Autonomous Zones _ OVNI 2006
Colonial dream - Autonomous zones Archive
/ CONTEXT 1994 - 2020
Autonomous Zones _ OVNI 2006
The Colonial Dream_ Autonomous Zones
Colonialism and Eurocentrism are often discussed as though they were things of the past, fortunately overcome. But in life under globalisation, the reality seems to be just the opposite: the occupation and destruction of other worlds and cultures, systematic exploitation of their resources... and also aggressions at the local level, real-estate violence, colonial tourism, migra...
Autonomy and no-zones: other ways of perceiving and creating community-based external realities and subjective inner ones. Autonomous ways of living and thinking, zones without limits, no-zones.
After the OVNI 2005 program Resistances (1), we thought it was necessary to deepen the critical intent of the Observatory Archives through documents that reflect upon some of the roots of the situation we are currently living in. Many situations described in the videos that we screened can be traced back to the colonial pulse, either implicitly or explicitly. Similarly, Eurocentrism and the idea that all progress - even revolutionary progress- must pass through the European experience or take it as an unavoidable reference, are still present in conservative thought, and also, in a worrying and paradoxical way, in dissidence. We also wanted to go beyond the negativity that taking a position of resistance necessarily entails, and to show and share the communal and personal affirmations that are being produced in many societies and cultures, and all around us.
The Colonial Dream*Autonomous Zones sets out on a search that was already implicit in the Archives under different names, an undertaking that will naturally be conditioned by our limitations in the face of such an enormous and complex subject. This first approximation that we share with you now would not have been possible without the many contributions and collaborations that we've received - help in locating particular documents and also finding a direction within the search. In any case, our aim is not to build up a collection of historical documents, or provide a catalogue of specific events, tasks that we would be unsuited for. Rather, given the nature of the Observatory Archives, we want to offer a selection that provides some of the keys and fractals of the subject. This selection is complemented by presentations from some of the people and collectives who have shared the investigation with us or are fundamental points of reference within it, such as the ContraPlano - LAD working group, Michael Taussig (Lecturer at Columbia University and author of Mimesis and Alterity, Shamanism, Colonialism and the Wild Man ...), Serra Ciliv (!f.Istanbul Festival) and René Vautier ( Afrique 50, Algeria in Flames, Hirochirac. ..).
Our search for contemporary news and promotional materials (from 1930 to 1965) that are key to understanding how the imaginary of the time was constructed led us to some of the major audiovisual archives in the world (storehouses of the colonial legacy). Through our contact with them we came to understand the workings of something that is part of the collective memory of mankind, and how such places are managed. "Management" that is largely governed by the criteria of financial gain. Ignoring such things as non-profit, educational, etc criteria, offensive rates are applied to the extent, for example, of charging up to twenty thousand euros for screening 30 minutes of material (2). Private archives, public archives managed by private companies, or public bodies that are run according to similar criteria prevent free access, or any access, to the audiovisual material that, in this particular case, adds up to a catalogue of evidence against Europe's supposedly civilizing impulse; and a "bank" of the arguments that are still applied even now to current crises. The discovery of how difficult it is to access this material made us aware of the urgency of demanding and defending public access to these archives, which, as we said, form part of the collective memory of mankind. And to prevent the same thing happening in future with the material that is contemporary to us now.
We don't claim objective truth for the government and corporate documents, or from those by independent authors or groups - "Film is not now nor has it ever been the technology of truth. It lies at a speed of 24 frames per second. Its value s not as a recorder of history, but simply as a means of communication, a means by which meaning is generated. The frightening aspect of the documentary film is that it can generate rigid history in the present in the same manner that Disney can generate the colonial meaning of the culture of the Other. Whenever imploded films exist simultaneously as fiction and nonfiction they stand as evidence that history is made in Hollywood" (3). In reality, what we're showing are not historical events, but images. And even then, the images can't be pared back to the documentary value of the imaginary they create, images that are real in themselves and not in relation to what they represent. "Imaginary" realities - but not any less real for it. Rather than responding to the criteria of true or false, these images respond to the who, how and for what they were imagined.
In his 1951 film Afrique 50 against savagery, colonialism and exploitation, René Vautier breaks with the complicity of most documentaries and news reports filmed in Africa at the time, full of "greedy lies and fraudulent complacencies". In his words: "Look what lies in store for the people of Africa: we're in Palaka, in northern Ivory Coast. The village couldn't pay the colonial taxes: 3700 francs! On February 27, 1949 at 5 am the troops came, surrounded the village, fired, burned, murdered (...) On this African ground four bodies, three men and one woman, were murdered in our name. In the name of the French people! It's mind blowing: burnt houses, massacred townspeople, dead cattle rotting in the sun. Friends, colonialisation here is just like anywhere else, its run by vultures." These reflections led to 13 lawsuits, a year in jail and the film being banned in one way or another for 50 years.
In a different way, in Les Maîtres Fous Jean Rouche shows us how there are other ways of conspiring against colonial domination, when direct confrontation isn't possible. Or in Moi, un Noir , how a group of Nigerien migrants would rather return to the "poverty" of their country than struggle to survive in the "wealth" of the colonial paradise.
First Contact shows archival images of the first time the indigenous tribes of an area of New Guinea came into contact with white man, and contrasts these images with the situations taking place now.
In Les Statues meurent Aussi, Alain Resnais and Chris Marker look at how difficult it is to dialogue or simply understand other countries from a Eurocentric position, and how other cultures are subjugated to the "colonial" gaze.
The colonial imaginaries, made up of images filmed by the colonial powers as a testament to their work and their value, are also reflected in the material on the ex-Spanish colony of Equatorial Guinea that was made available to us by the Filmoteca de Catalunya and reflects the obsessions of the times: the task of Christianisation, the idyllic idea of bringing progress to new lands, the enthusiastic hunt for wild animals, the felling of trees, the militarization of life. Vincent Monnikendam also deals with these and other more complex issues in Mother Dao , one of the most enlightening and poetic visions of colonial realities, constructed entirely from images filmed by the Dutch colonisers in Indonesia.
The spectacular directions of this vision already appear on the European continent at the end of the 19th and start of the 20th centuries, with the Colonial Exhibitions that t
