AFRICAN MOBILITIES 2.0

Release Schedule

Circulations

14 July #V1 K

AbdouMaliq Simone in conversation with Mpho Matsipa

AbdouMaliq Simone joins Mpho Matsipa in a discussion about urban life in the “majority world” as being a series of relations that are mediated through shifting registers of incalculability and invisibility. The conversation provides insight into the different modes of collective life--understood through movement, anticipation, strategy, and improvisation.

Inoperable Relations
20 July #V1 E1

Global Africa Lab (Mabel Wilson & Mario Gooden) in conversation with Justin Moore

Justin Garret Moore in conversation with Global Africa Lab co-directors, Prof. Mabel O. Wilson and Prof. Mario Gooden, discuss the history of racial geography in New York. The discussants engage concepts of blackness as a form of enclosure that operates alongside the immobilized black body--from redlining, to urban renewal and physical infrastructures of segregation, to the racial demography of COVID-19--but also [blackness] as a site of radical imagination.

Enclosure
27 July #V1 E2

Parenthesis (César Schofield Cardoso & Patricia Anahory) in conversation with Celeste Fortes

AbdouMaliq Simone joins Mpho Matsipa in a discussion about urban life in the “majority world” as being a series of relations that are mediated through shifting registers of incalculability and invisibility. The conversation provides insight into the different modes of collective life-understood through movement, anticipation, strategy, and improvisation.

Rabida
3 Aug #V1 E3

Jean-Charles Tall

Justin Garret Moore in conversation with Global Africa Lab co-directors, Prof. Mabel O. Wilson and Prof. Mario Gooden, discuss the history of racial geography in New York. The discussants engage concepts of blackness as a form of enclosure that operates alongside the immobilized black body--from redlining, to urban renewal and physical infrastructures of segregation, to the racial demography of COVID-19--but also [blackness] as a site of radical imagination.

Transmissions

Prototypes

17 Aug #V2 K

Sammy Baloji in conversation with Mpho Matsipa

Sammy Baloji, Emanuel Admassu, and Mpho Matsipa discuss the relations between colonialism, extractive practices, and environmental catastrophes in urban Africa. They explore how to think beyond the colonial archive and African material futures.

Extraction
24 Aug #V2 E1

Paula Nascimento in conversation with Maria João Teles-Grilo

Paula Nascimento and Maria João Teles-Grilo discuss the concept of the hizome as explored in the project Beyond Entropy Angola. They explore how ‘Rhizome’ can be understood as a methodology and generator for alternative interventions in the context of urban planning.

Rhizome
31 Aug #V2 E2

Doreen Adengo in conversation with Zaheer Cassim

Doreen Adengo and Zaheer Cassim discuss the impact of multidisciplinary collaboration as materialised in the representation processes and methods employed in the ‘3X3’ project, in which Adengo's team explored how Congolese traders and tailors transform the social, economic, and built environment in Kampala, Uganda.

Stop-Frame
7 Sep #V2 E3

Emanuel Admassu in conversation with Mpho Matsipa

Emanuel Admassu discusses his ongoing research project ‘Two Markets’ with Mpho Matsipa. He suggests that Kariakoo in Dar es Salaam and Merkato in Addis Ababa, offer fragmented portals into two sub-Saharan marketplaces, as sites where identities are constructed in urban marketplaces that are continually performing new interpretations of communality and mutuality in ever-shifting zoning systems.

Tapestry

Speculative Futures

14 Sep #V3 K

Jepchumba in conversation with Wale Lawal

Jepchumba and Wale Lawal discuss ‘virtual politics’ and digital space as a site of struggle between people and the state. They also explore the possibilities for digital and visual cultures in Africa to function as modes of archiving and expanding imaginaries.

Imagination
21 Sep #V3 E1

The Nest Collective in conversation: Njoki Ngumi, Sunny Dolat, & Jim Chuchu

The Nest Collective In Conversation (represented by Jim Chuchu, Sunny Dolat, and Njoki Ngumi), considers the effects of borders on relations between and among Africans on the Continent. They discuss how art, culture, language, identity, and colonial proximities have made kinships between the Continent and the black diaspora more challenging to explore. They reflect on the need for kind, honest, patient discourse by and among the kinfolk to unpack these ongoing conflicts and tensions.

Borders
28 Sep #V3 E2

Blessing Blaai, Kiki Dörmann & Solam Mkhabela in conversation.

Blessing Blaai, Kiki Dörmann, and Solam Mkhabela explore ‘holes’ as a conceptual frame to talk about liminal urban spaces and the street. They explore the necessity of narrative as a space between the images, or what we think of as a ‘city.’

Holes
5 Oct #V3 E3

Olalekan Jeyifous in conversation with Wale Lawal

Olalekan Jeyifous and Wale Lawal discuss their collaboration on 'Mad Horse City'. They explore science fiction as a way of simultaneously viewing remnants of a time that was and a future yet to come.

Ruptures
17 Oct Epilogue

Mpho Matsipa in Conversation with Ilze Wolff

Ilze Wolff and Mpho Matsipa discuss collaborative-creative practice and theory in the making of African Mobilities.

Coda

Live Events

Circulations

16 July LE1

Other Universals (Dr Victoria Collis-Buthelezi) & Dr Danai Mupotsa.

This reading group explores AbdouMaliq Simone's concept of "inoperable relations" with Other Universals, (led by Victoria Collis-Buthelezi), Danai Mupotsa, and Mpho Matsipa. Other Universals is a supranational Mellon consortium that aims to bring into conversation intellectual, cultural, and artistic traditions of resistance and liberation of the Global South--with special emphasis on Africa, the Caribbean, the Maghreb, and South Asia.

Inoperable Relations
25 Jul LE2

Black Student Alliance at GSAPP (BSA+GSAPP), Columbia University.

In this roundtable discussion, members of the Black Student Alliance at Columbia GSAPP [BSA+GSAPP] join Mpho Matsipa to respond to the latest episode of @AfricanMobilities 2.0 Podcast on #enclosure and discuss institutional and structural racism against the backdrop of two global pandemics—COVID-19 and state-sanctioned anti-black violence in the US--so as to explore forms of exchange beyond the university.

Surrounds: The City, The University, and Insurgency
28 Aug LE3

Parenthesis; Tchida Afrikanu; César Schofield Cardoso; DANYKAS DJ; &Victor Gama.

"Resonances in Dialogue" is a composition of musical exchanges and conversations on sound and culture. It travels through oceans; continents; and history, producing a soundscape that connects people and stories across virtual and sonorous geographies.

Resonances in Dialogue: A Soundscape

Prototypes

5 Sep LE4

Issa Diabate in conversation with Aziz Doumbia; Amy Kouamé; Nil Nintcheu; & Edwige Dro.

This panel discussion between an array of young creatives in Abidjan, explores how the next generation of African designers use design-thinking to create something more adapted to the current paradigms of rapid urban transformations in a sub-Saharan Africa.

Future DNA
16 Oct LE8

Jean-Charles Tall (CUAD) & Worofila in conversation with Annie Jouga, Mamy Tall, Fatou Jobe & Ernest Dione

This live event takes as its point of departure, Jean Charles Tall's argument that it is important to encourage the transmission of architectural knowledge between generations of architects in order to enrich their reflection and inform their practice(s). It aims to discuss how Senegal's historical and material heritage informs new, sustainable design practices and the frameworks in which they can be shared and expanded.

Prototypes: Heritage and Bioclimatic Futures

Speculative Futures

18 Sep LE5

Kiluanji Kia Henda; Tiago Oliveira; Toy Boy; & Ana Diaz.

This podcast consists of a series of three interviews with fictional characters about space projects developed in Angola during the Cold War. Among those interviewed are musician, Tiago Oliveira, in the role of Russian architect, Anatoli Vitayev; artist, Toy Boy, in the role of Angolan astrologer, Frederico Muamdumba; and finally, Ana Diaz in the role of US Secretary of State for African Affairs, Jennifer Houdston. The interviews are recorded with an overlapping sound environment created by Tiago Oliveira and Kiluanji Kia Henda with the intention of creating multiple scenarios of the astral adventure through sound.

AfriLunar Station: Transmutation of Space and Sound
24 Sep LE6

Mariam Kamara; Ikem S. Okoye; AbdouMaliq Simone; & Jean-Charles Tall.

This panel looks to the long cosmopolitan histories of Sahelian urbanism to explore the practice of piecing together territories of operation in order to reach out into a larger world that presently manifests itself in towns and cities.

Sahelian Urbanism: Itineraries
09 Oct LE7

The Nest Collective: Njoki Ngumi; Mars; Ziggie; Noel; & Atiani.

The DJs of the "Nest Collective" reflect on intra-African engagements, Pan-African aspirations, and the possibilities in all those complexities and layers for new and interesting futures and ideas through music. With a specific focus on Black music makers and producers, they consider music as a genre that travels across the Continent and Diaspora to explore new possibilities.

An Experiment in Possibility: Everything is a Seed