3-channel video installation, 27 min. English, German.
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.
Musquiqui Chihying, born in 1985 in Taiwan, is an artist and filmmaker based in Taipei, Taiwan, and Berlin. He works with diverse media and formats such as video, photography, and installation. His recent works investigate the post-colonial and post-immigrant ideology embedded in public domain and pop culture. Chihying has participated in several international exhibitions and biennials. In addition, he regularly publishes articles in art publications and is also the member of Taiwanese art group Fuxinghen Studio.
Gregor Kasper, born in 1986 in Germany, is an artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. He studied painting at Weißensee Academy of Art Berlin and is currently completing his MA Art in Context at Berlin University of the Arts.
