Café Togo | 2018, 3-Channel Video Installation, 27’ in Loop ☞ Narration based on the writings of Abdel Amine Mohammed and the interview between Musquiqui Chihying and Abdel Amine Mohammed Director | Musquiqui Chihying, Gregor Kasper Director Assistant | Antonia Cattan Director of Cinematography | Lucas Bueno Maia Camera Assistant | Andres Villarreal, Kojo Schneider, Pjönghwa Kim Director of Sound | Shen Sum Sum Mixing Engineer | Ilya Selikhov Music | Aaron Snyder, Jimmy Trash, Igor Meiji, Shen Sum-Sum Art Director | Viktor Bone Costume Design | Han Le Han Makeup Design | Louisa Gniffke Technical Support | Kamil Markiewicz, Tamara Magradze, Tekla Aslanishvili, Thomas Chang Interview | Cheng An Chi Translation | Rosanna Lovell Performed | Dietrich Kuhlbrodt, Keto Logua, Kristof Trakal, Hike, Abdel Amine Mohammed, Musquiqui Chihying, Yugen Yah, Han Le Han, He Ling Yu, Aaron Snyder, Jimmy Trash, Igor Meiji Extremely appreciate the support from Kristina Leko, Christian Kopp, Walter Lenertz, Institute for Art in Context, Berlin University of the Arts, Berlin Postkolonial, Fredericks Café, SCREEN The Film is funded by Department of Cultural Affairs, Taipei City Government, Interflugs, Berlin University of the Arts Institute for Art in Context, Berlin University of the Arts Produced | Musquiqui Chihying Café Togo focuses on the engagement for the re-naming of Streets with colonial connotation — Petersallee, Lüderitzstraße and the Nachtigalplatz — in the so called Afrikanisches Viertel (African Quarter) in the district of Berlin-Wedding. According to §5, Art.2 Berliner Straßengesetz, each street, event and place in the city of Berlin honours the person, place or event it is named after. The two streets and the place named after personalities, whose biographies are tainted with blood of German colonial victims, honouring becomes a skewed undertaking. According to the same law, streets, places or events are to be re-named if not in consonance with today’s understanding of democratic and human rights definitions. The short film follows in its documental and fictional scenes visions of the Black activist Abdel Amine Mohammed, who is intensively involved in processes of re-naming streets with colonial connotations in Berlin. His key argument is based on a perspective change of symbolic politics implemented by state authorities in this regard: turning away from honouring colonial perpetrators into honouring victims of German colonial regime. Abdel Amine (a member of the ISD – Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland) is active in a collective of initiatives both from the Black community as well other civil society NGOs, whose activism seeks to implement change, by arguing from a postcolonial perspective: a multi-dimensional politics of remembrance. Café Togo is inspired by “Carl Peters”, a propaganda film produced in 1941 during the National Socialists, to honour the life and person of the colonial criminal Carl Peters, in whom they see a pioneer, a visionary of their racist ideology. The film depicts scenes of subjugation, racial mis-interpretation, Eurocentric representations and appropriation. The scenes about Africa were filmed on Rügen, a German island located in the Baltic Sea. Appropriating the same concept, Café Togo re-stages several scenes about Kolonie Klein Afrika (Small African Colony) and Kleingartenverein Togo e.V., which until 2015 was called Dauerkolonie Togo e.V. (permanent colony Togo). The act of re-naming was realized in the Café Fredericks, a symbolically important location in the quarter, where Café Togo’s main shooting took place, in the sense that the locations’ former name Luderitz Eck was re-named into Café Fredericks in honour of the German-West-African resistance and freedom fighter Josef Fredericks II. As a contribution Abdel Amine wrote “With Colonial Love”, which lay the fundament of Café Togo. Café Togo is a Three-Screen film installation, consisting of documentary and fictional material shot in the Afrikanisches Viertel with both digital and 16mm analog film.
