[This lecture took place on November 23 rd , 2015 at the Bergen Academy of Art and Design, Norway] Vesna Madžoski The Magicians of Globalization: Magiciens de la Terre, 25 years later Kazimir Malevich, Black Square, 1915 [The Prologue] I would like to open this talk with a short mentioning of a news from last week that opened up so many questions and might disturb many of the usual assumptions when it comes to the so-called abstract art. Namely, during their celebration of the 100 years since Kazimir Malevich's Black Square was publicly exhibited, the Tretyakov Museum in Moscow had performed an X-ray scan of the painting. Already significantly cracked, X-rays were still needed to see what might have been hiding behind. The layers of two other paintings were discovered underneath, but also a seemingly enigmatic writing in Russian, which might be the actual title of the painting, “battle of the Negros.” According to the authorities, this is a clear reference to a following joke by the French writer and humorist Alphonse Allais, a joke we would clearly call racist today, and that was published as a cartoon in 1897; it reads “The battle of the Negros in a cave, during night”: 1