Sundiata Keita

The thesis of the evening: Human rights were invented in Africa - already more than seven hundred years before the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in December 1948 in the Palais de Chaillot in Paris!

The Cameroonian theater maker Martin Ambara and his team went on a research trip through Guinea this summer, into the meandering paths of history around the story of the "Lion King" Sundeita Keita and his Charter of the Mandes. This already contained a preamble stating social peace in diversity and the inviolability of the human person. The existence of the Charter means locating the origins of the idea of human rights in Africa.

On their journey, Ambara and his team conducted interviews with the last living griots, the transmitters of the stories surrounding the Manden Charter, and present a performative lecture with music, dance and video that aims to correct the postcolonially clouded view of the African continent and its history.

The lecture performance will be followed by a discussion with the director Martin Ambara and the artists about the research trip, Europe's image of Africa and the significance of the Manden Charter for African societies.

Guest in conversation: Julia Schade, postdoctoral researcher in the Graduate College The Documentary. Excess and Deprivation at the Ruhr-Universität Bochum. In the context of decolonial discourses, Schade questions and researches other modes of representation and appearance as well as procedures for making visible and authenticating historical experiences of violence.

Recherche, Text, Regie: Martin Ambara
Performance / Tanz: Edith Voges Nana Tchuinang, Messina Effouba Sylviane
Musik: Ronald Tchoumo-Nounjio Mangoua
Video: Max Walter
Performative Übersetzung: Claire Lovy