Love and Ethnology – The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (after Hubert Fichte)

Love and Ethnology – The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (after Hubert Fichte) is the finale of the multi-year publication and exhibition project Hubert Fichte: Love and Ethnology, which—in cooperation with Goethe-Institut and several curatorial teams—has passed through stations in Lisbon, Salvador da Bahia, Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Dakar and New York since 2017. Based on a critical reception of Hubert Fichte’s writings, the project has initiated a multi-faceted debate on colonial modernism, ethnography, poetry and sexuality. The HKW exhibition is curated by the artistic directors of the multi-year project Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke.

Can the ethnographic gaze be “given back,” restituted? The German writer Hubert Fichte (1935–86) was fascinated by arts and religions of the African diaspora. In the 1970s, he toured cities like Salvador da Bahia and Rio de Janeiro, Santiago de Chile, Dakar, New York and Lisbon, developing his utopia of a radical sensitivity. This sensitivity would serve research alongside intense surveys, intimacy through (gay) sexuality, self-reflexivity and a condensed poetry of objectivity. Within the context of ethnology and the aesthetic avant-garde of postwar West Germany, the exhibition and research project Love and Ethnology examines Fichte’s writing and takes it as the starting point for new works by contemporary artists on questions of representation and restitution, the unlimiting and canonization of art and the reproduction of colonial power relations.

Artists: Nadja Abt, Heriberto “Eddie“ Alicea, Kader Attia, Gilles Aubry, Richard Avedon, Alvin Baltrop, Gabriel Barbi, Letícia Barreto, Coletivo Bonobando, Michael Buthe, Miguel Rio Branco, Rosemarie Clausen, Nathalie David, Mestre Didi, Hubert Fichte, Claudia del Fierro, Avril Forest, Alair Gomes, Renée Green, Philipp Gufler, Ayrson Heráclito, Isaac Julien, Euridice Zaituna Kala, Kippenberger und Akim S. aus 44, Friedl Kubelka, Pedro Lemebel, Cristóbal Lehyt, Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi, Leonore Mau, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Virginia de Medeiros, Michaela Melián, Mario Navarro, Richard Oelze, Pan African Space Station, Lil Picard, André Pierre, Lili Reynaud-Dewar, Daniel Richter, Thierno Seydou Sall, Pap Samb (Papisto Boy), Pierre Verger, James Van Der Zee

The exhibition will be accompanied by the publication Love and Ethnology - The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (after Hubert Fichte), edited by Diedrich Diederichsen and Anselm Franke at Sternberg Press, in English and German, featuring essays by the curators of the present and past stations of the project as well as contributions by academics and artists. The articles will be supplemented by an extensive glossary.

With essays and contributions by Dulcie Abrahams Altass, Kader Attia, Jan-Frederik Bandel, Jürgen Bock, Lisa Deml, Diedrich Diederichsen, Rosa Eidelpes, Denise Ferreira da Silva, Anselm Franke, Renée Green, Ayrson Heráclito, Max Jorge Hinderer Cruz, Koyo Kouoh, Dirck Linck, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Mario Navarro, Amilcar Packer, Marleen Schröder, Erhard Schüttpelz, David Simo, Kerstin Stakemeier, and Yesomi Umolu.

What are the organs of sensitivity? A conference during the opening days of the exhibition on October 18-19, 2019 addresses the question of which bodies, which organs, which institutions, and which narratives enable, guarantee, or even instrumentalize, the opening proclaimed by Fichte. Is there an industry of sensitivity? What forms of negotiation, contact, and solidarity stand in opposition to an aesthetic colonialism that extracts experiences instead of raw materials? 

With Jan-Frederik Bandel, Renée Green, Ayrson Heráclito, Karin Krauthausen, Musa Michelle Mattiuzzi, Tiona Nekkia McClodden, Amilcar Packer and many more.

Hubert Fichte: Love and Ethnology is accompanied by an online journal:  projectfichte.org

Love and Ethnology – The Colonial Dialectic of Sensitivity (after Hubert Fichte) is part of Hubert Fichte: Love and Ethnology, a cooperation between Goethe-Institut and Haus der Kulturen der Welt, supported by S. Fischer Stiftung and S. Fischer Verlag. It is part of the long-term HKW project Kanon-Fragen, supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media due to a ruling of the German Bundestag.

Haus der Kulturen der Welt is supported by the Federal Government Commissioner for Culture and the Media as well by the Federal Foreign Office.

Press Contact:
Haus der Kulturen der Welt
Anne Maier
anne.maier [​at​] hkw.de
T +49 30 39787 153/196