T H R E E I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R Y F E S T I VA L S JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA
L AG O S N I G E R I A
N A I R O B I K E N YA
28 OCT - 1 NOV 2015 W W W. G O E T H E . D E /A F R I C A N F U T U R E S
PROGRAMME
W W W. G O E T H E . D E /A F R I C A N F U T U R E S
28 OCT - 1 NOV 2015
admission to all events is free of charge, unless otherwise stated
Nnedi Okorafor, Lauren Beukes, Leif Randt, Binyavanga Wainaina Book Readings: Nnedi Okorafor: Who fears death?, The Book of Phoenix Lauren Beukes: Zoo City, Slipping Leif Randt: Planet Magnon followed by the panel: Narratives in Science Fiction Literature Moderator: Binyavanga Wainaina
Wed Oct 28 • 18.30 - 21.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD Award-winning writers Nnedi Okorafor (Nigeria/USA), Lauren Beukes (South Africa), Leif Randt (Germany) and Binyavanga Wainaina (Kenya) will participate in the opening event of the programme African Futures. Each writer will be reading excerpts from their work: Nnedi Okorafor from her novel Who Fears Death, which won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel, as well as the follow-up prequel The Book of Phoenix that was released in May 2015 to much critical acclaim. Lauren Beukes selected the award winning Zoo City as well as the recent short story Slipping about a girl from Gugulethu competing in an extreme games tournament where anything goes set in Karachi, while Leif Randt will read from his latest novel Planet Magnon, which imagines a world where humans become pawns of the machine, an evolutionary antiquity. Binyavanga Wainaina, one of the most prolific and outspoken writers in Africa today, leads the panel discussion on current and future narratives in science fiction literature.
THU Oct 29 - SAT OCT 31 • 10.00 - 17.00 DAILY Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD Ever since Palmer Luckey launched his Kickstarter crowdfunding campaign for the Oculus Rift in 2012, people have been buzzing with excitement about the new wave of Virtual Reality. VR provides a visceral, immersive, 360 degree experience and gives the person wearing the headset the feeling of being there in the film, game or interactive experience. It has been called an “empathy machine” for this reason, allowing people to feel a sense of connection with others and to feel like they are in someone else’s world for a moment. Filmmakers and artists are already experimenting with VR, using both animation and live-action to explore what this empathy machine can do.
New Dimensions A Virtual Reality Exhibition
All directors will join for a Q&A’s after their film’s screening.
Tickets: R45 bookINGS: www.thebioscope.co.za
(Johannesburg, São Paulo, New York) Johannesburg: Speakers: Kodwo Eshun (tbc), Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Moderator: Rike Sitas São Paulo: Speakers: Viny Rodrigues, Leda Martins Moderator: Daniel Lima New York: Speakers: TBC MODERATOR: ADRIENNE EDWARDS
Technology: Means or curse of the future?
FRI OCT 30 • 10.00 - 13.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD
Raimi Gbadamosi, Tegan Bristow, Jonathan Dotse, Wanuri Kahiu, Arthur Goldstuck
Technology in its current form (and particularly the representation of technology) is widely produced in the West. At the same time, much of today’s technological innovation, production and repurposing happen in other parts of the world, including Africa. Is this the next technological revolution in the making?
Discover this exciting new medium and get to know new languages of expression, storytelling and audience experience. This exhibition, curated by Ingrid Kopp and Steven Markovitz, is a chance to experience some recent VR projects from all over the world, while the VR space is still in an expansive, experimental stage. What might VR for an African Future look like?
Who owns technology and its embedded codes? When will we use software that’s written in Yoruba? And what’s the story with Ghanaian cyberpunk?
Raimi Gbadamosi (Nigeria/UK), artist and professor of Fine Arts at the WITS School of Arts in Johannesburg, Tegan Bristow (South Africa), lecturer at the Digital Arts School at WITS University and curator of the exhibition Post-African Futures, Jonathan Dotse (Ghana), author of the blog Afrocyberpunk and Wanuri Kahiu (Kenya), filmmaker of the award-winning movie Pumzi that imagines a future in Kenya where water resources are scarce, will join in this panel. It is moderated by the writer, analyst and technology commentator Arthur Goldstuck.
Knowledge Production: where do we go from here? Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Keziah Jones, Ntone Edjabe, Achille Mbembe, Molemo Moiloa
Jean-Pierre Bekolo, Sherif Adel, Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum, Faustin Linyekula, Sean O’Toole
What kind of speculative futures do artists from different disciplines imagine? Much thought-provoking work has been produced when artists engage with ideas of the future and how contemporary realities in Africa potentially provide answers to questions yet to come. As Ntone Edjabe, curatorial board member of African Futures and editor of the Chimurenga Chronic remarked, “living in Nairobi right now is science fiction”.
Kapwani Kiwanga Afrogalactica: The Deep Space Scrolls
While the world embraces information as both resource and currency, Africa is busy working on telling its story and imagining that story’s future. Will this shift the way in which we think about information or data? Can fiction be a more accurate vehicle for telling the truth than news reports? And whose voices, whether relaying information or telling stories, will be heard?
One of the notable aspects of Mashumi’s work as a curator is the location of her shows. “I show mainly in Soweto, which is still unusual. I want to bring contemporary art to Soweto and the people who live in Soweto; to show that it is for everyone.”
Exhibition Opening and Walkabout
See Africa
(Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi & Zanele Mashumi)
The exhibition Mashumi is curating for African Futures will be held in a pop-up gallery in Dube. She is specifically interested in finding and promoting young artists portraying the continent, and their own identity, with sensitivity and complexity. “I see myself as part of a new generation of curators,” Mashumi says. “I need to find ways to assist young artists navigate the industry. The value of African art is set to continue rising globally. Within this context, I see my role partly as working to ensure the just representation of Africa and Africanness.” The See Africa exhibition is part of the project MULTIPLIER.
The panel sees contributions from Jean-Pierre Bekolo, award-winning film-maker from Cameroon, including the first African lesbian sci-fi movie Les Saignantes, Sherif Adel, Egyptian graphic novelist, fine artist Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum from Botswana, based in Johannesburg and Faustin Linyekula, internationally renowned choreographer, based in Kinsangani/DRC. Participants will be discussing their own artistic work, as well as their views on African futures. The panel will be moderated by journalist and writer Sean O’Toole.
Walkabout: Raimi Gbadamosi They Came From Outer Space, an exhibition curated by Raimi Gbadamosi, deals with questions regarding conceptions of Africa and the Future. According to Gbadamosi: “The idea of science and technology sits uncomfortably alongside general perceptions of Africa as ‘a place out of time’”. Technology in Africa is firmly placed in an indigenous past, in order not to disturb ideas of “superior” Western modernity, which is maintained as part of systematic domination. Technological developments in antiquity on the continent, including for instance those evidenced by the Benin Bronzes, the Pyramids, Great Zimbabwe, etc, has often been explained by Western sources in terms of the arrival of foreign influence, including terrestrial, celestial, or from “Outer Space”. Works of art still survive in a system ratified by global discourses, and practitioners’ works are treated differently within global technological discourses that justify “taste”, as much as “value”.
“If you want to have any idea of the world that is coming, the world ahead of us, look at Africa!” Achille Mbembe From Lagos to Nairobi to Johannesburg, the continent is giving answers to global questions of the future. What might various African futures look like? How do artists and academics imagine this future? And what forms and narratives of science fiction have African artists developed? These are some of the questions addressed by the project “African Futures”, organized by the GoetheInstitut from 28 October to 31 October 2015. Three concurrent interdisciplinary festivals taking place in Johannesburg/ South Africa, Lagos/Nigeria and Nairobi/Kenya will be exploring the future, following potential narratives and artistic expression in literature, fine arts, performance, music, film, and various digital formats. Before and during the festival, the Tumblr www.goethe.de/africanfutures will explore some of the many facets of African Futures, including Black Feminism, Indigenous Knowledge Systems and Knowledge Production in Africa.
THU Oct 29 • 15.00 - 16.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD
They came from outer space
Who generates knowledge about Africa? How do past, present and future collide in representations of the continent? And what are the different languages we use to speak about Africa’s political, technological and cultural tomorrow?
Zanele Mashumi is a young curator who is responding to the needs of a new generation of South African artists. She is the founder of Mashumi Art Projects – a company that specialises in pop-up exhibitions, consulting and organising art forums.
The trilogy itself starts in 2011 with Afrogalactica: a brief history of the future. In the first part of the story, Kiwanga establishes her connection to Afrofuturism as a Black movement for emancipation and futurist projection which was born in the 20th century in the United States of America. At the exact opposite on the spatiotemporal grid, The Deep Space Scrolls goes back to the origins of Africa’s affinity with science, astronomy and the fantasy realm of the future. This is Kiwanga’s archaeological dig – which she contrasts with another mythological construct: the fantasy world of Hollywood.
Sat Oct 31 • 10.00 - 13.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD
Sat Oct 31 • 16.30 - 18.00 1354 Mncube Drive, Dube 1852, Soweto
Afrogalactica: The Deep Space Scrolls (2014) is the third and last chapter of a series of performances. Kiwanga borrows from Science Fiction and History, playing an anthropologist from the future. Her character lives in 2100 in the United States of Africa – a Confederation created in 2058 (100 years after the first declaration of independence by an African country – Ghana) – but has travelled back to our time to tell us about the Afronaut Odyssey.
THU Oct 29 • 10.00 - 13.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD
The circum-atlantic conference will bring together speakers in Johannesburg, São Paulo and New York, to discuss these issues via live video conference. The intention is to create an international debate that emerges at the local level and opens up global avenues of thought and reflection. Speakers include Kodwo Eshun of the prolific Otolith Group, based in London, Cameroonian Bonaventure Ndikung, founder and curator of the Berlin based SAVVY Contemporary art space and Adrienne Edwards, curator, scholar, and writer with a focus on artists of the African diaspora and the global South. They will be joined by Viny Rodriguez, Sociologist and member of Sistema Negro, and Leda Martins, poet and essayist, both from São Paulo.
Artist Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, based in Johannesburg, Nigerian musician Keziah Jones, founder and editor of the Chimurenga Chronic Ntone Edjabe, based in Cape Town and Afropolitan author and critic Achille Mbembe, based in Johannesburg, will team up to discuss current conditions and possible ways forward. The panel is moderated by Molemo Moiloa, head of the Visual Art Network South Africa.
Fri Oct 30 • 16.00 - 17.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD
Africa’s speculative futures and new imaginaries
Afrofuturism, arguably the most famous concept of speculative futures of the African diaspora, originated primarily in the USA, and is associated with artists such as Sun Ra, George Clinton and Octavia Butler. Envisaging a future and presenting this impulse was considered a symbol of liberation. How do contemporary artists and intellectuals of the African diaspora in North and South America, as well as Europe, envision their future today?
N A I R O B I K E N YA
Narratives in Science Fiction Literature
The Future of the African Diaspora
FRI OCT 30 • 19.00 - 21.00 Goethe-Institut JHB. 119 JAN SMUTS AVE. PARKWOOD
L AG O S N I G E R I A
With Directors present 17.00: Les Saignantes (Jean-Pierre Bekolo) 20.00: Afronauts (Frances Bodomo), Crumbs (Miguel Llanso)
The film programme of African Futures, co-curated by Steven Markovitz and the Goethe-Institut, and shown at the Bioscope Independent Cinema, interrogates different filmic visions of the future of Africa. The first screening on Thursday 29 October includes Afronauts by Ghanaian film-maker Frances Bodomo, award winning Crumbs, a Spanish-Ethiopian production set in a surreal post-apocalyptic Ethiopian landscape, and Les Saignantes, hailed as the first African lesbian sci-fi movie by renowned film-maker Jean-Pierre Bekolo.
Circumatlantic Conference:
T H R E E I N T E R D I S C I P L I N A R Y F E S T I VA L S
Les Saignantes, Afronauts & Crumbs.
THU Oct 29 • 17.00 - 21.30 The Bioscope, 286 Fox Street, Johannesburg, 2094
JOHANNESBURG SOUTH AFRICA
Film Programme:
Film Screenings:
Homecoming, Pumzi, The Future Sound of Mzansi 19.00: Homecoming (Jim Chuchu), Pumzi (Wanuri Kahiu). Tickets: R25 20.00: The Future Sound of Mzansi (Lebogang Rasethaba). Tickets: R45 bookINGS: www.thebioscope.co.za
FRI OCT 30 • 17.00 - 21.30 The Bioscope, 286 Fox Street, Johannesburg, 2094 The film programme of African Futures, co-curated by Steven Markovitz and the Goethe-Institut and shown at the Bioscope Independent Cinema, interrogates different filmic visions of the future of Africa. At the second screening on Friday 30 October, Pumzi by Kenyan film maker Wanuri Kahiu, and Homecoming by Jim Chuchu from Kenya will together paint a kaleidoscope of images of future scenarios on the African continent. They will be complemented by the documentary Future Sound of Mzansi by Spoek Mathambo and Lebohang Rasethaba.
African Futures Music Concert & Party Spoek Mathambo, Keziah Jones, Just A Band, Gato Preto Tickets COST R120 AND ARE AVAILABLE ON WWW.QUICKET.CO.ZA
Sat Oct 31st • 21.00 - LATE Alex Theatre, 36 Stiemens Street, Johannesburg, 2000 Nigerian musician Keziah Jones, South African Spoek Mathambo, Kenya’s Just A Band and German duo Gato Preto will join for an evening of music and the closing party of African Futures. Each of them will be performing music that relates to the theme of African Futures. Keziah Jones, Nigerian singer-songwriter and guitarist, who accompanied Lenny Kravitz on his world tour, will present music from his latest album Captain Rugged, which was accompanied by a graphic novel, about the adventures of an African superhero. Just A Band, whose self-produced sound has been described as an eclectic, soulful, funky trip, will bring their D.I.Y. aesthetic that extends to their music videos, which have become internet sensations in their own right. Spoek Mathambo, South African musician, DJ and film-maker will present his vision of Afrofuturism with an original set of music, specially created for African Futures, in collaboration with Aero Manyelo and a traditional music collective from Mozambique. Gato Preto, the German based music duo by Gata Misteriosa (Mozambique, Portugal) and Lee Bass (Ghana/ Germany), will perform their Mysterious Black Cat Project and from their new album, to be released in October 2015.
In a second stage in 2016, the most interesting outcomes of artistic positions and discourse elements will be part of an interdisciplinary festival at SAVVY Contemporary in Berlin.
#AFRICANFUTURES
African Futures is a project of the GoetheInstitut South Africa, funded by the GoetheInstitut and the TURN Fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation.