/// Kwa Niaba Yako,
I Shredded Them
The process of applying for funding is a tenuous and at times debilitating negotiation, between the self and the/an institution. One must ground oneself not only in practice, but in the ability to market one’s practice to an often faceless panel. We bend our words to fit in a summary of a proposal that is supposedly meant to inspire creativity; or present decolonial theories; or build new worlds; yet the system of choice and voice that leads the process is anything but creative or decolonized. Kwa niaba yako, I shredded them is a spatial intervention, which begins with the process of shredding and recycling old (as well as newly) rejected proposals into material for creating paper planes. By eliminating the text that forms the foundation of the proposal the intervention aims to acknowledge the absence of sincerity in words, or rather, the lack of access to them outlined by the specificities of proposal writing jargon.
CONCEPT, INSTALLATION Rehema Chachage TECHNICAL SUPPORT Valerie Asiimwe Amani
REHEMA CHACHAGE “To get 'white money' you have to play the game. Say the right things (in your proposal) and tick the right boxes (in the way that you implement and report for your project). Working both as a visual artist and arts coordinator in Tanzania, this is a game which I was able to master very early on in my career. However, this is also a game which I gave up being a participant in very quickly (or at least I learnt to become very selective). In playing this game, you often find yourself compromising your own agency in the work you do. 'White money' is tricky, and often, it can be demeaning (with its violent structures which create beggars out of the people that it relies on). Artists like us who come from countries that do not have financial support for the work that we do often fund ourselves relying on 'white money', but also have a very complicated relationship and an underlying discomfort with it. My interest in this lab is to work through this discomfort, to give it a name and meaning. In the past, calling out 'white money' has often left me with an ‘arrogant’ label plastered on my name. This lab, and the people involved with the project are proof that my discomfort is not unfounded. My hope is that through this project some impact on policies (related to how 'white money' is administered, portioned, and for what purposes) will also be had."
REHEMA CHACHAGE (Dar es Salaam/Tanzania and Vienna/Austria) is a visual artist whose work can be described as performative archiving. She collects and transforms stories, rituals and oral traditions using different media (performance, photography, video, text and physical installations). Her tracing work focuses particularly on women’s history(ies) in the Swahili region. Her work has been shown in Africa, Europe, Asia and South America.
