Owned by Others

Owned by Others: A Map to Possession Island treads the interstices of the institutionally mummified city center that is Museum Island in Berlin. An embodied interrogation of colonial looting and nationalist chauvinism, this book maps alternative orientations for decolonization, restitution, repair, and empowering movement. Owned by Others also considers how the alleged “revitalization” of the museologized city center continues to exploit the lived experiences of diasporic artists and looks to other practices of inhabitation and transformation to challenge these legacies of oppression.

Conceived to inspire readers to go on their own walks around the area, this publication follows and extends a series of site-specific works organized by the initiative Owned by Others, including the conversion of a former storefront for a Caribbean travel agency into the “Museum Tropicana,” located across the river from the Stadtschloss/Humboldt Forum. Comprised of images and artists’ writing reflecting on the Museum Tropicana and related agitprop events and projects, as well newly commissioned and translated essays on the psychogeography of Berlin, the publication proposes a counter-vision to the reactionary urban planning that has cemented on Museum Island.