Interactive performances in public space in the African Quarter

With SYSTEMATIC VERTIGO the dancer and performer Deva Schubert and visual artist Ella Ziegler take geodesy – the science of measuring and mapping the earth's surface – as the starting point for interventions and actions carried out in the African Quarter, an urban colonial landmark. The two artists investigate the connection between the measurement of the earth’s surface and the emergence of uniform reference systems as well as the accompanying strategic and political conquests of terrestrial territories.

 

The starting point of this artistic research and intervention is Adolf Lüderitz’s so-called Meilenschwindel (or, “mile fraud”): The Bremen merchant and colonialist came into possession of a large coastal strip of land in South West Africa, a German colony, by means of deliberate fraud.