The Weight of Sedimented Time

The temperature has climbed to thirty degrees these past days in Berlin. The river alongside Radialsystem shimmers in a bright, summer blue under the afternoon sun. By evening, the audience is gathering for the opening week of „Unexpected Lessons: Knowledges of Body and Sound“ and the Berlin premiere of „Somewhere at the Beginning“ by Germaine Acogny, widely known as "the mother of contemporary African dance". It is a spectacle in itself: people in vivid colours, some in garments covered in bold prints and patterns, filling the foyer with an expressive energy.

„Somewhere at the Beginning“, created in 2016 and directed by Mikaël Serre, is a sixty-five-minute autobiographical, solo performance from Germaine Acogny. Dismantling inherited identities, unlearning through conflict, exile and return: these are the most intimate and personal stories, the kind that stay inseparable from a person for life. 

She is surrounded by thin, white curtains which form a rectangular enclosure. Like a deep sea of memory, the space is translucent enough for layered projections to overlap on multiple veils at once. Her father in military suit, knives from family legacies, a baobab tree, each element gets blended like how true memory can be broken into fragments and sealed with tension.

In a linen, black dress, she starts to tremble, starting from the centre of her body and extending to her long, muscular arms. Carrying the weight of sedimented time, there is a fraction behind the beat in her trembling. I feel the blank space between the sound and her body’s response. Turning 82 years this week, Germaine Acogny reveals herself through her quality of time.

„You know where you were born, but not where you will die“, as Acogny’s text narrates. It is a proverb from Tiviglititi, a sage in one of her grandmother's stories. Floating identities becomes a vehicle rather than a destination and belonging has no final answer.

41 artists till February 2027 expected

This openness for fluid time is part of the curatorial ambition of „Unexpected Lessons“. Seeking to embody at a structural level, this series runs through February 2027 and brings 41 artists together from across non-eurocentric communities. Initiated by Talking Objects Lab and curated by Isabel Raabe and Celina Baljeet Basra, the project challenges the usual choreography of cultural exchange: the guiding concept is not diversity but plural knowledge. The recognition that multiple, non-hierarchical knowledge systems must share the floor. Everyone is invited to the „LA PALABRE space“, a curated site throughout the whole programme in which tea, texts and artistic interventions are offered as a form of knowledge production in themselves.

Acogny's delay, that small, luminous gap between sound and movement turns out to be the most honest choreography for what „Unexpected Lessons“ is asking of all of us: to pause before responding, to recognize that the conversation has been a long time coming, and to listen differently.