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- Convenors:
-
Ute Fendler
(University of Bayreuth)
Jorge Cardoso Filho (Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia)
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- Discussant:
-
Livio Sansone
(Federal University of Bahia)
- Format:
- Workshop
- Stream:
- Imagining ‘Africanness’
- Location:
- S46 (RWII)
- Sessions:
- Wednesday 2 October, -, -, -
Time zone: Europe/Berlin
Short Abstract:
The study of trans/oceanic experiences in arts and literatures, especially in the areas of the Black Atlantic and the Indian Ocean focuses on narrative productions and artistic practices in the light of colonial legacies.
Long Abstract:
In the context of transoceanic studies, the idea of the "journey", of crossing space(s) and time(s) is a condition of production expressed in diverse narratives and expressive formats similar to Glissant. The condition of strangeness for afro-descendant communities, becomes expressive material for creative processes and responses. The afro-descendant experiences, strongly shaped by post-colonial struggles, of a multiple insertion that does not accept spatial (here and there) or temporal (before and after) binarisms and is crossed by power relations that are defined by racial, gender, class, sexualities, etc. in an intersectional way. This movement of formulating meanings from what some authors identify as “margin” (Hall 2003; Kilomba 2019; Hooks 2019), is grounded in a creative possibility that, according to Grada Kilomba (2019), allows the imagination not only of new answers, but, significantly, of new questions that are able to disrupt hegemonic authorities and discourses and propose places outside the predefined order. These approaches can be combined with transoceanic perspectives so that archipelagic memories and displacements can be related across regions.Thus, our aim is to observe the poetic flows that take this aesthetic of the waters as an element of their expressive matrices which can range from motifs, metaphors, and figures to aesthetic means that try to capture the fluid character in the rhythm of a verbal/performing/audio-visual text. These poetic narratives are not considered here as invariably romanticized, nor as exclusively linked to the trauma of slavery, but following movements and ambivalences, in which shades of these extremes may coexist.
Accepted contributions:
Session 1 Wednesday 2 October, 2024, -Ruoqi Li (Middlebury College)
Contribution short abstract:
The essay discusses how Ghanaian artist Anatsui revitalizes his maritime heritage, drawing splendor from nature and liberating it from colonialism's aftermath. It enables a new theoretical structure to examine the global south contemporary art that addresses circumstances of deprivation.
Contribution long abstract:
Rather than representing, Ghanaian artist Anatsui, born in the coastal town of Anyako, assimilated found objects as materials for his work. The richness in history and memory of his unit materials, caps, originate from their literal passing from hand to hand, from the past stages of production-consumption to taking shape in art. Confronted with a continuous stream of spectators, it seeks to awaken memories through its immense size and astonishing complexity, circumventing the traditionally Western, visually focused discourse that seeks to rediscover truths in precise visual reproductions. The artists' transportation and transformation of waste redeem the dignity and objecthood of the object, often regarded as useless or of low value.
Jugaaḍ (or "Jugaaṛ") is a colloquial word in Indo-Aryan languages. It is a flexible approach to problem-solving that innovatively uses limited resources—the honoring of ingenuity in the face of past and present adversities. In the case of Anatsui, his creative use of bottle caps directly acknowledges the alcoholic beverage commodity's role in the slave trade. Against the arrested image of a relationship that sees post-colonialist art as colonialism’s repercussions on the cultural plane, Anatsui's work poses a directness drawing splendor from the natural phenomenon, such as in Rising Sea and Wade in the Water. The essay concludes with the artist revitalizing the cultural and environmental legacy of his sea-dwelling background in an inclusive, egalitarian way.
The mindset's coincidence with other artists from the global south, such as Song Dong, liberates discussions about cultural philosophy, norms, aesthetic judgment, and value systems.
Marcelo Ribeiro (Federal University of Bahia)
Contribution short abstract:
This contribution analyses the film 25 (1974-1976) as a transnational and transoceanic crossroads. Directed by Celso Luccas and José Celso Martinez Corrêa, the film is part of Teat(r)o Oficina's cinematographic work and one of the first films released by the Mozambican Instituto Nacional de Cinema.
Contribution long abstract:
In the context of early African film history, I propose to interrogate the variable collective frameworks inscribed and mobilized in the film *25* (1974-1976). Directed by Celso Luccas and José Celso Martinez Corrêa, both members of the Brazilian artistic group Teat(r)o Oficina (renamed as Oficina Samba from 1973 to 1979), during their exile in the 1970s, *25* became one of the first productions by the Mozambican Instituto Nacional de Cinema. Considering its possible similarities with other films by Brazilian filmmakers on the independence of Mozambique, such as Essas são as armas (1978), by Murilo Salles, and Plantando nas estrelas (1978), by Geraldo Sarno, as well as other Mozambican cinematographic and audiovisual experiences in the post-independence period involving foreign filmmakers, such as those of Jean Rouch with Super-8 and Jean-Luc Godard with television, I intend to situate the film *25* in a comparative perspective, understanding it as both a transnational and a transoceanic crossroads. As part of a broader project dedicated to identifying and characterizing the variable collective frameworks to which the film is related, understanding them as cosmopoetics of the commons (variably defined in nationalist, pan-Africanist, socialist and other terms) which remain in dispute and confrontation, in this contribution I will focus on the ways in which Luccas and Corrêa seek to "sweep away the images of the past", as they put it, by articulating their 16mm footage with excerpts from newsreels, Portuguese television records, colonial fiction films, songs and films associated with anti-colonial struggles in different historical contexts etc.
Kimingichi Wabende (University of Nairobi)
Contribution short abstract:
The Digo encounters with foreigners from the Indian Ocean have been interpreted and revealed through the Kayamba ritual healing performance. This paper examines the Kayamba healing ritual as a form of artistic tool through which the community has confronted the harsh realities of the Indian Ocean.
Contribution long abstract:
Kayamba, which also refers to a musical instrument or dance, is a healing ritual that involves exorcising spirits, whether good or bad from the sick. Believed to be a cure for many ailments that cannot be dealt with by conventional medicine, Kayamba healers are said to be possessed by powerful spirits, some local and others foreign to have abilities to cure ailments (mostly mental). The Digo community on the Kenyan coast, due to interactions with different foreigners whether as traders, colonizers, or religious groups has variously borrowed spirits and healing powers from different communities that have come to the Kenyan coast. The long interaction between the Islamic religion and the Mijikenda has led to a blend of tradition and Islamic religion. This encounter with the foreigner has been reflected and interpreted in different ways in which the spiritual world as it is related to the ocean is relayed through the Kayamba performance. This paper looks at Kayamba not just as a healing ritual performance but also as a form of artistic instrument through which the community has confronted the harsh realities of what the Indian Ocean has brought forth. The paper also explores how this healing ritual performance relies on interactions with the ocean and how this links the many communities that live or use the Indian Ocean.
Viviane de Freitas (Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia (UFRB))
Contribution short abstract:
This work explores the poetics of water in the works of Deisiane Barbosa in connection to the artist's larger project to conceive ways of re-signifying landscapes and histories, and expanding places of memory, beyond hegemonic concepts of archive.
Contribution long abstract:
Deisiane Barbosa is a Brazilian poet, performer, book editor and researcher from Recôncavo da Bahia, who has been experimenting with literary creation processes, in conversation with performance, video art and artist’s books, crossed with women’s memories and narratives. This work engages with two of Barbosa’s artworks. “Crônicas a Luanda” [Chronicles to Luanda] (2020) is a poetic account of the writer´s crossing from Recôncavo da Bahia to Luanda, and her experience, as a woman of African descent, of “returning” to Africa. “O Sonho Puído” [A Threadbare Dream] (2019) is a video-poem-performance set against the backdrop of the waters of the Paraguaçu River in São Félix and the sea waters of Itapuã beach in the city of Salvador, as well as the crossing of these waters. Both artworks give prominence to trans/oceanic experiences and refer to some recurring issues raised throughout Barbosa’s artistic project, such as the experience of producing narratives extended to cities and involving other women-bodies, as well as the role of the body as archive, capable of forging counter-hegemonic forms of writing and inscribing memory. In foregrounding images and metaphors of water and crossings, “Crônicas a Luanda” and “O Sonho Puído” trace a poetics of water, centered upon fluidity, inventiveness, provisionality and relationality, but committed to situated engagements with places and spaces. This work aims at building a relation between these two artworks by approaching them as archives of Brazilian slave trade memories, which provide us with alternative epistemic models and a grammar for re-crossing the Black Atlantic.
Ute Fendler (University of Bayreuth)
Contribution short abstract:
This paper focuses on the construction of a shared imaginary across the Atlantic ocean based on the example of the water goddess Mami Wata - in comics, music videos and the film "Mami Wata" (2023).
Contribution long abstract:
The water goddess Mami Wata finds its echoes in Maman Dlo in French speaking West Africa and the Caribbean, as well as in the Brazilian Yemanja. While there are many versions of the respective narratives, they still hint at travelling motifs and shared imaginaries across the ocean. This becomes evident especially in recent popular culture productions like comics in Brazil and Nigeria or music video clips from Brazil and Ghana. In a second step, we propose an analysis of the feature film Mami Wata (2023) by Nigerian filmmaker C.J. Obasi that is a co-production between Nigerian and Benin. The film uses a stunning black-and-white aesthetic based on the work of the Brazilian director of photography Lílis Soares. The plot concentrates on the clash between traditional and modern ways of living where mystic beliefs seem to be reduced to mere fairy tales. The focus will be laid on the aesthetic work turning the film into an artwork that creates iconic images that strengthen the shared imaginary.
audio-visual requirements: screening of films
Stefanie Jason (Rutgers University - New Brunswick)
Contribution short abstract:
This paper examines representations of waterbodies in the works of contemporary South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, and argues that her practice not only confronts ongoing histories of violence at sea but proposes the water as a critical site for new forms of art and memory making.
Contribution long abstract:
In his writing, TJ Demos demonstrates ways in which oceans have been figured in contemporary African diasporic experimental art as a “locus of terror and beauty” in which the “social, political, and ecological” are intertwined (2020). Using Demos’s reflection as a point of departure, this paper will examine representations of waterbodies in the works of contemporary South African artist Dineo Seshee Bopape, and argue that her practice offers critical oceanic historiographies and unorthodox modalities for art and memory making.
Focusing on the multidisciplinary installations Bopape created after 2016 – which present video, drawing, sculpture and sonic elements – I will study the artist's use of imagery, matter and soundscapes from the ocean to hypothesize that her works not only confront ongoing histories of violence at sea but propose the water as a fertile site for artistic experimentation and below-the-surface worldviews.
As the installations of Bopape engage waters across the Atlantic and Pacific oceans, her works address complex aquatic ecologies, African diasporic cosmologies and obfuscated narratives of subjugation/resistance. In mapping a labyrinth network that traverses space and time, aesthetics and subjectivities, this paper emphasizes Bopape’s practice as provoking rigid structures established by maritime boundaries, linear temporalities and dominant art logic. Moreso, I aim to explore how transoceanic and transdisciplinary methodologies in the practice of Bopape encourages shifts in archival approaches and helps realize liberatory futures.
Jorge Cardoso Filho (Universidade Federal do Recôncavo da Bahia)
Contribution short abstract:
Using the video clips Oro Mimá, by the group Bantos Iguape, and Velejo, by Sued Nunes, we reflect on multitemporal traces in the waters of Paraguaçu and Baía de Todos os Santos, reflecting on the way they deal with the ways of life and Afro-diasporic legacies in their aesthetic-political gestures.
Contribution long abstract:
Using the video clips Oro Mimá, by the group Bantos Iguape, and Velejo, by Sued Nunes, we reflect on multitemporal traces in the waters of Paraguaçu and Baía de Todos os Santos, reflecting on the way they deal with the ways of life and Afro-diasporic legacies in their aesthetic-political gestures.
The waters of the Paraguassu River and Baía de Todos os Santos hold traces of the economic history and slavery in the region, but they also appear very explicitly in the artistic and audiovisual expressions produced there. They are the waters of Iemanjá, queen of the sea, sung in verse, prose and musical lyrics, as well as the waters of mother Oxum. It is these waters that enable ways of life, of shellfish gatherers, fishermen and riverside dwellers, that circulate axé, in a movement of biointeraction where transatlantic memories are reissued and generate confluences between the worldviews and ways of existing of the inhabitants of this territory.
We then bring out, from the photography, melody and the lyrics, some fundamental images that reveal these multitemporalities: the waters as a mirror, which reflects and also distorts colonial legacies, in a relationship of the present with the past; of vessels as extensions of bodies that cross large portions of water and that also constitute an archive of memories and documentation, in a relationship between the past and the past; that of waters as the personification of orixás; that move, dance, in the environment, in a relationship with the ancestral future.
Valerie Gruber (University of Bayreuth)
Contribution short abstract:
This presentation is a poetic journey of a river that flows into the ocean. Based on audio-visual materials produced by young Afrodescendant artists from Brazil and Colombia during four years of participatory action research, the public will dive into manifold experiences of overcoming and healing.
Contribution long abstract:
Connecting creative movements of Black re-existence across the African diaspora is crucial to fight colonial and racist exclusion. However, this requires highly sensitive means and media to express bodily, emotional and spiritual experiences of transformation that can hardly be captured by logocentric approaches. Against this backdrop, the multimedia e-book “Todo rio resiste mar: cartografias de memorias afrolatinas” (dir. Valerie V. V. Gruber and Gilbert Shang Ndi, Andarilha Edições, 2023) presents illustrations, poems, memoirs, choreographic and music performances created by young Afrodescendant artists from marginalised communities in Salvador da Bahia (Brazil) and Cartagena de Indias (Colombia). The anthology is the result of an exchange programme carried out over four years based on transdisciplinary methods of participatory action research, social arts and research-creation. The design of the e-book follows the journey of a river returning to the ocean, meandering through complex social and cultural territories. The encounter of different waters and currents is more than just a metaphor; it is the conceptual ground for the understanding of Afro-Latin American re-existence, personal and collective overcoming as well as decolonial healing. This presentation invites the public to dive into the rhythms, memories and imaginations of the exchange participants, reorganized in a map-collage with strong audio-visual impulses. The diverse voices and representations will set afloat discussions on the ethics and aesthetics of Afro-Latin American struggles against colonialism and racism, while raising questions on the degree to which traumatic experiences can be transmitted and transformed through artistic means across time, space and power hierarchies.
Ute Fendler (University of Bayreuth)
Contribution short abstract:
Workshop adding to panel presentations. More details TBC.
Contribution long abstract:
Workshop adding to panel presentations. More details TBC. Longer abstract will be added later.