How Does The World Breathe Now? – Film as Witness, Archive, and Political Tool

The catalogue of the 13th edition of the Rencontres de Bamako - African Biennale of Photography, focusing on multiplicity, difference, becoming, and heritage.

The dominant narrative in this "globalized world" is, incidentally, that of singularity—of universalism, of single identities, of singular cultures, of insular political systems. With this narrative, however, comes an illusory sense of stability and stasis; identities seem inalterable, cultures are immutable, political systems prove uneasy in the face of change. Thus, in sustaining this pervasive discourse, there has been a great loss of multiplicity, of fragmentation, of process and change, and not least of complex notions of humanity and equally complex narratives.

In decentering this year's biennale On Multiplicity, Difference, Becoming, and Heritage, General Director Cheick Diallo, Artistic Director Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, and the curatorial team—Akinbode Akinbiyi (artist and independent curator), Meriem Berrada (Artistic Director, MACAAL, Marrakech), Tandazani Dhlakama (Assistant Curator, Zeitz MOCAA, Cape Town, South Africa), and Liz Ikiriko (artist and Assistant Curator, Art Gallery of York University, Toronto)—of the Bamako Encounters pay a powerful tribute to the spaces in between, to that which defies definition, to phases of transition, to being this and that or neither and both, to becoming, and to difference and divergence in all their shades. Accordingly, Amadou Hampâté Bâ's statement (Aspects de la civilisation africaine, Éditions Présence Africaine, 1972) presiding over the manifestation, Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono,translates to, "the persons of the person are multiple in the person."

A key tool for negotiating the processual and shifting nature of multiplicity lies in storytelling. It is the central medium through which humanity points the lens on itself and launches an attempt at self-understanding and reflection, and the breadth of answers given throughout history testifies to the congenial nature of storytelling and multiplicity. Moreover, the stories we tell not only negotiate who we are but also expose underlying currents of who we will become in the future. This is the concern lying at the heart of the 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters—the stories we tell, the multiple facets of humanity we accommodate, notions of processuality, becoming in being, embracing identities that are layered, fragmented, and divergent, and the multifarious ways of being in the world, whether enacted or imagined. It should be emphasized that this does not apply only to questions of personal identity. On the contrary, it is a bold affirmation of transformation and transition, of becoming in an emphatic sense, and is thus equally significant for state politics. It also rings true for questions of heritage/patrimony. Embracing the kaleidoscopic legacy of our multiple heritages means to open them up and liberate the term "patrimony" from its etymological roots (the Latin patrimonium means "the heritage of the father"), imagining in its place an inclusive concept of matrimony.

Thus, in this 13th edition of the Bamako Encounters with the title Maa ka Maaya ka ca a yere kono, artists, curators, scholars, activists, and people of all walks of life are invited to reflect collectively on these multiplicities of being and differences, on expanding beyond the notion of a single being, and on embracing compound, layered and fragmented identities as much as layered, complex, non-linear understandings of space(s) and time(s).

Published following the 13th edition of the Rencontres de Bamako - African Biennale of Photography, in Bamako, Mali, in 2022.

With Saïd Afifi, Ixmucané Aguilar, Baff Akoto, Annie-Marie Akussah, Américo Hunguana, Daoud Aoulad-Syad, Leo Asemota, Myriam Omar Awadi, Salih Basheer, Shiraz Bayjoo, Amina Benbouchta, Hakim Benchekroun, Maria Magdalena Campos Pons, Rehema Chachage, Ulier Costa-Santos, Adama Delphine Fawundu, Fatoumata Diabaté, Aicha Diallo, Amsatou Diallo, Anna Binta Diallo, Mélissa Oummou Diallo, Nene Aïssatou Diallo, Binta Diaw, Adji Dieye, Imane Djamil, Sènami Donoumassou, Abdessamad El Montassir, Fairouz El Tom, Luvuyo Equiano Nyawose, Raisa Galofre, Raisa Galofre, Joy Gregory, Gherdai Hassell, Thembinkosi Hlatshwayo, Letitia Huckaby, Anique Jordan, Gladys Kalechini, Hamedine Kane, Atiyyah Khan, Gulshan Khan, Seif Kousmate, Mohammed Laouli, Maya Louhichi, Mallory Lowe Mpoka, Nourhan Maayouf, Marie-Claire Messouma Manlanbien, Botembe Moseka Maïté, Louisa Marajo, Clarita Maria, Billie McTernan, Mónica de Miranda, Arsène Mpiana Monkwe, Sethembile Msezane, Ebti Nabag, Elijah Ndoumbe, Lucia Nhamo, Samuel Nja Kwa, Nyancho NwaNri, Jo Ractcliffe, Adee Roberson, Fethi Sahraoui, Muhammad Salah, Neville Starling, Eve Tagny, René Tavares, Sackitey Tesa, Helena Uambembe, David Uzochukwu, Sofia Yala, Timothy Yanick Hunter.

The Forgive Us Our Trespasses Reader explores radical and emancipatory significations and fabulations of trespassing, turning towards practices that transgress and reshape the boundaries of, among other dimensions, currency, governance, religion, spirituality, language, and artificial intelligence.

Complementing the thematic concerns of the exhibition of the same name, this collection of essays, poems, artistic contributions, and a sermon, conceptually maps the distance between the English word "trespasses"—with its double meaning of to sin or to physically tread—and the German word "Schuld"—referring to sin and guilt but with etymological proximities to debt (Schulden). Deviating from the line of prayer that lends the project its name, the contributors do not ask for forgiveness for the various trespasses they elucidate—be they religious, social, class-related, national, sexual, or disciplinary in nature—but rather assert them as modes of transgression, as forms of rebellion, and as possibilities for transcendence.

Published on the occasion of the eponymous exhibition at Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Berlin, in 2024.

Contributions by Victoria Adukwei Bulley, Egidija Čiricaitė, Yásnaya Elena Aguilar Gil, Toussaint M. Kafarhire, Mansour Ciss Kanakassy, Chao Tayiana Maina, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Tavia Nyong’o, Mary Louise Pratt, Josefine Rauch, Deborah A. Thomas, Senthuran Varatharajah, Yuanwen Zhong.

Who claims abstraction? What are the limits of abstraction? Are statelessness, dislocation and feelings of (un) belonging embodiments of an abstracted self that is in itself a work in progress? How could performance art—an artistic practice that places significant importance on presence and legibility of form—transgress into the realm of the abstract and the illegible in an effort to protect the artist’s likeness while shedding light on what it means to be in their body in relation to this world?

Chipo Chipaziwa’s My Mother My Home establishes itself as a query on the aspects of belonging and the artist’s own personhood that acts as the foundation of her practice. The question of where one’s personhood begins and ends within an artwork has appeared to be ever prevalent within the realm of visual art and is more relevant within the canon of performance art.

Writers: Chipo Chipaziwa, Denise Ferreira Da Silva, Olumoroti George
Contributing Artists: Margaret Joba-Woodruff, Sophia Lapres, and David Ezra Wang
Edited by Katrina Geotjen

To Navigate Backward: Resonating with Zapatismo a book-within-a-book, the first of three mouvements (as in a musical composition) is a collection of essays titled When the Roots Start Moving: Chto Delat and Free Home University—investigating predicaments of rootedness and rootlessness and notions of belonging and of displacement across different geographical and epistemological coordinates.

Zapatismo—the insurgent movement of Indigenous peoples from Mexico—emerges as a form of belonging, a home (or a homecoming) for our hopes and political imaginaries, providing a praxis to learn from and with. The contributors of this book, without romanticizing or objectifying the Zapatista struggle toward Autonomy, offer their understanding of the Zapatistas' movement, of their poetics and politics within an Indigenous cosmovision and cosmopolitics, but also in relation with the current global ecological and social crises.

The book extend the research and practice of artistic collective Chto Delat, long since adopting Zapatismo as a lens to self-reflect and emblematically reminding of how the Zapatista imaginary continues to inspire those who are looking for emancipatory tools: through art, language, radical pedagogy and conviviality, as a practice of commoning and collectively reimagining an otherwise.

To Navigate Backward: Resonating with Zapatismo is a small act of reciprocity—in preparation for the Zapatistas' visit to the European continent, a gesture of solidarity with those who, with fierce care, leave their homes to reverse imposed trajectories, to look in the same direction and share a common horizon.

The conversation hosted in this book by Free Home University will continue in the following two mouvements—Between Displacement and Belonging and Motherlands/Mother Earth.

The collective Chto Delat (What is to be done?) was founded in early 2003 in St. Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from St. Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism. Chto Delat sees itself as an artistic cell and also as a community organizer for a variety of cultural activities intent on politicizing "knowledge production". The activity of collective takes responsibility for a postsocialist condition and actualization of forgetten and repressed potentiality of Soviet past and often works as a politics of commemoration. From its inception, the collective has been publishing an English-Russian newspaper focused on the urgent issues of Russian cultural politics, in dialogue with the international context. In 2013, Chto Delat initiated an educational platform—School of Engaged Art in Petersburg and also provides resources for a space called Rosa's House of Culture.

Free Home University exists at the crossroad of engaged art, experimental pedagogy, and political commitment since 2014. Based in Lecce (Italy), FHU has been carrying out artistic investigations and processes of convivial research, engaging with communities of struggle and practice. Artists, farmers, activists, asylum seekers, scholars, thinkers and doers collectively inform learning spaces, through living, studying, and creating together.

A transdisciplinary investigation and a choreographic performance, between Umeå and Oslo, about ecological grief, cultural panic, and a feeling of collapse.

How to Die – Inopiné is a performance and a practice. It thinks through, in an embodied manner, the prevailing contemporary moods of ecological grief, cultural panic, and collapse. As a performance in a theater or outdoors, an audience encounters five dancers who are constantly building, unbuilding, and rebuilding. Afterwards, stories are told around a bonfire. As a practice in the studio, school, or street, a group of dancers, artists, writers, and architects meet for a year of residencies between Oslo and Umeå. They host a working process and encounter external informants. The goal is to displace oneself into the unexpected. This publication, two years in the making, engages with the challenges of translating a choreographic process into the space of a book. It both documents the project's development as well as offering the reader-doer different modes of thinking-doing, from somatic practices to proposals for a curriculum. Experiments in writing, mapping, and moving are played with, all engaging with the question, "what is the future of displaced thinking?"

Published following the series of eponymous events held in Umeå, Oslo, Bergen, Trondheim and Reykjavik in 2019-2020.

Contributions by Harald Becharie, Mia Habib, Jassem Hindi, Asher Lev, Marie Kraft Selze, Namik Mačkić, Ingeborg Olerud, Anna Pehrsson, Ashkan Sepahvand, Nina Wollny.

A manifesto for the decolonization of art book fairs and publishing.

Can we decolonize art book fairs? Can we decentralize knowledge and deconstruct privilege in our contexts? Decolonizing Art Book Fairs aims to rethink through the existing and speculative frameworks of organizational practice in the art book fairs. This workbook attempts to introduce new narratives and help deconstruct the frontiers between north(s) and south(s), putting an emphasis on practitioners and initiatives from the African continent and diaspora. A workbook with (primarily newly commissioned) texts and interviews.

Contributions by Jean-Claude Awono, Yaiza Camps, Chayet Chiénin, Chimurenga, Renata Felinto, Wanjeri Gakuru, Moritz Grünke, Aryan Kaganof, Sharlene Khan, Grada Kilomba, Carla Lever, Fouad Asfour, Dzekashu MacViban, Gladys Mendía, James Murua, Tinashe Mushakavanhu, Simon Njami, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, Monica Nkodo, O Menelick 2Ato, Pascale Obolo, Michalis Pichler, Mario Pissarra, Sergio Raimundo, Djimeli Raoul, Flurina Rothenberger, Bienvenu Sene, Bisi Silva, Kwanele Sosibo, Parfait Tabapsi, Louise Umutoni, Zamân Books & Curating.

Cet ouvrage se compose de « leçons » pour tenter d’anticiper les contre-feux institutionnels et se confronter aux effets qui accompagnent l’offre amoureuse d’une décolonisation de façade. Essayer de comprendre pourquoi ces stratégies trouvent des prises particulières dans le contexte français et montrer comment elles composent le chemin le plus sûr pour la poursuite – et même la nouvelle peau – de l’économie néolibérale.

Olivier Marbœuf est auteur, poète, performeur. Il a été directeur artistique du centre d’art l’Espace Khiasma. À travers ses multiples expériences et sa connaissance des milieux artistiques et culturels, il analyse les chantiers actuels de décolonisation de ces espaces.

« Et ensuite quand le calme est revenu, plantez à la place une femme noire qui lève le poing, même un instant, comme pour faire semblant. Une femme noire fera le job, avec le poing levé, c’est mieux, c’est cool. » Écho ou fantôme de Suites décoloniales, ce recueil de poésie prolonge et complète les chemins parcourus par Olivier Marboeuf dans son essai, au moyen de ce que l’auteur appelle une « pratique théorique de la poésie ».

Fragments de mauvaises rencontres, haïkus sur le beat accéléré d’un train, hommages à la banlieue chérie, Olivier Marboeuf se fait conteur polyphonique, poreux au monde et dépositaire des histoires étendues et vues dans de multiples nuits.