Roulotte:08

COLONIALISMS / COLONIALISMES / COLONIALISMOS

Roulotte’s latest wanderings provide a journey through supposedly decolonized territories which, however, continue to suffer absolute lack of interest other than a clear economic reconquest based on the arrogance of the West. No lawful exorcism capable of shaking up the colonial ghost is possible as long as there are no clear policies regarding reparations; any other way out is just a new plan to obtain literary material. Until this becomes effective it is absolutely essential to go back to the scene of the events to accomplish a double aim: acknowledge the ruins caused in the laboratory of modernity and test new ways of listening to local versions.

In the first option seen from this double perspective, the projects by Pep Dardanyà and Ângela Ferreira in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and in Niger and the Congo respectively, must be interpreted. The work by Andrea Geyer on indigenous communities in North America may also be conceived as a perfect example of this attention paid to local psyches silenced by colonial violence. Between these two extremes, Marion von Osten delves into the complexities of negotiating between modernism’s evangelization and the liberation movements in Casablanca, so close to the infamous Spanish example of lax post-colonialism in Western Sahara now remembered in an essay by Xavier Arenós. In any case, on this journey Roulotte detects how too many voices still plan domination that is capable of adapting to new formats. Perhaps the exotic portrayal of the Papuan Islands cannot be repeated to swell the notion of a Germanic homeland –as reproduced in the work by Fernando Bryce– but solvent metropolises still consider in their political agendas old colonies as lands that are up for sale.

(December 2010)