Author Archives: Marion von Osten

In the Desert of Modernity. Colonial Planning and After

The research and exhibition project In the Desert of Modernity. Colonial Planning and After took place at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt Berlin in 2008 and the cultural center Les Abbattoirs Casablanca 2009, accompanied by film screenings, performances, talks, an international conference and the publication Colonial Modern. Aesthetics of the Past. Rebellions for the Future, co-edited with Tom Avermaete and Serhat Karakayali. The project “In The Desert of Modernity” and the publication “Colonial Modern”  dealt with both the production of aesthetical knowledge in the realm of urban planning and architecture and its entanglement with the political and social conditions in colonial North Africa.

Souffles Magazine Covers, Paris 2012

The Souffles magazine published in Rabat from 1966-72 has been digitally accessible at the National Library of the Kingdom of Morocco since 2010. Souffles had long been unlocatable, for it was banned in Morocco in 1972. Its editor, Abdellatif Laâbi, was imprisoned for eight years before being released following international pressure in 1980 and going into exile in Paris. The magazine is now accessible online thanks to his efforts and an international network. A review of its history was recently provided by the French literary scholar and journalist Kenza Sefrioui in the frame of her doctoral thesis.[1] Articles by the Rome-based art historian Toni Maraini in the Springerin periodical and the online journal Red Threat[2] have contributed to familiarizing a younger generation of writers, academics and cultural producers with Souffles. They include the Bidoun magazine, the South African project Chimurenga, the publicly accessible library of SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin-Neukölln and the l’appartmenet 22 art space in Rabat, as well as the projects I have initiated in Paris and Zurich, Action! painting/publishing and Ästhetik der Dekolonisierung.[3]

[1] Kenza Sefrioui: Souffles (1966-1973), espoirs de révolution culturelle au Maroc (Éditions du Sirocco, 2013).

[2] See: http://www.springerin.at/dyn/heft_text.php?textid=1869&lang=de; und http://www.red-thread.org/en/article.asp?a=41 (05/15/2015)

[3] See: https://www.zhdk.ch/index.php?id=73291 (05/15/2015)

Action! painting / publishing, Paris 2012

http://www.leslaboratoires.org/en/projet/architectures-de-la-decolonisation/architectures-de-la-decolonisation

From 2011-2012 Marion von Osten headed a project at the Parisian art institution Les Laboratoires d’Aubervilliers that asked how the process of decolonization has changed the epistemological structure of thought and radicalized aesthetic production. In the frame of this project von Osten initiated a series of gatherings and formed a research group that worked for several months on anti-colonial cultural magazines edited in Paris and French post-colonies in the first half of the twentieth century. This group of Paris based doctorate students and researchers consisted of Lotte Arndt, Mihaela Gherghescu, Fanny Gillet-Ouhenia, Olivier Hadouchi, Pascale Ratovonony and Cédric Vincent. The group studied magazines published in Algeria, France, Morocco and Tunisia in the first half of the twentieth century like Alif, Black Orpheus, El Moudjahid Culturel, Esprit, L’Étudiant Noir, Légitime Défense, Les Temps Modernes, La Revue Du Monde Noir, Masses, Miroir du Cinéma, Novembre, Opus International, Partisans, Présence Africaine, Souffles, Tricontinental, Transition, Tropiques. In the frame of the closing exhibition and public events entitled “Action! painting/ publishing”, the magazine Souffles was exhibited and compared with the Tricontinental and Partisans Magazine in a productive collaboration with the film and literature historian Olivier Hadouchi. Doing so, the larger frame of the constellations of aesthetic publishing in the former colonies and solidarity movements have been highlighted by showing the links, the simultaneities and divergences of Souffles with the other magazines and documents that were exhibited, but the Magazine itself was not yet studied in depth. This small-scale exhibition and its public events further encouraged the planned research application and its process-based, transdisciplinary approach.