Simone Dede Ayivi & Kompliz*innen: Unauthorized & Unverschämt

The installation Unauthorized and Unashamed looks at German history from a Black perspective: we take a look at the post-war period and then move forward together to the beginnings of the more recent Black movement. We examine the biographies of those who were born to Black US soldiers and white German mothers in the post-war years.

We interviewed a generation and met wonderful people who talk about their upbringing, their struggles and the realities of Afro-German life. Their stories are accompanied and shaped by exclusion and official racism in the Federal Republic of Germany. But they are also, and above all, stories of resistance and community building.

Simone Dede Ayivi & accomplices go into the archives for Unauthorized and Unverschämt*innen and shed light on the racism and sexism of the FRG - which is also responsible for families being separated and children being taken away from their mothers, adopted to the USA or placed in institutions. In Mannheim, Frankfurt and Berlin, they are researching how society dealt with the so-called "occupation children" and looking for traces that were left behind in official files. Because in order to understand current debates about identity and racism within and outside black communities in Germany, we also need to know this part of our history.

i will still be
african

even if you
would like me to be
german

and i will still be
german
even if you
don't like my blackness

i will go one step further
to the very edge
where my sisters are - where my brothers are
where
our
FREEDOM
begins

From the poem "Grenzenlos und Unverschämt - ein Gedicht gegen die deutsche Sch-Einheit" by May Ayim