In French, Swahili, Kibudu and Lingala with German surtitles

Coproduction of euro-scene Leipzig

In THE GHOSTS ARE RETURNING, GROUP50:50, a collective of artists from Congo, Switzerland and Germany remind us of the fate of seven Pygmy skeletons that a Swiss doctor brought to Geneva from Congo in 1952.

GROUP50:50 has started searching for the descendants in the Congolese equatorial forest, where the nomadic people of the Mbuti are being expelled due to illegal deforestation. Together with the Mbuti, while singing and dancing, they developed a ritual for the seven spirits – in the hope that they will then find peace. What is, however, often not considered in the debate for restitution: the spirits return with all the masks, skulls and skeletons that the Europeans stole and hid away during the colonial period.

GROUP50:50 tells stories about the historic and current economic and political interconnections between Africa and Europe, and demands the return of cultural inheritance and reparations for colonial crimes and current human rights infractions. It addresses the history of globalization, colonial domination over the African continent as well as neocolonial practices of exploitation of humans and nature to access natural resources. The collective also critically reflects the form of its own cooperation which is disturbed by historic economic inequalities, cultural misunderstandings and the fact that the means of production still come from Europe, since African countries rarely have budgets for culture.

www.podium-esslingen.de/prog/the-ghosts-are-returning

www.group5050.net/d-projekte/theghostsarereturning

On both days this will be accompanied by the THE TIME FOR DENIAL IS OVER discourse program with films, discussions at the Grüner Salon of the Schaubühne Lindenfels.