Documents from the South: An encounter between documenta 14 and Kassel Dokfest:
In and Out of Africa
by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash

NOV
18
Film screening
1:30 pm
Kleines Bali, Kassel

In and Out of Africa (1993) is a documentary film by Lucien Castaing-Taylor and Ilisa Barbash. The film looks at the global trade with African art objects, in particular with artifacts like masks and fetishes, sourced from a presumably religious context to be transformed into high-priced art objects.

The screening is followed by a talk with Manthia Diawara, moderated by Tobias Hering.


Documents from the South: An encounter between documenta 14 and Kassel Dokfest

documenta 14 is hosting the program Documents from the South as part of the Kassel Dokfest. On November 18 and 19, Angela Melitopoulos and Manthia Diawara will each present two program sessions, including screenings of their own films as well as works by other filmmakers. In the films and in conversations following the screenings, the artists discuss what documents from the South could look like and which stories they tell.

Documents from the South takes its cue from the title of the magazine South as a State of Mind, which is published during the years of work preceding the exhibition of documenta 14 and helps define and frame its concerns and aims. “South” is no longer understood as a geographical orientation, but refers to a culturally and historically produced location charged with psychological and political meaning.

Two documenta 14 artists discuss these concerns in relation to their own work with the Dokfest audience: Angela Melitopoulos, in whose films and video installations different phases, ruptures, and mobilities between Germany and Greece play an important role; and filmmaker and writer Manthia Diawara whose films and books have shaped and expressed the critical self-assertion of the African diaspora since the early 1990s.