Dani Gal’s latest film Dark Continent (2023), currently on view in the exhibition Forgive Us Our Trespasses / Vergib uns unsere Schuld, deals with the ‘racial phobias’ resulting from the colonial imaginary and their transmission through music. The film draws on the case study published by psychiatrist, political theorist, and anti-colonial author Frantz Fanon in Black Skin, White Masks (1952): a white French woman suffers from a nervous disorder triggered by the sound of ‘African’ drums—prohibited by colonial regimes because they were suspected of carrying signals of rebellion. 

The screening is followed by a lecture from Gal on the structure of the film in relation to its historical and literary sources, discussing the dynamics of cultural intolerance within oppressive systems and how these structures infiltrate psychological spaces and manifest in fear and alienation, particularly through sound and music. As part of a series of artistic research events at the Centre of Advanced Study inherit. heritage in transformation at Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, in which Dani Gal is a fellow, the event opens into a conversation with inherit’s other fellows and the public at HKW. A dynamic intellectual community spanning the arts, humanities, and social sciences, inherit brings together scholars, artists and heritage practitioners from around the world to research processes of heritage in transformation, and to exchange knowledge and work with collections, objects, and exhibition spaces. The event is jointly conceived by Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and inherit.