Inscriptions En Relation - Palais de la Porte Dorée

Disentangling histories of colonialism and colonisation reveals various forms of interchange, transfer and imagination. Conflicting ideas about culture, technologies, language and cultural practices are subject to modifications and exchanges across a gradient of complexity. Shifting through conditions of colonialism, post-colonialism, and de-colonialism, and based on our research in the post-conflict Balkans, post-Apartheid South Africa, and peace process-era Colombia, we ask: how to regard everyday cultural practices in contested cultural and political environments?

Our prototypical pilot-project is a physical, full-scale object inviting visitors of the exhibition to re-learn sitting, repairing, and producing, while reflecting on the dimensions of the ‘colonisation’, ‘de-colonisation’ and ‘re-colonisation’ inherent in the act of sitting. The public - regardless of age, race, gender and income level - are invited to share a seat with a renewed understanding of everyday spatial practices, in the pursuit of new and emerging qualities in open and shared public space.