In a subtropical country, white visitors crowd into a place where dark-skinned farm workers are emptying their harvest baskets. They look curious, as if they want to check the tea leaves. They pull out their cameras everywhere, whether in front of large wild animals or camels on horseback, in front of adorned human bodies or everyday work processes. Sometimes they themselves turn their eyes to the camera, for later, for home, when they would proudly show off their ‘exotic’ finds. In this pose lies a centuries-old model of Western travel and depiction – the tourist in search of the foreign.
Lisl Ponger reassembles found amateur footage of Western vacationers, traces their fascinated view of the foreign and thus archives a collection of exotic otherness. She adds a series of voices that speak in many languages at a subtle distance from the image and tell of experiences with different forms of colonization: as dominated people in their own country or as displaced people who have been turned into strangers.

Tuesday, February 5, 2002, 8:00 p.m.

Marcel Odenbach, video presentation
“Going abroad to feel at home”

About the confrontation with other cultures as an attempt at self-reflection. Marcel Odenbach (born 1953) shows video works from 20 years – constantly on the move from Europe to the USA and Africa. He belongs to the “second generation” of video artists whose works are characterized by a high aesthetic standard. As an artist and observer, he uses video to examine Germany’s cultural identity and also to keep an eye on the way the Western world deals with racial conflicts.

Friday, February 15, 2002, 8 p.m.

Ingrid Mwangi, performance
“A woman in Purdah”

In her performance, the Nairobi-born artist deals with her own experiences of racist reactions: the view of foreigners, dealing with the other and, above all, the view of the foreign exotic woman.