In der kontinuierlichen Berichterstattung zu Orten wie Sudan, Palästina, der Demokratischen Republik Kongo, Ukraine oder Iran zeigen sich wiederkehrende Muster: in politischen Interessen, in medialen Narrativen, in der Hierarchisierung von Leid und in den Formen der Entmenschlichung, die Gewalt legitimieren oder normalisieren. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist die Talkshow: Multiple Krisen als öffentlicher Beziehungsraum konzipiert, in dem verschiedene Gewaltkontexte nicht isoliert, sondern relational betrachtet werden. Mit Ouassima Laabich, Gilda Sahebi und Eric Otieno Sumba, moderiert von Anna Dushime https://www.hkw.de/programme/relational-work-relational-power/talk-show-multiple-crises

Im Rahmen des Sommerfestivals MINSK LIVE realisiert James Gregory Atkinson das künstlerische Projekt W. A. Mozart für Sal. Orch. gesetzt v. Sabac-el-Cher, das aus einer Orchesteraufführung und einem begleitenden diskursiven Programm besteht. Auf Initiative von Atkinson und unter der Leitung von Daniele G. Daude werden das Berliner String Archestra und eingeladene Musiker:innen zwei von Gustav Sabac el Cher arrangierte Stücke neu interpretieren. Die Stücke werden zweimal aufgeführt: am Samstag 29.08 um 14 Uhr und am Sonntag 30.08.2026 um 17 Uhr. Begleitend zum musikalischen Programm wird James Gregory Atkinson am Samstag 29.08. seine Platte 3 Lieder für Marie Nejar vorstellen. Am Sonntag 30.08. findet ein Gespräch zwischen Atkinson, der Schriftstellerin und Aktivistin Katharina Oguntoye und dem Musikwissenschaftler und Saxofonisten Harald Kisiedu statt. Beide Veranstaltungen werden vom Schriftsteller und Redakteur Eric Otieno Sumba moderiert.

OUT NOW: Memory in Motion - Sites of Learning and Remembrance of Colonialism in Germany

Debates on cultures of remembrance are repeatedly at the center of contestation in Germany. The mandate to anchor remembrance and critical engagement with histories of injustice and violence in Germany’s past within collective and public commemoration remains undisputed. At the same time, remembrance of Germany’s three decades of colonial rule continues to be treated as peripheral. To date, there is no official national site of learning and remembrance dedicated to German colonialism. The publication Memory in Motion documents an eponymous two-year process in which an international network of experts from academia, activism, art, architecture, civil society, museums, cultural heritage and the public sector engaged with the enduring effects of what is often referred to as »colonial amnesia.« The network shared perspectives and developed ideas regarding the potential creation of one or several sites of learning and remembrance dedicated to colonialism in Germany.

Memory in Motion is a joint project of the Historic Museums
Foundation Hamburg, the Ministry of Culture and Media,
the Advisory Board for the Decolonization of Hamburg, the
Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb), Decolonize e. V.,
Dekoloniale – Erinnerungskultur in der Stadt (Decolonial –
Culture of Remembrance in the City), and the Berlin City
Museum Foundation.

Editors: Beatrace Angut Oola / Iris Rajanayagam / Emmanuel Asare / Mèhèza Kalibani / Eric Otieno Sumba / Ibou Coulibaly Diop. Memory in Motion is published open access by Transcript in German and in English. Paperback and ebook versions available in both languages. The ebook can be downloaded for free here: https://www.transcript-verlag.de/media/pdf/e5/db/89/oa9783839463093FpVWiBKx2ClDL.pdf

In this instalment of What Is Critical Publishing?, writer, editor, and magazine collector Eric Otieno Sumba challenges the assumption that art books—and the ideas they carry—travel by themselves. Pointing to the coloniality of distributional networks and global logistics—and its deniability—he proposes a rethinking of distribution: instead of invisibilizing its processes, he argues, we should understand it as a labour of social and political determination and, as such, a central part of artistic and research production. https://brand-new-life.org/b-n-l/trickle-down-epistemology/ Image: Max Stocklosa

Zimbabwean artist Portia Zvavahera’s debut exhibition in Germany was on view between September 2025 and February 2026. Writer Eric Otieno Sumba lauds the artist's themes, technique, and eye for color, though he finds the conventional hanging of most of the works a missed opportunity by the city’s leading arts institution, the Fridericianum. In this belated review, Sumba also ruminates on curatorial, editorial, and commercial decisions that shape the state of mainstream art criticism today. https://contemporaryand.com/es/c-and-magazine/texts/portia-zvavahera-s-house-of-praise Image: Portia Zvavahera: Imba Yerumbidzo, 2024 (Installation view Fridericianum, Kassel, 2025) Photo: Andrea Rossetti © Portia Zvavahera, documenta und Museum Fridericianum gGmbH

"Die zentrale Figur des Romans: der Chlorsprühmann. »Ohne ihn passiert nichts«, schreibt Tadjo. Alles wird besprüht: die Leichen, die Betten, Autos, der Weg zum Friedhof, die Masken, Handschuhe, Zelte, sogar das Gras, das glänzt, während sich das Chlor wie Wassertropfen nach einem Nieselregen darauf absetzt. Chlor war nie billig, und die gestiegenen Preise im Rahmen der Covid-19-Pandemie sind vielerorts nie wieder gesunken." Eric Otieno Sumba über eine Ebola Epidemie unter Sparzwang, jetzt in der AK727: https://www.akweb.de/politik/ebola-epidemie-unter-sparzwang/ Foto: UNMEER/Martine Perret/Flickr, CC BY-SA 2.0

"In Slow Poison, the Columbia University Professor and father of New York City’s incumbent mayor, Zohran Mamdani—makes a formidable attempt to take two African dictators seriously enough to sustain a dense and comprehensive engagement with them. There is nothing defensible about African dictators, but they cannot be understood if they remain an archetype. They, too, need to be understood in their own contexts, but not on their own terms. A dictator rarely emerges alone and, more importantly, rarely falls alone. Carl Schmitt’s dictum, “Tell me who your enemy is and I’ll tell you who you are,” is useful in tracing Mamdani’s reconstruction of the inner political logic of two defining figures in Uganda’s history. Eric Otieno Sumba reviews Mahmood Mamdani's Slow Poison in Berlin Review. Now online in English and German: https://blnreview.de/en/ausgaben/2026-06/slow-poison-mamdani-idi-amin-museveni and in the forthcoming Berlin Review Reader #7

The zine “SPAZIO GRIOT Artist Residency-On the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists #1” revisits an important historical and cultural event held in Rome in 1959. Through its pages, the congress echoes to the present time, its legacies unfolding in conversations, essays and artistic positions in the contemporary art field. Edited by Johanne Affricot and Eric Otieno Sumba, contributors include curator and researcher Chris Cyrille-Isaac, and the inaugural 2024 cohort of artists in residence: Brianda Carreras, Immaculate Ruému, and Damiano Tata. https://otienos.com/projects/7284329

For the Dutch entry for the 61st edition of the Venice Biennale, Dries Verhoeven presents The Fortress. In collaboration with curator Rieke Vos, Verhoeven brings performance art to the Dutch Pavilion and makes the building itself part of the work through an architectural installation. The accompanying publication contains texts by Verhoeven and Vos, alongside contributions by Bas Heijne, Maurits de Bruijn, and Eric Otieno Sumba. Images by Willem Popelier. Print only. https://www.japsambooks.nl/products/the-fortress

1983, an einem kalten Wintertag in New York, stellt der US-amerikanische Künstler David Hammons einen improvisierten Straßenstand auf, breitet sorgfältig geformte Schneebälle in unterschiedlichen Größen auf einer Decke aus und bietet sie zum Verkauf an. Das scheinbar absurde Angebot eines flüchtigen, wertlosen Materials mitten im urbanen Alltag wird unter dem Titel Bliz-aard Ball Sale zu einer der prägnantesten Performances der amerikanischen Konzeptkunst. Der Verkauf von Schneebällen wird zur subtilen Parodie der ökonomischen und kulturellen Wertschöpfung. Der Film The Melt Goes On Forever (2023) von Judd Tully und Harold Crooks zeichnet die Karriere des afroamerikanischen Künstlers David Hammons nach. Die Künstlerbiografie wird am 06.03.2026 im englischen Original im Bremer Weserburg Museum gezeigt mit anschließendem Gespräch zwischen der Künstlerin Anys Reimann und dem Publizisten Eric Otieno Sumba.

Monira Al Qadiri’s work explores humans’ ambivalent and alienated connection to the natural world, often viewing it through the lens of petro-culture. At times, the artist highlights oil’s role in reshaping human culture and the environment; at others, she enlarges the microscopic chemical structures and organisms that either sustain life on Earth or enable its industrialized destruction. In her current show at the Berlinische Galerie, Al Qadiri navigates oil’s entangled relationship with the sea, highlighting the toxic impact of oil tankers on the ocean and retracing the surprising symbolic role played by a sea snail within the history of the industry. Eric Otieno Sumba visited the exhibition and found himself drifting in threatening waters, somewhere between the romantic ocean of the seafaring past and the modern, infrastructural sea. https://www.textezurkunst.de/en/articles/eric-otieno-sumba-monira-al-quadiri-all-her-ships/

It is easy to project a very particular kind of millennial nostalgia onto both of Liz Johnson Arthur's new books. The first, I Will Keep You in Good Company, offers a rare glimpse into the photographers workbook or scrapbook, an almost sacrosanct repository to many artists that hosts anything from an (irregular) diary, mementos, and fragments of thought and information, to assorted collages featuring source material from various magazines. Named for the now iconic queer club night, the second book PDA, by contrast evokes the era when nobody in the club had a camera phone with a mega-pixel count worth writing home about. Come Saturday morning, revelers eagerly awaited Friday night's photos, uploaded by the dozen to a public (sic!) album on the club's facebook page. Not all were flattering, but legendary from today’s era of the hypercurated image.
Review of two of Liz Johnson Arturs latest books (print only) https://camera-austria.at/zeitschrift/172-2025/

Villa Borghese is a sprawling park in Rome’s center, the legacy of a noble family given over to the public in 1903. Galleria Borghese is situated within these grounds, its building and collection initiated in the early seventeenth century by Cardinal Scipione Caffarelli-Borghese, who exploited his papal connections to amass power and wealth. Today, the museum displays this centuries-old collection, which includes many of the most celebrated artworks from Italian history, in the cardinal’s decadently designed baroque rooms.
In recent years, the museum has staged temporary special exhibitions with big, overwhelmingly European names from modern and contemporary art, including Picasso, Lucio Fontana, Damien Hirst, and Louise Bourgeois. This summer, Kenyan artist Wangechi Mutu mounted an exhibition that was aptly billed as a site-specific intervention. Mutu’s work occupied the lavish galleries, staging imposing and generative juxtapositions with its surrounding Roman busts and trompe l’oeil frescos. Writer Eric Otieno Sumba reviews the exhibition here, revealing how Mutu worked with and against the institution to assert figures, culture, and histories otherwise absent from this place. https://www.thepublicreview.org/read/spiritus-sancti-eric-otieno-sumba-wangechi-mutu-galleria-borghese Wangechi Mutu: Black Soil Poems, installation view, Galleria Borghese, 2025

Berlin’s Haus der Kulturen der Welt revived a groundbreaking Uzbek film festival, Eric Otieno Sumba and Can Sungu reflect on how its Cold War–era screenings bridged global cinema and fostered south-south solidarities. Image: Hanna Wiedemann / HKW https://www.frieze.com/article/eric-otieno-sumba-can-sungu-253

There can be no coming to terms with the calamity of Koyo Kouoh’s untimely passing mere days before she was set to announce her plans for the 2026 Venice Biennale. Not yet. Among the many art communities Kouoh was part of, there is the feeling that a colleague, mentor, and friend was snatched away in her prime – like the two ancestors, Bisi Silva and Okwui Enwezor, who preceded her. Somewhere under the grief, fond memories and deep gratitude are slowly emerging, but for now, the pain lingers. Her last exhibition, “In Minor Keys,” opens in May 2026 in Venice, now be delivered across the finish line by her curatorial team, an edifying conclusion to the great career of a woman whose vision for contemporary art and commitment to African artists was undeniable. “I am certain that, at 54, my work is done,” she told Emeka Okereke in 2022. We must take her at her word. https://www.textezurkunst.de/en/articles/eric-otieno-sumba-obituary-for-koyo-kkouoh/

https://www.akweb.de/gesellschaft/marie-nejar-war-dieletzte-bekannte-schwarze-deutsche-ueberlebende-des-nationalsozialismus/

Marie Nejar died last month at the age of 95. As far as the Initiative Schwarze Menschen in Deutschland (ISD) is aware, she was the last Black survivor of Nazi Germany. Obituary for the London Review of Books: https://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2025/june/marie-nejar-1930-2025

O-Ton für Deutschlandfunk Kultur Radio am Rande einer Podiumsdiskussion der C/O Berlin und der Berliner Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung am 23. April 2024 https://www.deutschlandfunkkultur.de/post-kolonialer-diskurs-welche-rolle-spielt-selbstpraesentation-100.html
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Soundbite for Deutschlandfunk Kultur Radio at the sidelines of a panel discussion hosted by c/o Berlin and the Berliner Landeszentrale für Politische Bildung on 23rd April 2024