Songline

The video uses images from an ethnographic expedition by Dr Paul Germann (1884-1966) from 1928/29 to the Gbande in northern Liberia (West Africa). The mask and stilt dances documented here have been used by Jens Hanke as source material for a dream-like alienation. The shots are shown inverted in order to approximate remembered dream images.

European perceptions of African cultures in the 19th and early 20th centuries were just as blurred as the film footage. In contrast, the "black continent" was a projection surface for colonial desires, which Jules Verne also thematised in his literature.

Jens Hanke supplements the original material with flashes and artificial blurring, which corresponds to an impression of synapsal discharges in dream events.

Source: State Institute for Ethnology, Leipzig