Dekolonizacja dokumentu

The article addresses the problem of the so-called documentary turn in contemporary art, especially in those practices that are related to the project of decoloniality. It examines how traditional documentary conventions, which constitute part of the Western epistemic code, are appropriated and dismantled for the purposes of the decolonialization of the image of cultural Others. From this perspective, I analyse the main strategies used by activist artists who seek to expose the typical mechanisms of knowledge production in non-Western cultures. I complement my interpretations with a genealogy of experimental ethnographic films, tracing contemporary artistic solutions back to the so-called ethnofictions of Jean Rouch. I use this as a background for analysing two video works by the Polish artist Wojtek Doroszuk (Prince, 2014, and Sape, 2016).