Aleya Kassam is a Kenyan feminist, storyteller, writer, and performer. Her writing has been performed and published on multiple platforms and stages around the world, including Nairobi, Kigali and Stuttgart. As the ‘A’ in The LAM Sisterhood, she fills the world with stories - like the award-winning stage show and podcast series Brazen - for African women to feel seen, heard, and beloved.

Arafa Cynthia Hamadi is a non-binary, multidisciplinary artist working in Tanzania and Kenya. They create artwork in various mediums that address the intersections of the conceptual and the physical, as well as the ephemeral and the permanent, in hopes of provoking their visitors into considering their daily realities. Arafa’s work also explores their queerness in relation to space and occupancy. They work in the realms of 3D design, graphic design, sculpture, and architecture.

︎: @arafa.builds
︎: Linktree

Caio Simões de Araújo is an anthropologist and historian based in Johannesburg, South Africa. He is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Wits Institute for Social and Economic Research (WiSER), at Wits University, where he works in the Project “Regions 2050”, headed by Achille Mbembe. His research explores the relationship between memory, history, and infrastructure in Southern Mozambique, especially by looking at the social and cultural lives of infrastructural projects and the political imaginaries revolving around them.

Cheriese Dilrajh has an education from the streets but she also holds a fine art degree from the University of the Witwatersrand. Cheriese works with migration and culture, inherited histories, the creation of ~, and confronting and disrupting violence through social practice and multi-disciplinary forms.

︎: @Cher_iese
︎: @cheriese_

DORMANTYOUTH is the DJ alias of Johannesburg based, non-binary architect, Thelma Ndebele. Their interest in the intersection of music & architecture led to them using DJing as a research method for their master’s dissertation (GSA, UJ) on mixing music as an act of temporal place-making within the night club space.

︎: @dormantyouth
︎: @dormantyouth
︎: Boiler Room

Kamel Ghabte is a Moroccan photographer and videographer from Casablanca, and Kamel Ghabte is a digital artist and consultant, from Cenon. In addition, Ghabte is a consultant and composer of electronic music, and an instructor in digital audio and digital interactivity. Magnetised by their shared passion for moving images, dancing sounds and digital interactivity in real-time, they now mix their talents and skills in "My digital food", their creation and research lab.

︎: @kamel_ghabte_
ww.kamelghabte.me

Kwasi Darko is a new media artist living and working in Ghana. His work uses visual artistry and performance art to explore his ideas. He is recently interested in investigating ideas such as transhumanism and our renewed relationship with digital realms and technology, stemming from recent global events.

︎: @KeLsDaRk
︎: @kwasi_darko
www.kwasidarko.com

Leandro Goddinho is an award-winning Brazilian filmmaker dedicated to LGBTQ+ issues. In 2015, he was selected by the German Chancellor Fellowship for Prospective Leaders sponsored by Alexander von Humboldt Foundation to research and develop a documentary project on LGBTQ+ Diaspora, called The World is round so that nobody can hide in the corners.

︎: @leandrogodinho_

Lo-Def Film Factory is a participatory community cinema initiative created by Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. Employing an experimental praxis that emphasizes co-creation and mistake-making, it aims to create space for video storytelling. The initiative places value on the transmission of ideas and experience over high production value.

︎: @lodeffilms
︎: @lodeffilms

Magolide Collective is co-founded by Mzoxolo ‘X’ Mayongo and Adilson Miguel De Oliveira. Mzoxolo ‘X’ Mayongo, born in Cape Town, is an emerging multi-disciplinary artist and activist whose work ranges from performance and photography to installation and sculpture. He recently completed his Honours in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand and is the co-founder of the Magolide Collective. Adilson Miguel De Oliveira, born in Bez Valley, Johannesburg, is an emerging multi-disciplinary artist whose work ranges from animation, virtual reality and print-making. He recently completed his Honours in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand and is currently an intern at Danger Gevaar Ingozi Studio at Victoria Yards, and the co-founder of the Magolide Collective.

︎: @magolide.co

Malebona Maphutse is a Johannesburg based multidisciplinary artist with a BA (Fine Art) Degree from the University of Witwatersrand. A recent Institute of Creative Arts fellow, her work has existed in/at several exhibitions, spaces, and happenings including the Bergen Triennial 2019 (The Dead Are Not Dead), and the Stellenbosch Triennial 2020 (Tomorrow There Will Be More Of Us).

︎: @bonny_maphutse
︎: @malebona.maphutse.art

Margarida Waco originally hails from Angola, having lived between geographies spanning from DR. Congo, the Republic of the Congo, France, and Denmark. She holds a degree in architecture from The Royal Danish Academy (KADK) and the Aarhus School of Architecture. Her work lies at the intersection of architecture, research, publishing and curating. In addition, she heads the Strategic Outreach of The Funambulist - a bimestrial magazine dedicated to the politics of space and bodies.

︎: @_mnwaco
︎: @margarida_waco
︎: Linktree

Maria Gabriela Carrilho Aragão was born, lives and works in Maputo. She has a degree in Architecture from the University of Cape Town, a profession she has practised since 2007, and has also been a Tutor and External Examiner at that same institution. Occasionally, she also writes, makes art, and designs functional objects, and uses her skills to enable others, helping them to clarify and translate their own creative vision.

︎: @gabitaaragao
︎: Linktree

Michael Salu is a British-born Nigerian writer, artist and critic, whose work and ideas find a place in a multidisciplinary practice. His written work has appeared in several literary journals, magazines and art publications and he has exhibited visual work internationally. He runs House of Thought, a creative research practice and consultancy and is the former creative director of Granta Publications (London). He currently lives between Berlin and Lagos.

︎: @michelsalu
︎: @panopticonal
︎: @houseof_though
︎: Linktree

Moad Musbahi is an artist and curator currently based between Tripoli and London. His work investigates migration as a method for cultural production and political expression, focusing on the social practices and forms of knowledge that it engenders. He recently curated ‘In Pursuit of Images’ at the Architectural Association, (2020) and was part of the curatorial team for the inaugural Sharjah Architecture Triennial, (2019). Moad is a recipient of the Sharjah Art Foundation’s Production Programme Grant (2020) and has worked as a visiting lecturer at the Royal College of Art.

︎: @rubicon_m
www.morningindustries.org

Nkeiruka Oruche is a cultural organiser, multimedia creative, and performer of Igbo descent, who specialises in Afro-Urban cultural intersections with identity, public wealth and sociopolitical action. She is a co-founder of BoomShake, a liberatory musical community of oppressed peoples, and Director of Afro Urban Society, a hub for global Black creatives.

︎: @afrourbansociet
︎: @afrourbansociety
︎: Linktree

Nkgopoleng Moloi is a writer and an MA student in contemporary curatorial practices at Wits University. Using archives and exhibition histories, her research explores womxn’s mobility —attempting to understand and draw attention to factors that enhance or inhibit womxn’s freedom of movement. Her interests are in history, art, language, and architecture.

Nombuso Mathibela is a Johannesburg based feminist educator, writer, vinyl collector and selector. Her sonic research interest span across folk, anti-colonial, nationalist and feminist music histories, and political aesthetics. She is part of an African ecofeminist collective that works on anti-capitalist ecological justice political education and histories.

︎: @nombusomathibela

Princia Matungulu is a Congolese artist, currently completing her degree in Fine Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand. With the only ties to her birthplace being oral histories and African cloths passed down by her mother, Matungulu’s practice engages with these histories and materiality through the intricacy of the weaving process. The resulting sculptures bear records of a personal and imagined history.

︎: @princia.matungulu.art
︎: @princia_matungulu

>Rania Atef is a visual artist who is interested in investigating reproductive and labour discourse on individual and collective levels, focusing on the infrastructure of social and cultural institutions. Enrolled in TASAWAR curatorial studies (TN), Rania also attended the MASS Alexandria program 2018/19 (EG) and holds a BA Degree in Product design in 2011 (EG). She is part of the “K-OH-llective” artists group.

︎: @raniatef
www.raniaatef.com

Shayna Rosendorff is a Johannesburg based artist and art commentator. Working in photography, sculpture, and drawing, her conceptual focus is the mined landscape and the politics of the representation of land and landscape in South Africa. She has participated in numerous exhibitions, runs Overheard in the Gallery, and in 2021 she was one of the winners of the BMW x WITS Art Project.

︎: @5haynaa
︎: @not_landscape_art

Sherief Zohairy is an independent director, screenwriter, and producer based in Alexandria. He graduated from the Faculty of Medicine, then in 2006, he directed his first short fiction film. Several other films followed. Since 2013 he has focused on writing screenplays, two of which have received awards.

︎: @shariefzohairy
︎: @shariefzohairy
︎: Sharief Zohairy

Sonya Mwambu is an experimental filmmaker and editor based in Toronto. She graduated from York University’s film production program where she developed her craft in shooting and experimenting with film to explore concepts of race, language and a connection to her own cultural identity. Although she was born in Kampala, she grew up in Canada and her films are centred on the intersections of her identities.

︎: @sonya.mwambu
︎: Linktree

Hamedine Kane is a Senegalese and Mauritanian artist and filmmaker. His film The Blue House (2020), which had its world premiere at IDFA in Amsterdam in November 2020, received a special mention from the jury. Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro is an artist, environmental engineer, and curator. He is a lecturer at École Centrale Paris, curator at NA Project, associate researcher at Ensad Paris, and researcher at Unbewitch Finance Lab.

︎: @theschoolofmutants
︎: @hamedine.kane7
︎: @stephane.verlet.bottero

Tshifhiwa Itai Ratshiungo is a writer and creative from South Africa studying law at the University of the Free State. A selection of his poetry appears in African Writer and History and Imagined Realities: An Anthology of South African Poetry (Impepho press 2021), a project powered by Institut Français d’Afrique du Sud.

︎: @_tshifhiwa
︎: @_tshifhiwa

Umlilo, Intergalactic shape-shifting kwaai diva, is a genre and gender-bending multi-disciplinary artist. The queer performer and music producer’s signature sound dubbed ‘future kwaai’ explores and pushes the boundaries of electronic kwaito, alt-pop music in contemporary South Africa and has been a regular fixture in the international music community.

︎: @umlilo_SA
︎: @kwaai_diva
︎: Linktree

By Aleya Kassam

In 1989, the Kenyan government wanted to destroy Uhuru Park to build a 60-storey business complex. Wangari Maathai led the protests that saved Uhuru Park so millions of people in Nairobi could enjoy a green space to gather, walk and breathe in. Thirty years later they thought we had forgotten. In 2019, the Kenyan government wanted to steal our breath again, this time to build an expressway to the airport. Wangari Maathai’s spirit was with us when we held protests to save Uhuru Park. On that day, I wrote this memory poem, as a warning. The soil always remembers.

SEE MORE HERE

By Arafa Cynthia Hamadi

In this series, I explore my culture with an intent to find myself within it. I am from Dar-es-Salaam, and I have found myself actively and in-actively living in other towns along this Swahili coast. This has led me to a process of relearning about my home, the cultures and the people who live here. The Kujiona Series is born from this process and includes the conversations and creations I have accumulated in the last three months of 2020. The artwork is created using a scavenged Swahili dhow that acts as a metaphorical connection to my coastal cultural history. 

By Caio Simões de Araújo

Inaugurated on November 10, 2018, the bridge connecting Maputo to the fishing village of Katembe, on the other side of the Maputo bay, is paradigmatic of Chinese-led infrastructural megaprojects in the Global South, in general, and in Africa, in particular. The bridge is not, however, merely a monumental engineering project. It also involved great economic change and restructuring of public finances and carried with it the promises of urban renewal and the development of Southern Mozambique broadly. While the bridge carries with it the “promise of infrastructure” – the promise of modernity and economic development – it also points to the dangers of neocolonialism under neoliberal globalisation and Chinese financing in the Global South. This visual essay “The Bridge'' assembles an immersive, experiential, and memorialist register of the instances of public performance surrounding the Maputo-Katembe Bridge in its moment of inauguration in November 2018. All images and sounds were collected during the weekend in which the infrastructural project achieved its triumphal conclusion: from excerpts of public speeches by members of the Frelimo party and the Chinese engineering firm in charge of the project – the China Road and Bridge Corporation – to the various criticisms voiced by members of civil society. The camera is in constant movement, facing the bridge from various vantage points in the city of Maputo; while the viewer is invited to come aboard, to cross the bridge as the camera moves across too. The various positions of the camera – located inside a car, a bus, a tuk-tuk, the ferry boat, or placed in front of various landmarks of the city – is representative of the multiplicity of conflicting vantage points, affects, memories and experiences surrounding the bridge as an “omnipresent infrastructure” making its mark in the cityscape.

By Cheriese Dilrajh

The legacies of colonialism, settler-colonialism and neocolonialism, apartheid and the Group Areas Act live on in the present as many are forcibly removed from their land, and are dehumanised, killed or criminalised for this occupation while the South African Defense Force, South African Police and the Anti-Land Invasion Unit have committed mass crimes and operate outside of the law.

This is a struggle we are not alone in, as similar atrocities are/were committed by armies elsewhere in Africa and by the Israeli Defense Force against Palestinians who have been killed, dispossessed of their lands and whose homes have been demolished. People are occupying, not invading the land, as they can’t be invaders in something that belongs to them. The act of existing becomes an occupation.

By DORMANTYOUTH

Gqom Waves: Borders & The Flexible Narrative of African Music is a short mix composed of music that was made from sampling Gqom sounds, a music genre born & cultivated in the rural hills of KZN, South Africa. This genre came out of the minds of experimental club kids using pirated music production software. The mix speaks of the transgressive power of musical innovation, where economic, social and physical borders have not stopped the world from moving their bodies to its frequency. The voices heard overlayed in this mix, are from those beyond the African continent who have embraced the sound and have added samples of their own country's familiarity in tone & cadence to make new borderless, hybrid genres such as UK Gqom. 

By Kamel Ghabte & Zouhair Lalaam

Casablanca Run the Covid is a techno-poem for the eyes and the ears. A lonely scooter travels through the deserted streets of Casablanca during a Covid-19 lockdown in 2020. Filmed vertically by a 360 ° cam, this piece takes us through an anamorphic crossing of a ghost town, emptied of life. Casablanca becomes an empty planet, bristling with moving protuberances and dancing architecture, moving to the rhythm of the race. Casablanca, an urban virus, is crowned with palm trees, candelabras, towers, bell towers and minarets. The city unrolls and curves, tattooed with flowing graphics and is bathed in an iridescent amniotic space of obscure light.

by Kwasi Darko

Digital Beings comments on our growing and deepening relationship with the digital realm, and the corresponding changing nature of our interactions with the natural world. Looking at the massive wave of digitisation, which has accelerated due to the global pandemic, the work asks how far the digital realm might be an extension of the human in this new future? And is science and technology the next inevitable step of evolution, extending the human’s current physical and mental limitations? The work explores the physical products of this rapid digitisation, focusing on aeroplanes and the internet, and the profound effect they have on our relationship with the self, others and the wider environment.

By Leandro Goddinho

Integrate v. [ˈˈin-tə-ˌgrāt] 1. combine (one thing) with another to form a whole. 2. bring into equal participation in a social group or institution. Refuge n. [ˈref. juːdʒ] (A place that gives) protection or shelter from danger, trouble, unhappiness. These films are part of a series of documentary shorts on LGBTQ+ migration and refuge. They tell the story of a protagonist who was forced to leave Nigeria to save himself and his love. Part I: Refuge tells the journey of an African gay refugee seeking asylum in Germany. In Part II: The Kiss, an African refugee visits the Gay Holocaust Memorial in Berlin. The film is a performance exploring the romance and terror of a simple kiss. 

By Lo-Def Film Factory

For over a year we have been engaged in a research project looking at archives, mapping and physical resources in central and southern Africa. Geo-Quiz is an old 80's geography board game we happened across. It did not have instructions so we could not figure out how to play it and instead decided to experiment with it. This video forms part of our broader project looking at uranium in the DRC and South Africa – a mineral that has been at the root of great conflict. Our work looks at the relationship between raw materials, technology and movement. We’ve been studying ways colonial practices have continued into this century, and how technological infrastructures trace the routes of former empires.

By Magolide Collective

Emergence: Afri Viola is a performance art piece that merges the traditions and conceptual visual language of art and the innovative technology of Virtual Realities. Emergence Afri’ Viola is immersed with visual cues retelling forgotten and omitted histories of African people and the landscape through the re-imaged colourful, comical and animated world of pop-culture. It is inspired by a fresco from the 1400s by Masolino da Panicale, in which a dead ‘westernised’ Christ is shown at the moment of Resurrection. This art work aims to over-turn this convention of the white messiah, whilst exposing the long-term effects of the colonial project through religion on the Black African identity and the plundering of land and mineral resources - stripped, and stolen, only to be re-appropriated into a mouth-piece of Western colonial propaganda. VR and video enable the viewers to have a sense of being there—of living in the moment happening, captured. This can teach us how to see deeply, which is the essence of all spiritual practices. In our mind, technology is ultimately a spiritual force and a part of our inner beings.

By Malebona Maphutse

Siyagoduka means we are leaving or are on our way. It speaks to the nature of departure; whether it be in the physical sense or spiritual sense through death and ritual ascendance. While witnessing the forced and now declared illegal inhumane removals in Hangberg, Ocean View and Khayelitsha in Cape Town during the storm of COVID-19 I was reminded of the long history of forced removals in South Africa, and beyond, from the 1913 Land Act to the Tulsa Oklahoma Massacre. History has a cyclic recurrence that has a way of reminding us of the cracks in our systems of governance and existence. This prompted me to consider the process of coerced, forced or “voluntary” black migration due to unfavourable circumstance and living conditions, to find new life and prosperity. Siyagoduka is about being on the move and the journey that lies ahead. The work takes on science fiction, and dystopian aesthetics to speak to the extraordinary nature of the times we live in. I have imagined these outer-worldly expressions of travel through painting, and a 3D augmented reality interactive digital experience which can all be seen here.

By Margarida Waco

At the threshold of the Indian Ocean, in the north-eastern corner of Tanzania, lies Bagamoyo. Once the town served as an administrative capital during the brief moment of German colonial rule and a notorious slave-trading outpost in the 19th century, weaving African bodies into a system that built modern capitalism. Some kilometres southwards its littoral is located in a rural tropical landscape, home to a population of about 12 000 residents living off small-scale farming and fishery in five self-built villages borne out of Julius Nyerere’s socialist philosophy of Ujamaa. Soon, however, 9 800 hectares of this rich and fertile ground will be woven into a planetary network of multi-directional trade. Convened under the concept of a Special Economic Zone, the site is about to endure a radical spatial transformation benefitting a global population and placing locals at the margins. 

SEE MORE HERE

By Maria Gabriela Carrilho Aragão

Travessia - Impressões de Viagem | Field Notes: It has been nearly 20 years since I first went to Ibo Island to study and visit. Although I was no longer at Universidade Eduardo Mondlane – Faculdade de Arquitectura e Planeamento Físico (UEM-FAPF), they were kind enough to let me integrate into the research team for their archival project concerning the built environment of the island – in particular, its domestic architecture – later published as Ibo: A Casa e o Tempo (2005). At the time, I made two consecutive trips: the first, in December 2001, as a student research assistant, and the second, barely two months later, to resolve a family matter with my great-aunt. It is this second trip that is recorded in these pages, a loosely assembled travelogue of digitally scanned analogue photos and field notes jotted down from memory.

By Michael Salu

Red Earth is an ongoing research project which aims to capture, analyse and reimagine personal West African ancestry, language and geological movement within virtual afterlife, the accelerated ‘posthuman’ state now upon us. As is often witnessed in flora, displacement and relocation can affect the well-being of biological entities. Red Earth explores the metaphysical dissonance that occurs from living in non-linear virtual space and time across hemispheres, by distilling, partly through code, what occurs when translating thought between language forms. These distillations take the form of geological totems, data topography as manifestations of the missing earth as it were. These processes attempt to engage with metaphysical discord within re-routed and excavated cultural identity, led by Yoruba continuity of spirit (beyond the body). The data extracted from these experiments have then been moulded into sculptures that take their lead from, and reimagine, Yoruba totemic and geological items.

By Moad Musbahi

Arriving at the Corner: To arrive at a place is an event that indicates a host of prior things; the awareness of the destination and the correct journey to take, the bodily ability for the movement and the implications for this movement. This latter aspect is both physical, in the biological capacity to take on the strain that distance will inflict, and spiritual, in the ritual consequences that accompany travel. From these interdependencies, a gestural and architectural tradition can be witnessed, one that has developed a rich set of tools and strategies for remembrance. This work is a mnemonic tactic that privileges the geometry of the corner, the anatomy of the joint and the place of the dead as three parts of a geographic archive that resists erasure, that denies forgetfulness. ‘Arriving at the Corner’ is a piece that seeks to locate what haunts and remains between the fibres of each muscular contraction, upon every moment of arrival.

By Nkeiruka Oruche

Let Me Come and Be Going uses modes of transportation as a conduit to investigate class, culture and citizenship. It offers a reflection on the individual and collective experience of being on a journey for a ‘better life’, constantly grappling with what we are dealt, and aggressively trying to move towards arriving at the material markers of ‘success’, which are constructed and powered by inhumane conditions. It is an affirmation that for us, despite disruptions to our psyche and societies, we have created powerful movements and practices rooted in the simplicity, beauty and celebration of life. In other words, We Move.

By Nkgopoleng Moloi

Gestures of gratitude // Catharina "Groote Catrijn" van Paliacatta: I first met Groote Catrijn in the Western Cape Archives and Records, housed on Roeland Street in Cape Town. I was on a research trip attempting to map out slave histories — visiting the Iziko Slave Lodge, Prestwich Memorial, The Company's Gardens, excavation sites near Gallows Hill and Museum van de Caab in Franschhoek. All these sites were key points in my journey to understanding the city’s haunting colonial past. I wanted to understand how the present is constituted through histories of slavery. In thinking about Groote Catrijn’s life, I invoke gratitude as a mode of attunement. My gestures include reflecting, imagining, dreaming, and communing. The inclination towards gratitude as a gesture in the recollection of slave narratives is premised on the belief that if we are unable to let the dead rest, then our recollection of their lives should at least, in part, be in their service.

By Nombuso Mathibela

Flight time letters and songs: This piece is about what it feels like to sit through a pandemic with the company of sound and words. The act of sitting down and writing letters has been one way of moving through the punishing silence of this time. Using this slow-food form of expression has helped me to eat every feeling that has made a home in this body. To respond to isolation and loneliness. To return to sentimentality and detail. To hear the travelling sounds and forms of escape that I dearly miss.

By Princia Matungulu

Nouveaux Mémoire Vieux Pagne, navigates through complex inheritances and histories; tearing them apart, unravelling, questioning, deconstructing, and reconstructing an identity, therefore making new memories out of old clothes. Our clothes bear witness, they carry a pure, undiluted essence of who we are and hold stories of the places we have been in memory. These African print materials, African lace, and the linings from my mother's clothing are no different. Language is particularly important, and present in my work, as it plays a primal role in shaping and constructing my identity. Therefore, in these works, I also explore and engage with the ways in which language is interchangeable and how one perceives and comprehends that which is not translatable into their language of primary comprehension.

By Rania Atef

Is there a bird that stops flying? Despite the severity of the times and the troubles this has caused for me as a mother-artist, I cannot deny that there is a hidden relief at the demise of mobility for artists. Although movement is a necessity for the work and its development, it becomes a burden for mother- artists. I do not mean to generalise here, but I think others share these same feelings with me and are also questioning how the art scene will move on from.

By Shayna Rosendorff

Unmapping: Contaminated Representations is a project that began in 2020. Lockdown forced the world to a halt, and I began exploring the continent through my computer on Google Earth. Alongside this, I recently found an old book compiled by UNESCO in 1963 that houses a map locating a large number of resources and minerals across the African continent. The preface for this collection is a mapping for ‘when the rest of the world runs out of minerals- it was necessary to know where to find them’. Drawing on this UNESCO publication, I set out to locate each of these resources from above on Google Earth - all of which became marked through a mine. Each collage houses a collection of the same type of mine across Africa, layered on top of each other to the point that one is unable to tell where one ends, and another begins. The combined maps point to the historical process of erasure along with the destruction of memory and the environment inherent to mining. What is the landscape without its minerals- and what is brought to the surface as a result of extraction?

By Sherief Zohairy

Pandemic: In modern standard Arabic, the pandemic is translated as Al-Ga’hah, which is pronounced Al-Gayhah in Egyptian Arabic; the colloquial Egyptian pronunciation tends to smooth the characteristic and specific bumpy sound for daily conversations. Yet, during the COVID-19 lockdown, this phonetic trick became useless and the whole metaphor was jammed with Al-Waleed among others. Facing the sudden loss of his smell and taste senses, he tries to hold maintain his sanity by analysing this new situation and speculating on the consequences of being infected.

By Sonya Mwambu

Banange! is a short experimental film shot on 16mm that follows a mother as she teaches her daughter how to speak Lugisu in an attempt to reconnect her to the motherland, a memory long fragmented by the echoes of time and abstracted by the blur of distance.

By Hamedine Kane(Senegal/Mauritania) & Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro

The School of Mutants is a collaborative inquiry in African futurism, initiated in Dakar by Hamedine Kane and Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro. The project has been exhibited internationally, with recent shows at Partcours Festival, Oslo Triennale, Taipei Biennial.  

By Tshifhiwa Itai Ratshiungo

This is Not Your Country is Inspired by the death of a mother and her children during Christmas 2020. This is Not Your Country is a poem that highlights the effect of migration laws on undocumented citizens.

By Umlilo

Qhakuva tells the story of a distant dystopian future set in South Africa where a space traveller lands in the city of Joburg, wrecking their mode of transport. They begin to explore this foreign land, much to the amazement of the people. It speaks to a certain kind of mobility, and the ability to travel to different dimensions and worlds.

By Wanjeri Gakuru

Bicycle Stories: Through a thicket, you see four women perched on bicycles, laughing and high fiving each other. Their lessos are colour coordinated, and woven baskets laden with produce dangle off the handlebars. It is a produced moment, warm and bright, perfect for inclusion into a calendar and a coffee table book. But away from the camera’s gaze, the women speak of less joyful things, of being anomalies, the subject of jeers and insults. It is 2014 and I am out on assignment to capture “unexpected Kenya”. The high fiving women are cyclists from the port city of Kisumu, selected from an eclectic group of eight. They are in their early 30s to late 50s, a mix of entrepreneurs and homemakers alike. Although cycling increases their mobility, not everyone sees it that way. The women all speak of being accused of "spoiling men's food" by cycling. To cycle is to be highly visible. It is to be vulnerable to the elements. Yet to cycle is also to trust in oneself and be propelled forward by muscle and sheer willpower. In this context, the image of a woman cycling is oppositional, always a challenge, always-already embodying and performing the power to refuse.

Ali Hussein al-Adawy is a curator, researcher, editor, writer and critic of moving images, urban artistic practices, and cultural history. He has curated several film programmes and seminars such as Serge Daney: A homage and retrospective (2017) and Harun Farocki: Dialectics of images…Images that cover/uncover other images (2018). He also curated, together with Paul Cata, the exhibition The Art of Getting Lost in Cities: Barcelona & Alexandria (2017). He was one of the founders of Tripod, an online magazine for film and moving images criticism (2015-2017) and was part of the editorial team of TarAlbahr, an online platform and a publication for urban and art practices in Alexandria (2015-2018).

︎: @ali.aladawy85

Amino Belyamani was born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco, and began playing the piano by the age of six. He is a founding member of AXIS TRIO and DAWN OF MIDI wherein he composes, performs, and records original music. Amino’s music reflects the diversity of his interests, which usually translates into a blend of complex African rhythms, Arabic melodies, western classical music, and jazz. Amino also established Moroccantapes.com, an online archive where you can listen and download Moroccan cassette tapes from the 70s and 80s.

︎: @dawnofmidi
︎: @moroccantapes
www.moroccantapes.com

Emmanuel Iduma is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a travel book, and The Sound of Things to Come, a novel. His stories and essays have been published widely, including in Best American Travel Writing 2020, Aperture, The Millions, Art in America, the New York Review of Books, and Artforum. In 2017 he was awarded an arts writing grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation for his essays on Nigerian artists. A Stranger’s Pose was long-listed for the Ondaatje Prize in 2019.

︎: @emmaiduma
www.mriduma.com

Ngangare Eric "1key" is an independent poet, spoken word artist, emcee, performer, actor, and blogger from Rwanda exploring various formats of storytelling. His work deals with issues of identities— individual and collective— power systems and societal dynamics. His second album Mwiru was released in 2021 and offers a mix of genres, styles, and languages.

︎: @1keyziki  
︎: @1keyziki
︎: 1key

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1981, and writes poetry, prose, and theatre. Mujila lives in Graz, where he teaches African literature at Universität Graz and works with musicians in Austria on various projects. His first novel Tram 83 was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Prix du Monde, and was awarded the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Internationaler Literaturpreis from Der Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Halima Ali is a Zanzibari, Part 2 architecture student currently based at the Architectural Association in London.

︎: @halima.kara

Hedley Twidle is a writer, teacher and researcher based at the University of Cape Town. His essay collection, Firepool: Experiences in an Abnormal World, was published by Kwela Books in 2017. Experiments with Truth, a study of narrative non-fiction and the South African transition, appeared in the African Articulation series from James Currey in 2019.

︎: @hedley.twidle

Ilze Wolff is a partner of Wolff Architects and a co-founder of Open House Architecture, a transdisciplinary research practice. She has taught and lectured internationally including in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan and India and continue to do so. The work of the practice has also been included at various international exhibitions including, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Architectural Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale and the South American Architecture Biennale.

︎: @ilzewolff
︎: @ilzewolff

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1981, and writes poetry, prose, and theatre. Mujila lives in Graz, where he teaches African literature at Universität Graz and works with musicians in Austria on various projects. His first novel Tram 83 was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Prix du Monde, and was awarded the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Internationaler Literaturpreis from Der Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Hedley Twidle is a writer, teacher and researcher based at the University of Cape Town. His essay collection, Firepool: Experiences in an Abnormal World, was published by Kwela Books in 2017. Experiments with Truth, a study of narrative non-fiction and the South African transition, appeared in the African Articulation series from James Currey in 2019.

︎: @hedley.twidle

Jamal Mahjoub is a Sudanese british writer. He has published eight novels under his own name which cover subjects as diverse as Sudan’s history and strife, heliocentricity, and explorations of identity. In 2012, Mahjoub began writing a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Parker Bilal. He has won the Prix de l’astrolabe in France, the NH Mario Vargas LLosa award in Spain, and the Guardian African Short Story prize. His most recent novel published in 2021 is titled The Fugitives and is about Sudanese music, friendship and the desire for home. Listen to the associated playlist at: https://soundcloud.com/jamal-mahjoub/sets/the-fugitives-soundtrack

︎: @parker_bilal

Jihan El-Tahri is an Egyptian-born writer, director and producer of documentary films. Her films include the Emmy-nominated House of Saud and The Price of Aid and Cuba, an African Odyssey.

︎:@jihantahri
︎: @Jihantahri

Jamal Mahjoub is a Sudanese british writer. He has published eight novels under his own name which cover subjects as diverse as Sudan’s history and strife, heliocentricity, and explorations of identity. In 2012, Mahjoub began writing a series of crime fiction novels under the pseudonym Parker Bilal. He has won the Prix de l’astrolabe in France, the NH Mario Vargas LLosa award in Spain, and the Guardian African Short Story prize.

︎: @parker_bilal

Jumoke Sanwo is a storyteller, cultural interlocutor, and creative director of Revolving Art Incubator. She works primarily in photography, video art, and extended reality (XR), and her work engages the realities and complexities of spatiality in postcolonial societies. She lives and works out of Lagos, Nigeria.

︎: @jumokesanwo
︎: @revolvingartincubator
︎: @jumokesanwo

Emmanuel Iduma is the author of A Stranger’s Pose, a travel book, and The Sound of Things to Come, a novel. His stories and essays have been published widely, including in Best American Travel Writing 2020, Aperture, The Millions, Art in America, the New York Review of Books, and Artforum. In 2017 he was awarded an arts writing grant from the Creative Capital/Andy Warhol Foundation for his essays on Nigerian artists. A Stranger’s Pose was long-listed for the Ondaatje Prize in 2019.

︎: @emmaiduma
www.mriduma.com

Kuukuwa Manful is a PhD candidate at SOAS. She curates Adansisem, an architecture collective that researches and documents Ghanaian architecture theory, research and practice and has recently been awarded a British Library Endangered Archives Grant which she will use to digitise an architectural archive in Accra. Kuukuwa’s research project examines African nation-building and notions of citizenship through the architecture of West African secondary schools constructed by states between 1945 and 1965.

︎: @Accra_Archive
︎: @Accra_Archive www.accraarchive.com
︎: @kuukuwa_
︎: @kuukuwa_
www.kuukuwa.com

Halima Ali is a London-based freelance journalist and editor focusing on travel, lifestyle and culture. Some of her bylines include CNN, The Guardian, The Telegraph, BuzzFeed UK, NPR, CityMetric, ABTA magazine, ASTAnetwork magazine and CountrybyCountry.com. She also works as a sub editor and production editor at The Guardian.

︎: @halima.kara

Menna Agha earned a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Antwerp and is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oregon. Spatial justice is an overarching theme in Agha's work, but this is not a choice born of luxury. She is a third-generation Nubian woman displaced by the Egyptian state as part of the Aswan High Dam project in the 1960s.

︎: @agha_menna
︎:@agha_menna

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1981, and writes poetry, prose, and theatre. Mujila lives in Graz, where he teaches African literature at Universität Graz and works with musicians in Austria on various projects. His first novel Tram 83 was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Prix du Monde, and was awarded the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Internationaler Literaturpreis from Der Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Meghna Singh is a visual artist and a researcher with a doctoral degree in visual anthropology focusing on the theme of migration from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Working with mediums of video and installation, blurring boundaries between documentary and fiction, she creates immersive environments highlighting issues of ‘humanism.’

︎: @singhmeghna
www.singhmeghna.com

Menna Agha earned a Ph.D. in architecture from the University of Antwerp and is a visiting assistant professor at the University of Oregon. Spatial justice is an overarching theme in Agha's work, but this is not a choice born of luxury. She is a third-generation Nubian woman displaced by the Egyptian state as part of the Aswan High Dam project in the 1960s.

︎: @agha_menna
︎: @mennaagha
www.projectunsettled.com 

Amino Belyamani was born and raised in Casablanca, Morocco, and began playing the piano by the age of six. He is a founding member of AXIS TRIO and DAWN OF MIDI wherein he composes, performs, and records original music. Amino’s music reflects the diversity of his interests, which usually translates into a blend of complex African rhythms, Arabic melodies, western classical music, and jazz. Amino also established Moroccantapes.com, an online archive where you can listen and download Moroccan cassette tapes from the 70s and 80s.

︎: @dawnofmidi
︎: @moroccantapes
www.moroccantapes.com

Meghna Singh is a visual artist and a researcher with a doctoral degree in visual anthropology focusing on the theme of migration from the University of Cape Town, South Africa. Working with mediums of video and installation, blurring boundaries between documentary and fiction, she creates immersive environments highlighting issues of ‘humanism.’

︎: @singhmeghn
www.singhmeghna.com

Halima Ali

︎: @halima.kara

Moshood Mahmood Jimba was born in 1963 to a Muslim family in the city of Ilorin in North Central Nigeria. In 2012, after six years at Kogi State University, where he headed the department of Arabic and Islamic Studies, he moved to Ilorin to teach at the Kwara State University, where he is currently the Director of Centre for Ilorin Manuscript and Culture. Jimba specializes in Arabic language and Arabic literary criticism and Arabic-English-Yoruba translation.

Omar Berrada is the director and co-founder of Dar al-Ma’mûn, a library and centre for artists’ residencies that opened in Marrakech in 2010. His work as a curator, writer, editor and translator focuses on the politics of translation and the transmission of knowledge between generations. One of his latest projects is the posthumous publication of the film-maker Ahmed Bouanani’s history of Moroccan cinema, La Septième Porte (Kulte Editions 2020); other books he has edited or co-edited include the Album – Cinémathèque de Tanger, a survey of film in Tangier, and The Africans (2016) which deals with questions of race and migration in Morocco.

︎: @omarbrrd
︎: Linktree

Omnia Abbas Shawkat graduated with a BSc in biology with a focus on environmental studies from the American University in Cairo in 2008. She has a Master’s degree in Environment and Resource Management with a focus on water and climate policy from the Vrije Universiteit in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. After six years in development and environmental management, Omnia rerouted her career to become a digital storytelling curator and cultural manager. Omnia is one of two founders of Andariya, a bilingual digital multimedia cultural platform and cross-cultural enterprise launched in 2015 in Sudan and South Sudan, and in Uganda in 2018. Andariya has partnerships with more than 30 regional cultural entities and operates with a core team of 14 across the Sudans and Uganda and more than 100 freelancing creators across the globe.

︎: @andariyamag
︎: @andariyamag
︎: @omniashawkat

Princess Zinzi Mhlongo is a theatre director and the co-founder of The Plat4orm, which for many years provided an alternative space for artists in the theatre industry to develop new uncensored work. She directed her first professional production, And the Girls in their Sunday Dresses, in 2008. Since then, her work has toured internationally, and she has received numerous nominations and awards including the prestigious Standard Bank Young Artist of the Year Award for Theatre in 2012. She is a recipient of The Laboratory for Global Performance and Politics 2020-21 fellowship at Georgetown University, Washington DC. In 2020 she launched Exhibit, a digital platform that showcases upcoming or unfinished work by an artist seeking funding.

︎: @princeszee
︎: @princeszee
︎: @theplat4orm

Sara Salem is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at the London School of Economics. Sara’s research interests include political sociology, postcolonial studies, Marxist theory, and global histories of empire. She has recently published articles on Angela Davis in Egypt; on Frantz Fanon and Egypt’s postcolonial state in Interventions and her recent book is titled Anti-Colonial Afterlives in Egypt: The Politics of Hegemony (2020).

︎: @radical_reading
︎: @saramsalem

Thandi Loewenson is an architectural designer and researcher currently based at the Royal College of Arts, in London. She is also a visiting professor at University of Aarhus, and co-foundress of the architectural collective, Break Line. She operates through design, fiction and performance to interrogate our perceived and lived realms and to speculate on the possible worlds in our midst.

︎: @thandiloewenson
︎: @thandiloewenson

Victor Gama was born in Angola and currently lives between Luanda, Lisbon and Bogota. His work of musical composition intersects areas as diverse as music, image, field recording, audio video installation and the design of contemporary musical instruments. Gama has been commissioned work by ensembles and institutions such as the Chicago Symphony Orchestra, the Kronos Performing Arts Association, the National Museums of Scotland, the Tenement Museum in New York, Prince Claus Fonds, the Amsterdam Fonds for the Arts, the Royal Opera House of London or the Kennedy Center in Washington DC.

︎: @vict0rgama

Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor was born in Nairobi, Kenya. The Kenya-based literary magazine Kwani? published her short story, ‘The Weight of Whispers,’ which earned her the Caine Prize for African Writing in 2003. Owuor’s fragmented, poetic and emotionally charged style continued with her highly acclaimed debut novel, Dust (2014). The book is a recounting of a story of Kenya’s hidden pasts through the odyssey of a disrupted family from the north of Kenya. In 2015, the book was shortlisted for the Folio Prize. Several translations are available. Her second novel, The Dragonfly Sea (2019), is a coming-of-age story that explores aspects of East African sea imagination in a time of China’s return to its milieu.

︎: @flamboyant_tree

Ilze Wolff is a partner of Wolff Architects and a co-founder of Open House Architecture, a transdisciplinary research practice. She has taught and lectured internationally including in Switzerland, Germany, Italy, USA, Canada, Japan and India and continue to do so. The work of the practice has also been included at various international exhibitions including, the Venice Architecture Biennale, Shenzhen Biennale of Architecture and Urbanism, Louisiana Museum of Modern Art, the Chicago Architectural Biennale, the Sao Paulo Biennale and the South American Architecture Biennale.

︎: @ilzewolff
︎: @ilzewolff

THE ARCHIVE IS A PORTAL FOR REIMAGINATION

In the first podcast of the series, Ali Hussein al-Adawy talks to his central interests in the relationship between archives, cinema and contemporary art practices. He suggests that we might think of the archive as an imaginary space of possibility, drawing on the work of Egyptian artist Hassan Khan; he raises questions of the political and cultural implications of pan-africanism through the translation of Thomas Mofolo’s Chaka from English to Arabic under Nasser’s rule in Egypt; and he talks to questions of translation and opacity through the song Dorak Gai, by Alexandrian rapper Wegz that went viral earlier this year.

HOW MIGHT WE TRACE THE AFTERLIVES OF THE TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE ROUTES OF THE 8TH CENTURY?

In this final episode, Moroccan writer and translator, Omar Berrada, excavates the deep histories of his once enslaved great, great grandmother; Nigerian scholar, Moshood Mahmood Jimba, retraces the journey from Ilorin to Timbuktu that inspired him to establish a manuscript archival research group in Nigeria; Moroccan musician Amino Belyamani, speaks to us of the healing purposes of Gnawa music in Morocco and speculates on the deep relationship to Ewe music from Ghana. Omar Berrada extends special thanks to M'barek Bouhchichi, Hatim Belyamani, and NourbeSe Philip.

WHAT REMAINS OF THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IDEAS THAT IMAGINED THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AS THE ‘UTOPIA OF A BORDERLESS WORLD’?

In this episode, Ghanaian architect and scholar, Kuukuwa Manful reflects on the place of minor histories in deepening our understanding of Pan-Africanism; Nigerian writer, Emmanuel Iduma, shares an excerpt from A Stranger’s Pose (2018), and his search of an atlas of a borderless world; and Egyptian sociologist, Sara Salem, unravels the workings of coloniality and capital from the vantage point of the sky in a reading of her essay Fractured Flights (2020).

ART IN TIMES OF CRISIS

In this episode, Bongani Kona speaks to Princess Zinzi Mhlongo (South Africa), Eric ‘1 Key’ Ngangare (Rwanda) and Omnia Abbas Shawkat (Sudan) about producing art in troubled times. The conversation moves between the DRC, Rwanda, Sudan, and South Africa, raising the difficulties of war and its remnants, and the experience of coming of age in a time of great turmoil. It points to the importance of telling stories that contest history and statehood, discusses forms of silence and organised forgetting, and questions what it means to produce work that can contend with the violence of our times.

WHAT PERSONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES EMERGE VIA INFRASTRUCTURES. OF MOBILITY?

In this episode, Egyptian architect and researcher, Menna Agha gives voice to the Nubian bonds of kinship that survive the crossing of vast territories between Sudan and Egypt, a practice which rejects borders, ruptures and distances; Congolese novelist, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, reads to us from his novel Tram 83, “on trains that have lost all sense of time”; South African writer, Hedley Twidle, shares his journey of traversing the N2 on foot, South Africa’s longest highway; and Ghanaian researcher, Kuukuwa Manful, talks to us of the absences in architectural histories of the African continent.

HOW MIGHT THE GLOBAL SWAHILI WORLDS REFRAME OUR THINKING OF CONNECTIONS ACCROSS WATERS?

In this episode, Kenyan novelist, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, discusses the deep histories of the Swahili seas and the research that led to her novel Dragonfly Sea (2019); Zanzibari architectural student, Halima Ali, reads the work of Haji Gora Haji, a Zanzibari poet and seafarer who could navigate from Zanzibar to Yemen through the recitation of poem-maps; and visual artist Meghna Singh, draws us into the invisible world of mobile populations immersed in new forms of economic servitude at sea at the docks in Cape Town.

WHAT PERSONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES EMERGE VIA INFRASTRUCTURES OF MOBILITY?

In this episode, Egyptian architect and researcher, Menna Agha gives voice to the Nubian bonds of kinship that survive the crossing of vast territories between Sudan and Egypt, a practice which rejects borders, ruptures and distances; Congolese novelist, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, reads to us from his novel Tram 83, “on trains that have lost all sense of time”; South African writer, Hedley Twidle, shares his journey of traversing the N2 on foot, South Africa’s longest highway; and Ghanaian researcher, Kuukuwa Manful, talks to us of the absences in architectural histories of the African continent.

WHAT DO LINES OF FLIGHT REVEAL OF OUR SHARED PLANETARY FUTURES?

In this episode Zimbabwean architectural designer and researcher, Thandi Loewenson, digs through filmic and sonic archives and the speculative histories of ‘Black flight’; South African architect and scholar, Ilze Wolff, travels from Cape Town to Nagasaki in search of health, care and Black peace on earth; and composer Victor Gama, speaks to us about tracing the line from Thomas More’s Utopia to apartheid South Africa’s nuclear programme in the unfinished work of Angolan anthropologist, Augusto Zita.  

Fiston Mwanza Mujila was born in Lubumbashi, Democratic Republic of the Congo, in 1981, and writes poetry, prose, and theatre. Mujila lives in Graz, where he teaches African literature at Universität Graz and works with musicians in Austria on various projects. His first novel Tram 83 was longlisted for the Man Booker International Prize and the Prix du Monde, and was awarded the Etisalat Prize for Literature and the Internationaler Literaturpreis from Der Haus der Kulturen der Welt.

Hedley Twidle is a writer, teacher and researcher based at the University of Cape Town. His essay collection, Firepool: Experiences in an Abnormal World, was published by Kwela Books in 2017. Experiments with Truth, a study of narrative non-fiction and the South African transition, appeared in the African Articulation series from James Currey in 2019.

︎: @hedley.twidle

HOW ARE LARGER HISTORIES OF NON-ALIGNMENT, ANTI-COLONIAL REVOLT AND PAN-AFRICANISM INSCRIBED INTO THE LANDSCAPE?

In this episode Sudanese writer, Jamal Mahjoub reads to us from “Rumble in the Nile”, which chronicles the early years of promise heralded by Jaafar Nimeiry’s ascent to power in Sudan in 1969; And Egyptian documentary filmmaker, Jihan el-Tahri, questions why we date African independence to Ghana in 1957 as opposed to the Egyptian revolution of 1952.

HOW ARE LARGER HISTORIES OF NON-ALIGNMENT, ANTI-COLONIAL REVOLT AND PAN-AFRICANISM INSCRIBED INTO THE LANDSCAPE?

In this episode Sudanese writer, Jamal Mahjoub reads to us from “Rumble in the Nile”, which chronicles the early years of promise heralded by Jaafar Nimeiry’s ascent to power in Sudan in 1969; And Egyptian documentary filmmaker, Jihan el-Tahri, questions why we date African independence to Ghana in 1957 as opposed to the Egyptian revolution of 1952.

THE ARCHIVE IS A PORTAL FOR REIMAGINATION

In this episode, Huda Tayob speaks to Jumoke Sanwo (Nigeria) and Ali Al-Adawy (Egypt) on questions of archives, untranslatability, and opacity. Jumoke Sanwo discusses the importance of confronting history and the colonial baggage of dispossession and points to ways of engaging constructively with the ‘now’ by thinking with and through performance and the body-as-archive. Ali al-Adawy talks to his interest in the relationship between archives, cinema, and contemporary art practices. He suggests that we might think of the archive as an imaginary space of possibility, drawing on the work of Egyptian artist Hassan Khan and the Egyptian rapper Wegz.

WHAT PERSONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES EMERGE VIA INFRASTRUCTURES. OF MOBILITY?

In this episode, Egyptian architect and researcher, Menna Agha gives voice to the Nubian bonds of kinship that survive the crossing of vast territories between Sudan and Egypt, a practice which rejects borders, ruptures and distances; Congolese novelist, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, reads to us from his novel Tram 83, “on trains that have lost all sense of time”; South African writer, Hedley Twidle, shares his journey of traversing the N2 on foot, South Africa’s longest highway; and Ghanaian researcher, Kuukuwa Manful, talks to us of the absences in architectural histories of the African continent.

WHAT REMAINS OF THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IDEAS THAT IMAGINED THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AS THE ‘UTOPIA OF A BORDERLESS WORLD’?

In this episode, Ghanaian architect and scholar, Kuukuwa Manful reflects on the place of minor histories in deepening our understanding of Pan-Africanism; Nigerian writer, Emmanuel Iduma, shares an excerpt from A Stranger’s Pose (2018), and his search of an atlas of a borderless world; and Egyptian sociologist, Sara Salem, unravels the workings of coloniality and capital from the vantage point of the sky in a reading of her essay Fractured Flights (2020).

HOW MIGHT THE GLOBAL SWAHILI WORLDS REFRAME OUR THINKING OF CONNECTIONS ACCROSS WATERS?

In this episode, Kenyan novelist, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, discusses the deep histories of the Swahili seas and the research that led to her novel Dragonfly Sea (2019); Zanzibari architectural student, Halima Ali, reads the work of Haji Gora Haji, a Zanzibari poet and seafarer who could navigate from Zanzibar to Yemen through the recitation of poem-maps; and visual artist Meghna Singh, draws us into the invisible world of mobile populations immersed in new forms of economic servitude at sea at the docks in Cape Town.

WHAT PERSONAL AND POLITICAL HISTORIES EMERGE VIA INFRASTRUCTURES. OF MOBILITY?

In this episode, Egyptian architect and researcher, Menna Agha gives voice to the Nubian bonds of kinship that survive the crossing of vast territories between Sudan and Egypt, a practice which rejects borders, ruptures and distances; Congolese novelist, Fiston Mwanza Mujila, reads to us from his novel Tram 83, “on trains that have lost all sense of time”; South African writer, Hedley Twidle, shares his journey of traversing the N2 on foot, South Africa’s longest highway; and Ghanaian researcher, Kuukuwa Manful, talks to us of the absences in architectural histories of the African continent.

HOW MIGHT WE TRACE THE AFTERLIVES OF THE TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE ROUTES OF THE 8TH CENTURY?

In this final episode, Moroccan writer and translator, Omar Berrada, excavates the deep histories of his once enslaved great, great grandmother; Nigerian scholar, Moshood Mahmood Jimba, retraces the journey from Ilorin to Timbuktu that inspired him to establish a manuscript archival research group in Nigeria; Moroccan musician Amino Belyamani, speaks to us of the healing purposes of Gnawa music in Morocco and speculates on the deep relationship to Ewe music from Ghana. Omar Berrada extends special thanks to M'barek Bouhchichi, Hatim Belyamani, and NourbeSe Philip.

HOW MIGHT WE TRACE THE AFTERLIVES OF THE TRANS-SAHARAN TRADE ROUTES OF THE 8TH CENTURY?

In this final episode, Moroccan writer and translator, Omar Berrada, excavates the deep histories of his once enslaved great, great grandmother; Nigerian scholar, Moshood Mahmood Jimba, retraces the journey from Ilorin to Timbuktu that inspired him to establish a manuscript archival research group in Nigeria; Moroccan musician Amino Belyamani, speaks to us of the healing purposes of Gnawa music in Morocco and speculates on the deep relationship to Ewe music from Ghana. Omar Berrada extends special thanks to M'barek Bouhchichi, Hatim Belyamani, and NourbeSe Philip.

ART IN TIMES OF CRISIS

In this episode, Bongani Kona speaks to Princess Zinzi Mhlongo (South Africa), Eric ‘1 Key’ Ngangare (Rwanda) and Omnia Abbas Shawkat (Sudan) about producing art in troubled times. The conversation moves between the DRC, Rwanda, Sudan, and South Africa, raising the difficulties of war and its remnants, and the experience of coming of age in a time of great turmoil. It points to the importance of telling stories that contest history and statehood, discusses forms of silence and organised forgetting, and questions what it means to produce work that can contend with the violence of our times.

ART IN TIMES OF CRISIS

In this episode, Bongani Kona speaks to Princess Zinzi Mhlongo (South Africa), Eric ‘1 Key’ Ngangare (Rwanda) and Omnia Abbas Shawkat (Sudan) about producing art in troubled times. The conversation moves between the DRC, Rwanda, Sudan, and South Africa, raising the difficulties of war and its remnants, and the experience of coming of age in a time of great turmoil. It points to the importance of telling stories that contest history and statehood, discusses forms of silence and organised forgetting, and questions what it means to produce work that can contend with the violence of our times.

WHAT REMAINS OF THE POLITICAL AND CULTURAL IDEAS THAT IMAGINED THE AFRICAN CONTINENT AS THE ‘UTOPIA OF A BORDERLESS WORLD’?

In this episode, Ghanaian architect and scholar, Kuukuwa Manful reflects on the place of minor histories in deepening our understanding of Pan-Africanism; Nigerian writer, Emmanuel Iduma, shares an excerpt from A Stranger’s Pose (2018), and his search of an atlas of a borderless world; and Egyptian sociologist, Sara Salem, unravels the workings of coloniality and capital from the vantage point of the sky in a reading of her essay Fractured Flights (2020).

WHAT DO LINES OF FLIGHT REVEAL OF OUR SHARED PLANETARY FUTURES?

n this episode Zimbabwean architectural designer and researcher, Thandi Loewenson, digs through filmic and sonic archives and the speculative histories of ‘Black flight’; South African architect and scholar, Ilze Wolff, travels from Cape Town to Nagasaki in search of health, care and Black peace on earth; and composer Victor Gama, speaks to us about tracing the line from Thomas More’s Utopia to apartheid South Africa’s nuclear programme in the unfinished work of Angolan anthropologist, Augusto Zita.

WHAT DO LINES OF FLIGHT REVEAL OF OUR SHARED PLANETARY FUTURES?

In this episode Zimbabwean architectural designer and researcher, Thandi Loewenson, digs through filmic and sonic archives and the speculative histories of ‘Black flight’; South African architect and scholar, Ilze Wolff, travels from Cape Town to Nagasaki in search of health, care and Black peace on earth; and composer Victor Gama, speaks to us about tracing the line from Thomas More’s Utopia to apartheid South Africa’s nuclear programme in the unfinished work of Angolan anthropologist, Augusto Zita.

HOW MIGHT THE GLOBAL SWAHILI WORLDS REFRAME OUR THINKING OF CONNECTIONS ACCROSS WATERS?

In this episode, Kenyan novelist, Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor, discusses the deep histories of the Swahili seas and the research that led to her novel Dragonfly Sea (2019); Zanzibari architectural student, Halima Ali, reads the work of Haji Gora Haji, a Zanzibari poet and seafarer who could navigate from Zanzibar to Yemen through the recitation of poem-maps; and visual artist Meghna Singh, draws us into the invisible world of mobile populations immersed in new forms of economic servitude at sea at the docks in Cape Town.