TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE is a digital platform for decolonial knowledge production that will be launched in December 2024. The archive, developed together with African Digital Heritage, is interested in poly-perspectivity and plural knowledge systems breaking with European epistemologies and schools of thought.
Starting with objects compiled from collections of European and African Museums the archive aims to fan out a polyphonic universe of knowledge. Objects are thus made to speak and serve as door openers to enable a different form of relating.
In the course of the development of the digital archive, scholars, artists and other experts are invited to come together during three think tanks held in Dakar (May 2023), in Frankfurt (July 2024) and in Nairobi (December 2024).
The think tank in Frankfurt taking place from 3 July – 6 July deals with the cosmologies of objects and investigates their materiality, spiritual meanings and their manifestations as gendered objects. Artists and researchers from Senegal, Kenya and Germany are invited to reveal the knowledge stored in objects.
The accompanying exhibition “The Cosmologies of Objects” at Villa 102 shows artworks developed by Adam Yawe, Élise Fitte-Duval and Karwitha Kirimi during the TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE residency programme.
The Think Tank and exhibition are curated by Mahret Ifeoma Kupka and Isabel Raabe.
(1) Installation view „Talking Objects. The Cosmologies of Objects” at KfW Stiftung, Villa 102, 2024, © KfW Stiftung, Photos: Jens Gerber (2) Workshop Talking Objects at KfW Stiftung, part of Talking Objects Think Tank, 2024 © KfW Stiftung, Photos: De-Da Productions (3-5) Exhibition Opening „The Cosmologies of Objects” at KfW Stiftung, Villa 102, part of Talking Objects Think Tank, 2024 © KfW Stiftung, Photos: De-Da Productions