Café Togo
In collaboration with Musquiqui Chihying
27 min on loop, 2018, 3-channel video installation,
HD video (Original 4K digital video, ORWO 16mm B&W Film),
Stereo Sound, English + German
Short Synopsis
Café Togo looks at the efforts to change street names with colonial connotations in the so-called Afrikanisches Viertel (African Quarter) in Berlin-Wedding. According to Berlin’s street law, every street named after a person honors that person. Petersallee, Lüderitzstraße, and Nachtigalplatz bear the names of persons whose biographies are tainted by the blood of the victims of German colonialism. According to the law, streets that do not correspond to today’s understanding of democracy and human rights should be renamed.
Café Togo follows the visions of the Black activist Abdel Amine Mohammed, who is working for a paradigm shift in the politics of state symbols: away from honoring colonial criminals, toward commemorating the victims and the resistance and freedom fighters of the German colonial regime. His goal: a multidimensional politics of memory within postcolonial perspectives. Abdel Amine Mohammed therefore wrote the story “With Colonial Love.” It is this story, along with a reference to the NS propaganda film Carl Peters (1941), which narrates the founding of German East Africa, that forms the basis for Café Togo.
Long Synopsis
Café Togo looks at the efforts to change street names with colonial connotations in the so called Afrikanisches Viertel (African Quarter) in the district of Berlin-Wedding. According to Berliner Straßengesetz, each street in the city of Berlin honors the person, the place or the event it is named after. The streets Petersallee and Lüderitzstraße and the square Nachtigalplatz are named after personalities, whose biographies are tainted with blood of German colonial victims – so honoring becomes a skewed undertaking here. According to the mentioned law, those streets have to be re-named if they are not in consonance with today’s understanding of democratic and human rights definitions.
Café Togo follows in its documental and fictional scenes the visions of the Black activist Abdel Amine Mohammed, who is intensively involved in processes of re-naming streets with colonial connotations in Berlin. His key argument is based on a perspective change of symbolic politics implemented by state authorities in this regard: turning away from honoring colonial perpetrators into honoring victims and resistance and freedom fighters of the German colonial regime. Abdel Amine (a member of the ISD – Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland) is engaged in a collective of initiatives both from the Black community as well as other civil society NGOs, whose activism seeks to implement change, by arguing from a postcolonial perspective: a multi-dimensional politics of remembrance.
Café Togo is inspired by “Carl Peters”, a propaganda film produced in 1941 by the National Socialists to
honor the life and the person of the colonial criminal Carl Peters, in whom they see a pioneer, a visionary of their racist ideology. The film depicts scenes of subjugation, racist stereotypes, eurocentric representations and appropriation. The scenes about Africa were filmed on Rügen, a German island located in the Baltic Sea. Appropriating this concept, Café Togo re-stages several scenes about Kolonie Klein Afrika (Small African Colony) and Kleingartenverein Togo, which until 2015 was called Dauerkolonie Togo (Permanent Colony Togo). A symbolically important location in the quarter, where one of Café Togo’s principal theater took place, is Café Fredericks. The act of re-naming is already realized there, in the sense that the locations’ former name Lüderitz-Eck was changed in honor of the German-West-African resistance and freedom fighter Josef Fredericks II. As a contribution Abdel Amine wrote the story “With Colonial Love”, which lay the fundament of Café Togo.
Installation View 68th Berlinale - 13th Forum Expanded, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, 2018
EXHIBITIONS
ismus - 12. Ostrale Biennale O'19, Gedenkstätte Bautzener Straße + Historische Tabakfabrik f6 Striesen, Dresden, Germany, 2019
#WOD On Tour, #WOD-Bus, Dresden, Germany, 2019
Trans-Justice: Para-Colonial@Technology, Museum of Contemporary Art, Taipei, Taiwan, 2018
A Mechanism Capable of Changing Itself, 68th Berlinale - 13th Forum Expanded, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany, 2018
AWARDS
3rd Spain Moving Images Festival, Madrid, Spain, 2018 (Honorable Mention)
FESTIVALS
17th Kurzsuechtig Short Film Festival, Leipzig, Germany, 2020
33rd Image Forum Festival, Tokyo, Japan, 2019
3rd The Buddha International Film Festival, Pune, India, 2019
3rd International Safe Community Short Film Festival, Mashhad, Iran, 2019
7th BioBio Cine, Concepción, Chile, 2019
6th CineKasimanwa: The Western Visayas Film Festival, Iloilo City, Philippines, 2019
1st Diorama International Film Festival, New Dehli, India, 2019
3rd Chhatrapati Shivaji International Film Festival, Pune, India, 2019
3rd Busan Art Film Festival, Busan, South Korea, 2018
33rd Entrevues Belfort International Film Festival, Belfort, France, 2018
18th Short Film Days Flensburg", Flensburg, Germany, 2018
3rd Salto Independent Film Festival, Salto, Uruguay, 2018
3rd Spain Moving Images Festival, Madrid, Spain, 2018
8th iRep Filmfestival, Lagos, Nigeria, 2018
68th Berlinale - 13th Forum Expanded, Akademie der Künste, Berlin, Germany, 2018
SCREENINGS
WRG Sensor, Braunschweig, Germany, 2023
8th RAVY Biennale, Goethe Institut, Yaoundé, Cameroon, 2023
Our Place / Taipei Platform @ Taipei Dangdai, Taipei, Taiwan, 2023
Black, A Film Festival, C-LAB - Taiwan Sound Lab, Taipei, Taiwan, 2022
Citizens in the Shade, Aliens in the Sun: Trade, Vernàcular Institute, Mexico City, Mexico, 2021
Topia Festival, Frontviews, Berlin, Germany, 2021
Territories under my skin, Changing Room, Berlin, Germany + Goethe-Institut, Windhoek, Namibia, 2021
Black Light, Arsenal - Institut für Film und Videokunst, Berlin, Germany, 2020
Asia Art Center, Shanghai, China, 2020
Burden of Memory: Considering German Colonial History in Africa, Goethe-Institut / Sita Bella, Yaoundé, Cameroon, 2019
UNSW Art & Design (University of New South Wales), Sydney, Australia, 2019
UCL, University of London - IAS Forum, London, UK, 2019
Spinning Triangles: Ignition of School of Design, SAVVY Contemporary, Berlin, Germany, 2019
École des Beaux-arts (School of Fine Arts), Paris, France, 2019
Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (University of Münster), Münster, Germany, 2018
SELECTED PRESS
"The unmastered past: Activist & filmmakers bring German colonialism into the present with Café Togo" - Violence Elsewhere Blog, Francesca Lewis, 11.2019
"Auf den Spuren des Kolonialismus" - Deutschlandfunk Kultur, Christine Watty, 16.2.2018
PUBLICATIONS
"Decolonial Love", Abdel Amine Mohammed, Musquiqui Chihying, Gregor Kasper,
In: Decapitated Economies (intercalations 5), K. Verlag & HKW, Berlin, 2021
"Café Togo. Wenn aktivistische und künstlerische Praxis sich im Film begegnen"", Musquiqui Chihying, Gregor Kasper,
In: IZ3W - °376, 2020
DISTRIBUTION
Arsenal - Institute for Film and Video Art, Berlin
CREDITS
Directed by Musquiqui Chihying & Gregor Kasper
Written by Abdel Amine Mohammed, Musquiqui Chihying & Gregor Kasper
Cast
Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Keto Logua, Kristof Trakal, Hike,
Abdel Amine Mohammed, Musquiqui Chihying,
Yugen Yah, Han Le Han, He Ling Yu,
Aaron Snyder, Jimmy Trash, Igor Meiji
Director Assistant Antonia Cattan
DOP Lucas Bueno Maia
Camera Assistant Andres Villarreal, Kojo Schneider, Pjönghwa Kim
Image Editing & Color Correction Musquiqui Chihying
Director of Sound Sum-Sum Shen
Sound Mixing Ilya Selikhov
Film Score Aaron Snyder, Jimmy Trash, Igor Meiji, Shen Sum-Sum
Art Director Viktor Bone
Costume Design Han Le Han
Makeup Design Louisa Gniffke
Technical Support Kamil Markiewicz,
Tamara Magradze, Tekla Aslanishvili, Thomas Chang
Interview Cheng An Chi
Translation Rosanna Lovell
Production Musquiqui Chihying - Musquiqui Lab
Extremely appreciate the support of
Kristina Leko / Institute for Art in Context & Walter Lenertz - Berlin University of the Arts,
Christian Kopp & Berlin Postkolonial, Fredericks Café, SCREEN
With the support of
Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government
Interflugs, Berlin University of the Arts
Institute for Art in Context, Berlin University of the Arts
