Photo Credit: Elsa Godtfredsen

This podcast—led and produced by Maddie Sorensen—examines “A Right to Mourn; A Right to Monument,” an installation by Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro featured at Ballhaus Naunynstraße. According to the Ballhaus website, “Nathalie Anguezomo Mba Bikoro presents an installation at Ballhaus Naunynstraße: a mobile garden plantation and a satellite tower make up the foundation pillars of this special space of commemoration, growth and healing. Visitors are invited to complete the artist’s pre-produced voice archive by recording their own contributions as sound testimonies and sharing their demands for a right to a monument.” Further, “The project is part of a process to commemorate anti-colonial movements between Germany and Africa. Here the demand for reparations is addressed in the context of technology transfer: sound recordings and transmissions provide the basis for a decolonial archive intended as a performative gesture for a monument to all those that were erased. Considering the historical traces of Germany’s involvement in colonial systems—particularly through accessing botanical sciences and cultural industries—the monument is intended to challenge our constructs of memory: using mythologies to inspire a moment of healing and repair.”

Photo Credit: Maddie Sorensen

Maddie Sorensen is a junior Organismal Biology and Ecology major at Colorado College from outside of Chicago. She has always wanted to dive deeper into German history, learn another language, and explore more of Europe, so she found this to be the perfect opportunity for the semester. When she is not reading a science textbook or planning her next adventure, she can be found playing tennis, fishing, biking, skiing and baking lots of sweets.

Photo Credit: Maddie Sorensen

Joining Maddie in her discussion are Maggie Mehlman—a junior Math major from Denver, CO, and Atiya Harvey—a senior Feminist and Gender Studies major from Washington, D.C.

NOTE: The photo credit for the featured image also belongs to Maddie Sorensen.