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Distributed for Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw

After Year Zero

Geographies of Collaboration

Published in conjunction with an exhibition that has traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw from Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, this volume takes as its starting point the realignment of global ties after 1945—Europe’s “year zero”—and focuses on the worldwide phenomenon of decolonization.

Investigating magazines, journals, and newspapers, the diverse essays in After Year Zero shine a spotlight on collaboration, not confrontation, in the many publications launched at various times and in different places within the African continent or the African diaspora. As the volume contributors show, the format of these periodicals provided a means for temporary intervention against hegemonic voices and made possible the necessary task of creating a new language to talk about art, life, and politics. In addition to text-based essays, After Year Zero also includes visual essays designed like collages of documents, quotes, and images.

With its unique international and interdisciplinary approach, After Year Zero is an innovative study of postwar narrative possibilities and a powerful reflection on the processes by which the “universal” can be generated.

220 pages | 50 color plates, 50 halftones | 8 1/2 x 12 | © 2015

Art: Art--General Studies


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Table of Contents

Preface—Bernd Scherer
Preface—Joanna Mytkowska
Introduction—Annett Busch & Anselm Franke

The Universal Project—Anselm Franke

Universal Pictures: A Dialogue between a Future People from the Desert—Annett Busch

Essays

Négritude as a Concept of Collaboration?—John Akomfrah

Passions of Blackness and Imperatives of a Post-African Imagination: Re-reading Black Orpheus and Black Images—Denis Ekpo

Decolonization in Adversity: Cultural Constellations through the Prism of Présence Africaine—Lotte Arndt

Black Internationalism in Interwar France—David Murphy

On Souffles: Geographies of Solidarity—Clare Davies

Lotus Notes—Nida Ghouse

Pan-Asianism and the Question: “What is Asia?”—James T. Hong

Performing Solidarity: The Bandung Conference 1955—Shirin M. Rai

Travelling Communiqué
Reading a Photo Archive (1948-80), Presidential Press Service, Yugoslavia

Statecraft: An Incomplete Timeline of Independence Determined by Digital Auction—Kodwo Eshun

Accra, and Urban Promise—Lukasz Stanek

Where to Begin, Where to Belong: The Many Returns of Come Back Africa—Marie-Hélène Gutberlet & Tobias Hering

Black Consciousness, Black Holes, Black Suns, and Black Collectivity—Stacy Hardy

New Culture—Bisi Silva

Diggin’ or (Yes, Mr. Neogy, Magazines Do Culture…Sometimes)—Bongani Madondo

African Jazz—Max Annas & Gary Minkley

The Black Elegance: Escape from the ‘80s—Charles Tonderai Mudede

History Does Not Repeat Itself, but It Does Rhyme—Fred Moten

Artists
John Akomfrash
Kader Attia
Balufu Bakupa-Kanyinda
Kudzanai Chiurai
Jihan El-Tahri
Theo Eshetu
Yervant Gianikian & Angela Ricci Lucchi
Ruy Guerra
Walter Heynowski & Gerhard Scheumann
Kiluanji Kia Henda
Daniel Kojo Schrade
Sana na N’Hada et al.
The Otolith Group
Yann Le Masson & Olga Poliakoff
Kidlat Tahimik
Qes Adamu Tesfaw
List of Works

Biographies
Colophon

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