Invitation

Following a long conversation between the participants during the first public workshop at Whitechapel Gallery in London in April 2025, Françoise identified two main positions: The first considers that preservation is important, that museum collections contain extremely valuable artistic and cultural heritage from Africa, Asia, Europe, the Americas, Oceania and the Caribbean. That losing them would be terrible, constituting an irreparable loss of memory and history, practices, technologies, and creativity. For not all collections consist of looted artworks and heritage, and the peoples and communities of the South would be the first to be deprived of traces of their culture. Examples of museums working closely with communities were cited. The second considers that the capitalist commodification process that transforms sacred and mundane objects into “art” must be radically questioned. For racial capitalism is based on the sacred principle of private property (even in public museums), on extraction and dispossession. The museum denies common ownership; it is inscribed in systems of banking, insurance and speculation; it is built on high-value land, sometimes expropriated. That the museum is a reserve for capitalist accumulation, and its fictitious neutrality hides structural violence, racism and exploitation (of maintenance workers, guards and staff). That reforms only serve to merely mask the systemic violence of its violent origins. These two positions—the need for a space to preserve and protect community heritage and the need for a more radical anti-capitalist transformation of society, —were the focus of the workshop held in Paris on 2 and 3 June. Drawing on a theory of street theatre, as described by Brazilian dramaturge Augusto Boal, the workshop sought to work through these two positions through the medium of performance. 

The aim of producing this work as a piece of street theatre was to address the issue of looting and appropriation outside the context of a symposium, to allow non-professionals to participate and to invite the public to debate and offer alternatives.

Following a two-day workshop and a public performance, the outcomes have been drafted into a script that can be shared for re-stagings. The resulting text differs only slightly from the public performance on 3 June, rendering certain aspects more explicit, emphasising more clearly the link between looting in the past and the present, and better illustrating forms of resistance.

The invitation and information sent to participants can be found below.