German Colonial Genocide in Namibia

On the closing day of LABO*R, we invite you to interact with the manifestations of collective labour conducted throughout the duration of the exhibition in our different labor*s engaging with woodwork, sewing, printing, sound making, dancing, filmmaking, researching, video editing, and many more. In the afternoon, we are also activating the public square outside of SAVVY Contemporary with a number of creative stations inviting your bodies, hands and hearts to join in communal learning, experimenting and creating. In the evening, we will watch film investigations by Forensis / Forensic Architecture.

Join us alongside Tobechukwu Onwukeme, Mark Mushiva and Ashkan Cheheltan of Forensis as we dive into their continuous research of the German colonisation of Namibia through a selection of films:

German Colonial Genocide in Namibia: Shark Island 
2024, 36 mins

Since 2022, Forensis and Forensic Architecture (FA) have worked with Nama and Ovaherero leadership groups in Namibia to examine sites related to the 1904–1908 genocide perpetrated by the German colonial army against the Ovaherero and Nama peoples. This investigation examines one of the most traumatic chapters in this history: the legacy of Shark Island, the site of the deadliest concentration camp established by the Germans in the colony known at the time as “German South West Africa”. Together with descendants of victims and survivors, we reconstructed the camp in unprecedented detail and identified burial sites dating back to the period of the genocide.

Descendants’ calls for the preservation of Shark Island and commemoration of the horrors that took place there have taken on new urgency. Significant proposals for commercial and infrastructural development on Shark Island and throughout the wider ancestral lands of the !Aman Nama threaten to destroy further physical traces of this history, continuing a process of erasure already compounded by decades of systemic neglect.

German Colonial Genocide in Namibia: The Hornkranz Massacre
2024, 31 mins

At the initiative of the Nama Traditional Leaders Association (NTLA), FA and Forensis worked with descendants of survivors to produce visual evidence and document the oral history transmitted through generations about the massacre of the Witbooi Nama in Hornkranz perpetrated in 1893.

Alongside the spatial reconstruction of the settlement and the unfolding of the massacre, the project interrogates the environmental changes that have ensued since the expulsion of the Nama from these lands.

The project seeks to support the community’s efforts to establish the 1893 massacre of Hornkranz as the first act of genocide against the Nama. It also supports the descendants’ ongoing calls for free and open access to their sites of remembrance.