White Money
White money flows from the arts funding bodies in Europe. It funds artists in the Global South or commissions work from artists in the Global South to be presented in the Global North. Often this white funding is an economic incentive to create or to perform work catered to the taste of the funders and curators, to present orientalist or exotic images of 'other' bodies and to re-shape or simplify complex content for a white audience. White money therefore shapes or reinforces inequalities and re-iterates racist and neo-colonial structures. Flinn Works, like all art professionals who work across the invisible borders of Global North and Global South are deeply entangled in this structure. With a group of six artists and curators from different parts of the world, the project sheds light on some hidden aspects of white money. Aderemi Adegbite invents and inaugurates the first Nigerian Cultural Institute of Yoruba Culture at Sophiensaele. Anuja Ghosalkar reflects in a performance on the complicated ethics and harsh economies of working as an artist in India. Rehema Chachage shreds a heap of rejected funding applications and manually transforms them into something radically new. Abhishek Thapar takes the audience on an intimate and speculative journey through their bank accounts, minds and hearts. Azade Shahmiri’s lecture performance shows representations of the West in Iranian plays and poses questions of the past to the present. Nora Amin sheds light on the history of so called 'belly dance' in her solo and wrestles the dance from the exoticised and voyeuristic gaze to an empowered expression of the dancer.
White Money as a project also seeks to stretch the boundaries of German funding regulations - by letting participants decide on how to spend the money. Because this project is also funded by white money.
Created by: Aderemi Adegbite (Lagos), Nora Amin (Cairo/Berlin), Rehema Chachage (Dar es Salam/Vienna), Anuja Ghosalkar (Bangalore), Konradin Kunze (Berlin), Abhishek Thapar (Amsterdam/Moga), Azade Shahmiri (Tehran), Sophia Stepf (Berlin)
Lab Assistant: Johanna Weisheit
Management: Drittmittel Produktionen
Opening: 17th November 2021 (also Nov 18-20) Sophiensaele Berlin
A Flinn Works production.
Supported by Fonds Darstellende Künste with funds from the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media and Berliner Senatsverwaltung für Kultur und Europa.
In Cooperation with Institut für Kulturpolitik der Universität Hildesheim
Artists
Aderemi Adegbite is an artist-curator and an interdisciplinary artist, his current focus questions individual realities and truth(s) that stretch across the societal fabric as constants for an elastic socio-system. He is interested in how past experiences (agonies, joys, businesses, travels and religious beliefs) of being part of a family reshape the individual’s present conditions, and serve as catalysts for “the” surrealistic future. The psychological effect of the idea “one for all, all for one,” is at the centre of his new interventions through photography and video art. Aderemi has participated in: Artist-In-Residence at Bayreuth International Graduate Student of African Studies (BIGSAS), Germany and Jogjakarta with Yayasan Biennale Yogyakarta.
Nora Amin is a performer, choreographer, author, theatre director and scholar. Fellow of the centre for Theatre of the Oppressed, founder of Lamusica Independent Theatre group (Egypt) where she choreographed, directed & produced 40 performances of dance, theatre & music. Founder of The Nation-wide Egyptian Project for Theatre of the Oppressed and its Arab network (Lebanon, Sudan & Morocco), fellow of the Academy of the Arts of the World, fellow of the International Research Centre for Interweaving Performance Cultures, Valeska-Gert guest professor for dance sciences, visiting lecturer at the centre for contemporary dance, workshop instructor at Tanzfabrik, at Berlin Mondiale (Wasserwerk program), and Mentor at PAP (Performing Arts Program/ Berlin-LAFT) and Flausen+bundesnetzwerk program.
Rehema Chachage is a visual artist born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania and currently doing her Ph.D in Practice with the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna (Austria). Her practice can be viewed as a performative archive which untraditionally collects stories, rituals and other oral traditions in different media (performance, photography, video, text as well as physical installations); which traces hi/stories directly tied to (and connecting with) her matrilineage; and, which utilizes methodologies which are both embodied and instinctual, employing written texts, oral and aural stories, melodies, and relics from several re-enacted/performed rituals as source of research.
Anuja Ghosalkar is the founder of Drama Queen—a Documentary theatre company in India. Her practice focuses on personal histories, archival absences & blurring the hierarchies between audience & performer—to extend the idea of theatre to create audacious work. Iterations around form, process, modes of media, sites, technologies, reclaiming narratives on gender & intimacy are critical to her performance making & pedagogy. Her work has been programmed by University of Oxford, Jawaharlal Nehru University, Forum Transregionale–ZMO, Frankfurt University. She co-curated an international workshop series on Documentary Theatre—with Gob Squad, Boris Nikitin, Rimini Protokoll. She also co-curated VR performances for the Serendipity Arts Virtual 2020.
Abhishek Thapar (Moga, 1985) is a theatre maker, performer, puppeteer and artist currently based in Amsterdam. He holds a post-graduate diploma in Physical Theatre from LISPA, London and a Master in Theatre degree from DAS Theatre, Amsterdam. Currently, he is building an artistic research and practice in post-colonial epistemologies, historiographic metafiction and storytelling.
Azade Shahmiri (b. 1982 - Tehran) is a theatre artist and performance maker. Her artistic practice oscillates between theater, performance, and forms of installation. Alongside the text, the collaboration between film, video, sonic and visual materials are central to her artistic practices. In her recent experiences she tended to move out of the black box to explore the potentiality and readability of space, and the qualities of co-presence of performer and spectator while trying to challenge the theater’s power structure. She graduated in Dramatic Literature from the University of Tehran in 2009 and holds a Ph.D. in Art Studies.