The right to listen to the voices of the ancestors: a plea
A plea for making phonographic recordings from Togo accessible to the people of Togo. Submitted to the Berlin Phonogramm-Archiv on March 21, 2023.
Literature as colonial loot: histories of provenance
Exibition from 26/04 to 30/06.
April 26, 6 - 8 p.m.: Opening and guest lecture by Mèhèza Kalibani: Voices as loots: How Songs and Proverbs of Colonized People Made Their Way to Berlin.
From Windhoek to Kamina to Nauen - A Workbook
From Windhoek to Kamina to Nauen listens to the present-day echoes of telegraphy between Nauen (Germany), Kamina (Togo), and Windhoek (Namibia).
The colonial ear
With the invention of the phonograph in 1877, the sound not only became a museum artifact in the European ethnological context but this invention also offered new opportunities for scholars in their attempt to study the so-called ?primitives?
Phonographed under constraint
Article by journalist Pat Christ on Mèhèza Kalibani's research on the acoustic heritage of German colonisation, published in October 2022 in the Neue Musikzeitschrift.
The Voices of our ancestors: a collective listening workshop
Organised by Mèhèza Kalibani in cooperation with the German-African Literature and Identities (LIGA) research group, the listening and discussion workshop "Les voix de nos aieux" (The voices of our ancestors) was held on 13 January 2022 in the lecture hall of the library of the University of Lomé.
Visiting the Palais de Lomé, a site of memory of German colonialism
Built between 1898 and 1905, the Palais de Lomé, formerly Palais des Gouverneurs, has undergone quite an odyssey over the last 100 years. It has served as an administrative building under all regimes of governance of Togo: the German and French colonial powers and the independent Togo since 1960.
There and back again: From West Africa to Westphalia and back again
Felix Gräfenberg (History Commission for Westphalia) interviews Mèhèza Kalibani on how to deal with colonial sound records on Togo. Kalibani explains the significance of acoustic sources in colonial history research, tells about her research trip to West Africa and clarifies what all this has to do with Westphalia.
Accessing Colonial Sound Archives
By outlining the institutional histories of colonial sound collections and focusing on two particular recordings, we address the double sensitive nature of historical audio sources. We aim to raise questions about the politics of access and presentation of sensitive sound material and argue for a plurality of interpretations of colonial sound archives.
Colonial artifacts: Looted, exhibited and then hidden
The management of inventories by German ethnographic museums and the challenges for African researchers in the debate on the restitution of African heritage.
Colonial Soundtracks
For the WDR 5 Scala programme of 26 August 2021, Jürgen Salm reports on phonographic collections from colonial contexts in European sound archives and the issues surrounding their sensitivity. He interviews Mèhèza Kalibani and Annette Hoffmann.
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