Open Call Slavery Memorial Year: 15 awards

A National Commemoration Committee 160 Years Abolition of Slavery will organise a programme with information, awareness and commemoration to reflect on 160 years of the abolition of slavery in Curaçao, with Emancipation and Healing as focus points.

IJswater Films, in co-production with Tulsa Studio’s, is developing the historical film ‘I will be heard’, which tells the story of Dutch writer, activist and resistance fighter Anton de Kom, author of the book ‘We slaves of Suriname’.

Under the motto ‘Turn your heritage into art’, Ruben La Cruz and Karolien Helweg will incorporate their findings from their research into the history of slavery in Bonaire into an installation/work of art that they will create together with the residents of Bonaire and Rincon, in a yet to be determined place in the public space of Rincon. Bonairean rock will play a leading role as basic material.

Part of Saramaka and Dutch history is anchored in songs. Place names and personal names are remembered in Saramaka through songs and stories. Artist collective Totomboti and artist Marjet Zwaans will produce new work that resonates with these songs and historical places. The oral sources are leading and are supported by written sources and utensils. Anchoring songs is also linked to the current land rights issue of indigenous and tribal peoples in Suriname and to the way of life of the Saramaka people with the rainforest.

Luci is a hybrid project that combines documentary, fiction and visual experimentation and takes the form of both a short film and a video installation. It is a search for the memory and legacy of the great-great-grandfather of performer and co-director Mathieu Wijdeven, the Surinamese artist G.G.T. Rustwijk, pseudonym “Luci” (1862-1914). Historical locations, site-specific performances, text, interviews and reinvented archive material are used to search for Rustwijk’s ‘light’ and what remains of it in contemporary Suriname.

The ultimate goal is a short film of the previously made installation, in which scenes from the film are cut and projected on multiple screens. In this way, Mathieu and Mateo want to elaborate on the story of G.G.T. Rustwijk, the search for him but also to appeal to collective responsibility, as a society, with regard to the colonial and slavery past.

What is the effect of centuries of divide and conquer politics on the way in which different population groups in Suriname interact with one another? How is this seen generations later in the Netherlands? In the hybrid podcast, a prominent Javanese, Hindustani, Afro-Surinamese person and a Chinese person discuss shared and internalised racism. Rakesh Kanhai is making a podcast about this and is looking for typical culturally rooted thoughts and statements among Surinamers that are actually remnants of slavery and colonialism.

How free are you to be free? The answer to that question is not the same for everyone. Free to be Free is a location performance by SoM about freedom and resistance. The performance is performed as a theatrical city walk in which the audience is taken along iconic places that are connected to the colonial history of the various cities. Local, underexposed narratives alternate with scenes and interventions involving dance, poetry, live music and installation art.

Nos no ta papia di e kosnan aki/ We don’t talk about those things is a cinematographic depiction (film + photo series) of the journey of Soraya Pol and her grandmother Rosa (95). A visual portal that opens up an experience of the contemporary physical and emotional consequences of the Afro-Caribbean slavery history on the Antillean community.

In Sint-Michielsgestel (North Brabant) more than 60 Javanese contract workers are buried at the public cemetery on Nieuwstraat. According to the foundation, few people are aware of this. With the project, STICHJI wants to remove the unknown, because they are tangible traces of an important period in the colonial history of the Netherlands. They do this, among other things, by developing a book and memorial plaque.

With the history of slavery project in Rancho Oranjestad Aruba (20 to 27 April 2023), the Rancho Foundation, as the initiator of the celebration of 200 years of Oranjestad, wants to pay attention to the origins and history of the slavery past in the Rancho Oranjestad Aruba. The historical facts and developments that have emerged from the 200-year relationship with the Kingdom of the Netherlands are underexposed. The reason is that there is very little locally written information is available. Through desk research, interviews, conversations and group meetings, residents are involved in the development and compilation of information for the future.

With the project ‘Slavery and freedom: 150 years of emancipation, commemoration, healing and recovery’, The Black Archives investigates issues surrounding the impact of the colonial and slavery past, and in particular the issue of ‘reparatory justice’, about healing and restoring the inequality that stems from the slavery past through participatory research and art. Results of the research will be made accessible to the public through two pop-up exhibitions and a larger exhibition.

Untold applied for the theatre performance Kormantse. This performance is about the slavery past of the Kormant peoples who came from Ghana to Curaçao and Suriname. With this performance, Untold aims to generate more knowledge and awareness for the underexposed history of the Trans-Atlantic Slavery history of Surinamese and Curaçaoans in particular. Kormantse is a historical performance in which the Kromanti (Kumanti) people and their spirituality, heritage and culture are central. It will start in the Kormantse area (Ghana), after which various leaders of uprisings in Haiti, Jamaica, Guyana and finally Suriname will be presented.

The literary project ‘Transatlantic Relatives’ by Wintertuin Curaçao about the common history, the present and the future of Curaçao and Ghana aims to create a digital platform on which writers, poets, rappers and spoken word artists reflect on the history of slavery and look ahead through new work.