theoretical and methodological issues concerning the city’s architectures.