Dierk Schmidt : the division of the earth : tableaux on the legal synopses of the Berlin Africa conference

In 1884 / 85, the European powers and the USA met in Berlin to prepare the division of the entire African continent through an "international" act of law. The series of pictures by Dierk Schmidt that was shown at documenta XII serves as a starting point in exploring the urgent question: Is it possible to respond to the brutality, with which colonial borders were forced upon existing societies, with a representation that makes legal abstractions tangible as a historic product of political and aesthetic modernism in Europe? The "Division of the Earth" is based on years of research and tackles, both visually and textually, the aesthetic-political, art historical and current legal facets of the growing international, post-colonial discussion.