Gathering #5: Post/De/ColonialGathering #5: Post/De/Colonial

After Setareh Noorani’s introduction to 2022’s theme, we welcomed two contributions from Working Group members. Writer and artist Hannah Dawn Henderson, although not physically present, presented the written work Uttering Visibility. This explores the language, metadata and archival apparatus surrounding colonial subjects in the Eibink archive.

Yasmin Tri Aryani has researched and illustrated everyday life around the colonial buildings in Bandung, Indonesia. She investigated the history of De Driekleur, designed by Albert Aalbers in 1938 and recently renovated by local architects. Writer and researcher Sumaya Kassim joined the discussion to reflect on decolonial structures in institutions. What can change look like within an institution?

In 2022, Collecting Otherwise set out to focus on seven case studies relating to architecture and design practice in the colonial ‘abroad’. The case studies were drawn from some 690 architectural archives held by the Nieuwe Instituut. Collecting Otherwise would explore the potential for decolonial agency in the diaspora, the decentralisation of design ‘culture’ and the reclaiming of heritage and design languages.

Eurocentric institutions, buildings and cities have all contributed to the spread and globalisation of the extractive practices of states and inter-state networks. As an institution, we need to listen carefully to these histories and their ongoing legacies, and to those who can give voice to them. This is where decolonisation begins for Collecting Otherwise. It would focus on several themes in 2022 including: reading architectural labour in the colonial ‘abroad’ and the global south; queering and intersectional feminisms as a lens; landscapes of colonial production; Sonneveld House and its relationship to the tobacco plantations in Paducah, Kentucky (USA); and decolonial agents and agencies. Looking at old photographs and documents, blueprints and drawings helps us to understand the socio-economic conditions of a place. We need to listen to these images and see how they relate to the land and buildings we have generally understood as mainly stacked bricks, poured concrete and woven textiles. We need to move away from the accepted idea that there was no rebellion, no resistance, no protest against “the structural adjustments of an imported [...] regime”.

The globalised reality of fast-changing exchange and localised vernacular is the political backdrop to architecture as a manifestation of power and skill. We should reverse the lens, and ask: what did people in the former Dutch colonies think of these interventions, and how are they seen now? What aspects of ‘design’ have been exchanged in this legacy? And how can we make the archives and research (often written in Dutch) available to the communities concerned?

As we opened the evening to our guest speakers, Delany Boutkan took to the digital stage on behalf of Hannah Dawn Henderson, artist, writer and member of the Working Group. Hannah shared a written piece that was enjoyed alongside screenshots of the collection’s search portal, offering a glimpse into the different visibilities and gazes constructed in and around the archival apparatus. Hannah began by considering how her first digital encounters with the archive unfolded:

"My first encounter with the archive was as this mobile, virtual site -- framed within my laptop's screen. Its data would later sprawl across my day-to-day conversations, over Skype and Facetime, extending across other virtual terrains and landing in the thoughts of friends and colleagues. This circumstance also had implications on how I initially engaged with the archive's imagery. The case study dossiers that I found myself drawn to were either not yet digitised in their entirety, or had otherwise not been made publicly viewable yet."

The text continues and poses questions rooted in Adolf Eibink's archive, that includes photographs of indigenous people in the former Dutch East Indies, often de-contextualised:

"How do we make visible and communicate doubt, conflicts of ethics, the absence of neutrality, question marks that only bear yet further question marks? How do we show these aspects of the archive's infrastructure -- these ruptures and sites of tension that have always been present within it -- whilst simultaneously reflecting on the potential violence entailed in visiblising the archive's contents? The work of Collecting Otherwise can be perhaps understood as a response to this very kind of urgent enquiry. By operating as a vessel of polyphonic, multifaceted knowledge, the working group seeks to translate doubts and questions into not so much clear-cut deliverables and rapid answers, but rather conversations, invitations, asterisks and annotations, footnoting the archive's future potential."

After the inspiring reading, we had the pleasure of welcoming Yasmin Tri Aryani, researcher, illustrator and member of the Working Group. Based in Indonesia, Yasmin brings a unique and situated perspective to Albert Aalbers’ archive and legacy in Bandung – looking at the buildings’ current uses and questioning the postcolonial traces left in contemporary Indonesian life, and how they shape collective identities. This presentation was also an introductory moment, as Yasmin aims to develop this project further within Collecting Otherwise.

Bandung is an important city within the Dutch colonial legacy and is home to many buildings that have been preserved and become part of the local heritage and the identity of the city – indeed, Yasmin points out that her initial conversations with the community about what they associate with the city included its colonial architecture, such as De Driekleur in northern Bandung which is at the centre of her research.

Yasmin's main research questions around this modernist colonial building decentralise and reclaim heritage by shifting the focus away from the building itself and zooming in on the conditions in which it has been maintained and the lives that exist around it, the contemporary appropriation of heritage:

“Why do they think De Driekleur should be preserved? What part of this Art Deco building is adapted to the tropical climate? How do the older generations who lived through the colonial period feel about the attempt to preserve it? And how do people today interact with these colonial legacies?”

As we are presented with animations, sounds and videos from the northern streets of Bandung, we are drawn into its moving, active, vibrant urban life, featuring taxis and food delivery couriers lingering around the building, sitting on the benches. The street where De Driekleur is located is a main thoroughfare, and is home to street food vendors – an activity that is not actually ‘allowed’ as it is deemed inappropriate for this part of town. We realised that segregation is alive and well in Bandung, driven by past (Dutch) colonial architecture and planning. The north side, where we were now standing, is characterised by Parisian-style lampposts, modern buildings and luxury shops, and is inhabited by a European and Chinese population. The Indigenous population lives to the south of Bandung and has no access to these goods. For whose eyes do we decorate the streets? And how can a street vendor, or any other ‘informal’ presence, be an act of decolonial resistance?

In design choices – as we compare the modernist Aalbers with Maclaine Pont, who appropriated Indigenous architecture in his design – and in conservation policies, the way Bandung’s local politicians have been the gatekeepers of a shared, public heritage raises even more questions about the tensions of reclaiming and preserving, and how different generations have approached colonial traumas and postcolonial futures differently. With certain colonial paradigms still at play, who gets to feel welcome, and what bureaucratic structures are still in place? Yasmin, as a member of the Collecting Otherwise Working Group, will continue her research around Bandung, collecting oral histories, testimonies and visual impressions.

With thanks to Yasmin, we introduced our speaker for the evening: Sumaya Kassim, writer, editor and curator. Through fiction and essays, Sumaya reflects on colonial narratives and forms, and is best known for the essay ‘The Museum Will Not Be Decolonised’ (Media Diversified, 2017). In a shared conversation, moderators and Collecting Otherwise team members Setareh Noorani and Carolina Valente Pinto joined Yasmin and Sumaya to reflect on the issues raised, linking the presentations and the aims of this year’s edition. As we acknowledge colonial legacies today, both on the streets and in institutions, what does change look like, and how do we make it happen?

First, Sumaya reflected on how Yasmin’s research highlights the ways in which design and architecture consolidate colonial exchange and power, even as they often house contemporary governments. In this way, navigating in the postcolonial or decolonial is a difficult, if not impossible, task. Hence the importance of Collecting Otherwise’s ‘granular’ and detailed-oriented approach, which focuses on the collection’s case studies in order to speak to broader issues. The ‘granular’ also acts as a vehicle for imagining postcolonial futures whose possibility is at once near and far. Despite our blind spots, our failures are productive, and in them we must continue to make room for more questions. Modernity, design, architecture and identity are all at stake in living through decoloniality, as the structures maintain not only power but also a seeming nostalgia for progress. So what comes next in the granular, what spaces can be inhabited in this approach, especially when we are talking about times and states of emergency? Who are the survivors, the street vendors in the archive? Through a caring, slow approach remembering and speaking the names of communities becomes central, as underlined in Hannah Dawn Henderson’s text, where the codified existence of those in the archive can be traced and re-told, shifting the gaze to those for whom these stories are made.

This leads not only to the case studies chosen, but also to the methods we work through to explore postcolonial or decolonial urbanity. Hetty Berens, curator at the Nieuwe Instituut and a member of the Working Group, asked about Yasmin's research methodology, while complementing her new and original approach to archival research with familiar case studies. Yasmin explains how street vendors, or peddlers, provide important metaphors for negotiating the existence of colonial architecture by mapping and zooming in the ‘other’. In the chat, Robin Hartanto commented on this compelling metaphor, pointing out that, “While Collecting Otherwise asks fundamental questions about the value and significance of the documents contained in the collection, you seem to approach the buildings themselves as living archives redefined by new events, encounters, exchanges and practices, while also allowing yourself to get lost and distracted by other things that interest you.”

Indeed, communities can be asked what to do with colonial buildings while at the same time squatting them and using them as shelter – Sumaya links this discussion to the global housing crisis, and how squatting (and peddling) is a form of protest.

In the midst of buildings and archives as oppressive architectures, how do we remember? What do we memorialise? In the chat, Catherine Koekoek shared her experience of living in Brighton, where the Orientalist palace is still a central social point and object of pride in the city. Sumaya, based in the UK, highlights the British relationship with its colonial past and the politics of its memory – mostly populated by a nostalgic, melancholic collective identity. In all the different ways of preserving and remembering, infrastructures are starting points for stories. We can now construct other utopias for ourselves, claim other intersections.

After an incredibly inspiring exchange, we closed the evening, thanking everyone for their presence and participation, and looking forward to what this new iteration will bring. The meeting closed with Sumaya Kassim's video essay, ‘The Museum Will Not Be Decolonised’:

“Decolonisation goes deeper than representation. When projects and institutions proclaim a commitment to ‘diversity’, ‘inclusion’ or ‘decoloniality’, we need to attend to these claims with a critical eye. Decoloniality is a complex set of ideas – it requires complex processes, space, money, and time. Otherwise, it is in danger of becoming another buzzword, like ‘diversity’. As interest in decolonial thought grows, we must be wary of the tendency of museums and other institutions to collect and exhibit, for there is a danger (some might argue an inevitability) that the museum will exhibit decoloniality in much the same way that it has exhibited black and brown bodies as part of the ‘collection’ of empire.”