Centrefold of JAMAN_DiARTgonale Special Edition #1

JAMAN is the fist of a series of special editions by Enough Room for Space in collaboration with the Cameroonian artist journal DiARTgonale.

This issue lends its title from an art project by Christian Hanussek (DE), Salifou Lindou (CM) and Nyemb Popoli (CM). Going back to the year 1905, the trio has explored the reciprocal fascination between the German colonisers and the sultan of Foumban, a city in Cameroon’s Hinterland. (“Jaman” means “German” in Pidgin English). Christian Hanussek chose the ancient printing technique of engraving to shed light at the processes of self-historisation that sprang from this encounter. Salifou Lindou made print graphics based on historical photographs that Hanussek found in European archives. The caricatures of Nyemb Popoli, editor of a famous satirical daily in Cameroon, put these historical finds into a contemporary perspective. The artists’ text for a comical opera on the colonial encounter in Foumban forms the backdrop to their distinct pictorial inventions.

In Bayreuth, Christian Hanussek and co-editor Annette Schemmel will introduce “JAMAN” and the other contributions to the edition, which span the years between 1905 and 2025 and deal with further incidents of exchange, appropriation and hybridisation.