TRACING A MEMORY PT. III

Quinsy Gario, Caribbean-Dutch poet, visual artist and performer, known in particular for his performance Zwarte Piet Is Racisme, continues his project of innovative historiography with his lecture-performance Tracing a memory pt. III. The starting point is historical recordings of the Caribbean islands on 35 millimeter black and white sound film. They were taken on behalf of the Rijksvoorlichtingsdienst (Dutch Government Information Service), shortly after World War II, at the time of the Indonesian War of Independence against Dutch colonial power. In 2019, Quinsy Gario and his mother Glenda Martinus traveled to St. Maarten, one of the islands documented in the films. They visited the same places and filmed them again, this time on Super-8: tracing a memory.

In Tracing a memory pt. III, Quinsy Gario uses this footage to reflect on image capture technologies as tools of liberation, and on play and unproductivity as strategies of defiance of colonial norms. And about the experience of traveling together.

After his appearance at the international performance festival Permanente Beunruheung and his lecture When artists refuse last season, this is now his first solo work at Ballhaus Naunynstraße.