Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper

The Guestbook

Addressing the legacy of colonialism, The Guestbook by Musquiqui Chihying and Gregor Kasper is a slow-paced, black-and-white film exploring the German colony of Togoland, now the Republic of Togo. The guestbook in question—a thin, battered copy that Do Do, the Togolese protagonist of the film, finds in Berlin’s State Library—is filled with the signatures of colonial-era explorers. The plot follows Do Do as he seeks out Treptower Park, where the JAZZ musician Kwassi Bruce was once exhibited in a human zoo in the first German Colonial Exhibition. The protagonist then goes to a Chinese massage parlor that used to be a Chinese restaurant called Nanjing, where Zhou Enlai, a key figure in improving Sino-African relations, was said to be a regular attendee. Zhou often went to the restaurant to strategize with communist military commander Zhu De. Many of the names and locations in this fictional story also appear in Chihying’s academic, lecture-style video, The Sculpture. 

Filming with an entirely non-white cast, Chihying touches upon the rarely represented multicultural characters of Berlin, and poses questions about anti-colonial solidarity. Did Zhou Enlai encounter African peers in Berlin, and what impact would they have had on his thinking? What has been left unresolved since he helped bring African states closer to China in the 1950s and 60s? Through reviewing a significant period in China and Africa’s mutual history, The Guestbook attempts to construct an alternative historical line. The work attempts to unpack and refocus the ignored historical fragments that might form the basis for current Sino-African political relations, and the potential realities of a Sinocentric future for Africa.