Cosmin Costinaş

What gets counted within the category of heritage, and who gets to do the counting?

This book contributes to discussions about what counts as heritage now, who gets to do the counting, and broader related issues around the subject of cultural sovereignty. It unpacks historical narratives and political memories linked with objects, sites, and ceremonies that have been lost, looted, restituted, repatriated, revived, or reinvented. Through its diverse line-up of discourse, poetry, and original artistic contributions, it weaves together subjects and geographies that are not usually part of the same conversation —from plundered cultural belongings held in colonial collections, to processes of renaming or removing symbols of past eras— and considers how they relate in the context of recent social upheavals and political processes across continents.

In our era of dangerous revisionism, when history has become a battlefield for both the left and the right, we are asking: How can art reconfigure our collective foundational myths? And of what should we let go on the journey towards figuring it out?

Conversations and essays that question the twisted and oppressive climate in a world where true decolonization has yet to begin.

New nationalisms, toxic patriotisms and systems of exclusion have been on the rise for the last decade, reinforced by technology and rooted in colonialism, slavery and class oppression. Our time offers a unique twist on these age-old structures: rhetorics of decolonization are now weaponized by autocratic regimes, just as they are normalized in the phantasmagoria of cultural practices. It is this paradoxical and entangled situation that we, perhaps somewhat emotionally, started to refer to as "perverse decolonization." This book is the result of a (self-)critical project of discussions, workshops, exhibitions and meetings in Cologne, Poland, Israel, Hong Kong and Chicago. Its conversations and essays question the twisted and oppressive climate in a world where true decolonization has yet to begin.

Contributions by Avital Barak, Saddie Choua, Cosmin Costinaş, Ekaterina Degot, Natasha Ginwala, Andrzej Leder, Georgy Mamedov, Walter Benn Michaels, Joanna Rajkowska, David Riff, Aneta Rostkowska, Joshua Simon, Jan Sowa, Hito Steyerl, Mark Terkessidis, Mi You.

Published in February 2022
English edition
15 x 21 cm (softcover)
164 pages