In July and August 2023, members of The Centre travelled to Benin for a workshop for Moving Pictures, Controversial Memories (CINEMAF), an ongoing collaborative project of which The Centre is part.
This workshop involves artistic, historical and anthropological research into still and moving images of Dahomey (now Benin) from the 1930s, made as part of a larger project, the Archives of the Planet, funded by French banker and philanthropist Albert Kahn (1860 – 1940).
It extends the research developed as part of the CINEMAF project, the aim of which is to initiate multidisciplinary reflection (ethnology, film studies, history of representations, visual arts) by researchers, artists and those in charge of collections in French, South African and Beninese heritage institutions on the issues of analysis, remediation and reuse of filmic material produced in controversial historical contexts.
This new phase of research is rooted in the eponymous seminar (2021-2022 & 2022-2023), and the workshop held in August 2022 at the Centre For The Less Good Idea in Johannesburg, South Africa which offered the opportunity to carry out artistic research on the archival images from Dahomey.
The originality of this critical re-reading of the images was generated by the epistemic decentring of the artistic approach and by the privileged dialogue between players on the Beninese and South African cultural scenes. The aim is to build an artistic and scientific dialogue that crosses perspectives on controversial memories of the past: post-colonialism, post-apartheid and post-socialism. It seeks to renew the issues of analysis, remediation and reuse of photographic and filmic materials produced in controversial historical contexts, and has two complementary strands:
- Experimentation with new research protocols and dialogues built around Beninese photographic and filmic corpuses from the 1930s, studied jointly by researchers, museum professionals and artists.
- Comparing artistic and anthropological research on the image corpus, in order to reflect together on the question of the ethics of images produced in colonial contexts and the ways in which they are rewritten and transmitted to the societies in which they were made.
This workshop, in Porto-Novo, aims to renew this reflexive approach to anthropological bodies of work with the society that these images represent, in the places filmed almost a hundred years ago. This renewed knowledge of colonial archive images will be shared with heritage partners (musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac; musée départemental Albert-Kahn ; École du patrimoine africain [EPA] in Benin), artistic research centres (Centre for the Less Good Idea in South Africa and the Ouadada Centre in Benin) and universities (University of Abomey Calavi; University of Paris 8/Vincennes, Saint-Denis; University of Paris-X Nanterre; University of Central Europe).
Present in the Archives de la Planète, are the Zangbeto. The Zangbeto are traditional voodoo guardians of the night among the Ogu (or Egun) people of Benin, Togo and Nigeria. A traditional police and security institution, the Zangbeto cult is charged with the maintenance of law and order, and ensures safety and security within Ogu communities. They are highly revered and act as an unofficial police force patrolling the streets, watching over people and their properties, and tracking down criminals and presenting them to the community to punish.
On 1 August 2023, (Independence Day in Benin), after first encountering them in a 93-year-old image, we came across Zangbeto on the streets of Porto-Novo.
WORKSHOP ORGANISERS | Didier Marcel HOUENOUDE (Abomey-Calavi), Bronwyn LACE (Vienna/Johannesburg) & Anna SEIDERER (Paris).
PARTICIPANTS | Christine BARTHE (Paris); Gérard BASSALE, (Porto-Novo) ; Gaëlle BEAUJEAN (Paris); Magali DUFAU (Toulouse); Adewolé FALADE, (Cotonou/Vienne) ; Julien FAURE-CONORTON, (Boulogne) ; Pélagie GBAGUIDI (Brussels); Monica HEINTZ (Paris); Vusi MDOYI (Johannesburg); Angelo MOUSTAPHA (Brussels/Benin); Nthabiseng MALAKA (Johannesburg); Franck OGOU (Porto-Novo); Damiana OTOIU (Bucarest); Zain VALLY (Johannesburg); Khadija VON ZINNENBURG CARROLL (Vienna).
IMAGE CREDITS:
1930s archival image of Zangbeto (left): Archives de la Planète, Musée départemental Albert-Kahn, Département des Hauts-de-Seine. Still taken from film by Frédéric Gadmer.
2023 image of the Zangbeto (right) by Nthabiseng Malaka.