After Year Zero: Geographies of Collaboration [Paperback]

Published in conjunction with an exhibition that has traveled to the Museum of Modern Art in Warsaw from Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt, this volume takes as its starting point the realignment of global ties after 1945—Europe’s “year zero”—and focuses on the worldwide phenomenon of decolonization.

Investigating magazines, journals, and newspapers, the diverse essays inAfter Year Zeroshine a spotlight on collaboration, not confrontation, in the many publications launched at various times and in different places within the African continent or the African diaspora. As the volume contributors show, the format of these periodicals provided a means for temporary intervention against hegemonic voices and made possible the necessary task of creating a new language to talk about art, life, and politics. In addition to text-based essays,After Year Zeroalso includes visual essays designed like collages of documents, quotes, and images.

With its unique international and interdisciplinary approach,After Year Zerois an innovative study of postwar narrative possibilities and a powerful reflection on the processes by which the “universal” can be generated.

Annett Buschis a freelance curator, writer, and translator.Anselm Frankeis head of visual art and film at the Haus der Kulturen der Welt in Berlin and former artistic director of Extra City Kunsthal in Antwerp.

Preface—Bernd Scherer
Preface—Joanna Mytkowska
Introduction—Annett Busch & Anselm Franke

The Universal Project—Anselm Franke

Universal Pictures: A Dialogue between a Future People from the Desert—Annett Busch

Essays

Négritude as a Concept of Collaboration?—John Akomfrah

Passions of Blackness and Imperatives of a Post-African Imagination: Re-readingBlack Orpheus andls?