Ghosts of Colonial Modernity (Parts I, II & III) | PALM Magazine, Jeu de Paume Paris

This was a three-part series of conversations for PALM Magazine of Jeu de Paume Paris, initiated by artist and writer Sophie Kovel.

The first and second conversations, held with Kovel, Léopold Lambert, Nacira Guénif-Souilamas, and myself, explore the hauntological material and ideological reverberations of the colonial continuum in our contemporary moment (particularly in France), thinking through architecture, surveillance and the unfinished project of decolonisation. Here, I discuss my curatorial project, Living with Ghosts, in further detail.

The final conversation, between Kovel and myself, takes the artist’s solo exhibition at Petrine, A Long Duration of Losses, as a point of departure for reflecting on monuments, iconoclasm, nationalism, reparations, and the racial and colonial occlusions of modern liberal democratic regimes.

Image: Postcard representing a model of the Baba Merzoug, Algeria, renamed “La Consulaire,” 1913. Collection of the Musée National de la Marine, Brest.