For a couple of weeks we hosted a co-creative workshop with young trainees in the House of Materialisation in Berlin (HdM). The meetings were focused on the postcolonial continuation of exploitation of people and land. The main material for artistic experiments were the reimported 300 kg of cloths from Benin, Kenia and Kamerun along with their stories. The second hand cloths became the symbolic material for the invention of a CANDY MACHINE - a magic machine installation, that fules on different kinds of labor, exploitation and energy. Running on waste and saccharification of all kind!
The Candy Factory was launched in our shop at Schlesische Straße 10/11at the end of September 2021. It lives on in the moving pictures above.
The Candy Factory was launched in our shop at Schlesische Straße 10/11at the end of September 2021. It lives on in the moving pictures above.
“The origins of modern global trade are founded in sugar. First encountered by the Europeans in the 15th century, sugar later became a staple good as the Age of Discovery and foreign dominance opened up trading routes and paved the way for the shipment of sugar back to the homeland. Indeed, colonial settlement and expansion often began with the seizure of lands for the purpose of producing sugar; cane plantations and the processing of sugar generated much wealth for Europeans (Mahler, 1981; Parker, 2012). The sweetness of sugar, however, belies a bitter history of a commodity harvested by slaves as Africans sold to white traders replaced Europeans in the plantations. Triangular trade – involving the exchange of goods for slaves between Europe and West Africa and the sale of slaves to transatlantic plantation owners in return for sugar (and, to a lesser extent, other plantation products such as coffee and tobacco) – helped drive the first wave of economic globalisation (Harms, 2003).”
︎
Our Pushback Production No.1 CANDY FACTORY was funded by Fonds Soziokultur and the Senate Department for Education, Youth and Family.