The conference “Trance-Colonial | Beyond Restitution: Reconnecting – Reimagining – Repairing Relations” will take place from 12 to 13 November 2026. It is the concluding event of the research project “PERFORM – Performing Provenance: Contemporary Art, Digital Spaces, and Things from the Cameroon Grasslands”.

Venue: Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum, Cäcilienstraße 29–33, 50667 Cologne

Registration: Information will soon be announced. 

Scientific organisation: Prof. Dr. Ursula Frohne, Alexandra Galitzine-Loumpet, PhD, Julie Peghini, Jolanda Saal-Basar, Nanette Snoep

Further information on the research area “PERFORM – Performing Provenance: Contemporary Art, Digital Spaces, and Things from the Cameroon Grasslands” can be found here.

While the inaugural symposium in Münster (10 November 2026) focuses specifically on the Cameroon Grasslands, the Cologne conference  proposes a complementary perspective. It takes the Cameroon case as its point of departure while opening the discussion towards broader artistic, philosophical and societal questions surrounding provenance research, restitution and rematriation. Rather than treating Cameroon as an isolated or essentialised case, the symposium places it in dialogue with artistic positions and critical perspectives from different parts of the world. 

The symposium takes place within the framework of the exhibition “return – Between Past and Future, Another Place Emerges” (17 September – 6 December 2026) at the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum. While PERFORM investigates how provenance research can be expanded through artistic practice, digital spaces and collaborative knowledge production, „return“ explores how violent histories of displacement, loss and interrupted relationships may open possibilities for new forms of coexistence, belonging and shared futures. Together, they shift the conversation from the restitution of objects towards the transformation of relationships, memory and future-making.

A particular strength of the Cologne symposium is its dialogue with diasporic artistic communities. Alongside international participants, artists and researchers based in Cologne will be invited to contribute to the discussions, creating encounters between global research networks and the city’s own diasporic landscape. This reflects the shared ambition of both PERFORM and “return”: to connect international research with local artistic practice and public engagement.

Rather than understanding restitution as the final outcome of provenance research, the symposium approaches it as the beginning of new relationships. It asks how digital technologies, artistic research and contemporary artistic practice can contribute to new forms of collaboration, knowledge production, social repair and future-making.

The symposium unfolds through 3 interconnected movements:

Reconnecting: How can digital technologies create new relationships between people, collections and knowledge?
Reimagining: How can artistic research and critical fabulation generate new forms of knowledge beyond the colonial archive?
Repairing Relations: How can artistic practices contribute to processes of reparation and the creation of new relationships beyond restitution?

Together these three movements shift the focus from the return of objects towards the transformation of relationships.