2.4.
Sonntag
12:30 Uhr

RAW Académie — Xam, Xamlé: SCREENING, READING & PERFORMANCE

12:30 - 2 pm

A Selection of short films of RAW Academie fellows:

Renée Akitelek Mboya, The Witness The Wayward The Waiting, 2020, Senegal/Kenya, 16’27”

Synopsis: The Witnesses The Wayward The Waiting* is the first iteration of a three part curatorial essay made in Dakar in August 2020. The project explores the rhetoric of black and African folklore and the heritage of folk tellings of history as well as looking critically at who is invited to tell.

The ritual performance of the telling is a way of creating a performative citational practice, as an extension of forms of intellectual protest known to the region for example in the use of Wolofal and other Ajami scripts.

In this way we view citation as a way of remaking and as a space of unlearning norms of practice and articulation. This first ritual for collective remembering approaches historical and political sense making as an extension of a process of archiving and asserts that archivability does not rest in the hands of the state alone and that this might happen alongside what narratives already exist.

Dani Kyengo O’Neill, An Unacknowledged And Ever-Present Other, 2021, 10’00”

Synopsis: An Unacknowledged And Ever-Present Other is a triptych short film that pieces together a conversation between a body, its shadow and their complicated mutual existence after processing death. The film questions the possibility of the shadow as an ever-present yet estranged relative to the human's physical existence and brings into question the pain and delusion of trusting again after loss. Made over a period of time when my grandmother, an anchor of my family home, has fallen ill and the possibility of her death looms over the family. An Unacknowledged And Ever-Present Other sonically echoes the range of confusion, rage and shameful emotions one internally disguises in order to remain a vessel grounded in a somewhat physical reality after devastating loss and sadness. I specifically reference Sad Bitch (2014) a composition by Arca and J Kanda in this triptych. As the title suggests, there are shadowy states of grief we're seldom given the freedom to express in the relational world - authentic deep sadness and having the courage to be unlikeable* at times (a bitch). The loneliness, isolation and estrangement that follows death, be it the death of a loved one, death of a version of oneself, or a relationship, brings with it these shadows of grief.

Frida Robles and Ujjwal Kanishka Utkarsh, Las entrañas de Tlatelolco [The entrails of Tlatelolco], 2021, 4’40”

Synopsis: This video reflects on notions of time projected on a particular roof. It is placed in the longing for a city that is no longer there. Be it Mexico City, be it Tlatelolco. We stare at the roof during a hot day. There are flies on the ceiling, and there are thoughts. Both seem heavy, as if affected by the weather. The video was shot in a social housing building in Vienna while thinking about Tlatelolco's massive social housing structure built in the 1950s as part of the Mexican urban and social modernization project. Tlatelolco is a neighbourhood in Mexico City. It used to be a city, the centre of the homonymous culture. In some ways, it has been the epicentre of Mexican history. Battles were fought there, important demonstrations were celebrated, and a massive earthquake cracked it. Tlatelolco is buried and alive, covered in material scars. This video vaguely reflects on its quasi-mythical existence.

Freya Rachel Edmondes, Collectif On Est Malade, We are Sick, 2017, 5’27”

Synopsis: We met in Dakar during a research residency, the RAW Académie. Our collective '0n est malade' evokes our desire to go beyond all fear in order to actually be part of the world-aduna in Wolof-that we think is ours. We walk through the city, perform spontaneously and record the sounds that we translate into sound. The object found at the carpenter's, the mechanic's or picked up in the street becomes a source of sound creation and conversation with the other, the one we don't know.

Sarah Kazmi, The Sea We See is not Blue, 2021, 5’35”

Synopsis: Blue water reflecting blue sky is a lie indeed. Is the sea blue? I murmured. No, it is golden and grey and black. “The Sea we See is not Blue” questions what lies on top of this surface we call “the sea”. Moving through waves, winds and colours, the sea is telling us to rethink that “I,” “the sea” am not just water, rather I am a site of globalization fuelled by oil and mobile labour.

Zooming in on YilPort shipping terminal, and the many sea bodies scattered around Oslo, Kazmi’s video installation looks at the non-stop commodities supply chain that is shipped to us via the sea. With field recordings and mechanical sounds of oil, the static frame-shots try to depict the constant loading/unloading of containers through the dance-like movement of the panamax cranes. It presents a human existence fuelled by oil, revealing the active relations of man to nature, and how technology aids our consumption pattern; questioning who gets to taste the vastness of the sea.

Shirin Sabahi, Muted Fanfare for the Shy, 2013, 16mm film transferred to video, colour, no sound, 6’00”

Synopsis: The film looks at a greenhouse at the Wilhelma Botanical Gardens in Stuttgart, previously a royal garden that in the 19th century opened as a public park. The glass and cast-iron structure is meant to cultivate and exhibit flora from distant climates. The building and its occupants are filmed from the outside and animated for the camera. The plants brush against the translucent walls of the house as if attempting to reach outside or expand their simulated habitat, suggesting the inherent limits and cost of the culture of displaying and viewing.

*The title of the work is taken from Farnoosh Fathi’s book of poems Great Guns (2013)

2:30 - 4 pm

A conversation moderated by Marie-Hélène Pereira "On alternative methods of transmission – on RAW Material Company's approach and practice between":

With Renee Akitelek Mboya — Artist & Curator, Fellow of RAW Académie Session 6 CURA directed by Koyo Kouoh and RAW Académie Session 7 Images for our Time directed by Eric Baudelaire.
With Yvon Langué — Curator & Graphic Designer, Fellow of RAW Académie Session 4 — CORPUS CALLOSUM directed by Tracey Rose
Moderated by Marie-Hélène Pereira — Senior Curator of Performative Practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW) and former Director of Programs at RAW Material Company

Yvon Langué's practice revolves around the curatorial, graphic design, teaching and writing. His projects have addressed topics like the frontiers of photography and migration. He is interested in the role of text in shaping discursive and performative spaces affecting the meaning of art, the function and social responsibility of institutions, or the social position and status of the artist. Currently, Yvon Langué co-runs Untitled, an Editorial Design, Art Direction, and Curatorial agency, and teaches at the Marrakesh School of Visual Arts.

Renée Akitelek Mboya is a writer, curator and filmmaker based in Nairobi, Kenya. Her custom is one that relies on biography and storytelling as a form of research and production. Renée is presently preoccupied with looking and speaking about images and the ways in which they are produced but especially how they have come to play a critical role as evidence of white paranoia, and as aesthetic idioms of racial violence. Renée works between Dakar, Kigali, and Nairobi and is a collaborative editor with the Wali Chafu Collective.

Marie Hélène Pereira is Senior Curator of Performative Practices at Haus der Kulturen der Welt (HKW). Previously she was Director of Programs at RAW Material Company, where she has organized exhibitions and related discursive programs including the participation of RAW to “We face forward: Art from West Africa Today” Whitworth Art Gallery, Manchester; ICI Curatorial Hub at TEMP, New York; The 9th Shanghai Biennial, Shanghai; MARKER Art Dubai (2013). She co-curated Scattered Seeds in Cali-Colombia (2015-2017) and curated Battling to normalize freedom at Clarkhouse Initiative in Mumbai, India (2017). Pereira was a co-curator of Canine Wisdom for the Barking Dog - The Dog Done Gone Deaf. Exploring The Sonic Cosmologies of Halim El-Dabh at the 13th edition of Dakar Biennale of Contemporary African art (2018). In 2021 she was selected as one of the recipients of the ICI Curatorial Research Fellowship – a Marian Goodman Gallery initiative conceived by artist Steve McQueen in honor of the late Okwui Enwezor. She was recently part of the artistic team of the 12th Berlin Biennale, 2022. Pereira is profoundly interested in histories of migrations and the politics of identity.

4:30 - 5:30 pm

Performance by Rehema Chachage

Fellow of RAW Académie Session 9 — Infrastructure directed by Linda Goode Bryant

Rehema Chachage is a visual artist whose practice can be viewed as a performative archive which untraditionally collects stories, rituals and other oral traditions in different media (performance, photography, video, text as well as physical installations); which traces hi/stories directly tied to (and connecting with) her matrilineage; and, which utilizes methodologies which are both embodied and instinctual, employing written texts, oral and aural stories, melodies, and relics from several re-enacted/performed rituals as source of research. She has a BA in Fine Art (2009) from Michaelis School of Fine Art, University of Cape Town; and an MA Contemporary Art Theory (2018) from Goldsmiths, University of London. Currently she is pursuing a PhD in practice with the Academy of Fine Art in Vienna where her research explores alternative ways of knowing/knowledge formation, specifically engaging with handed down/inherited knowledges (songs, names, recipes, building practices, healing rituals, scientific knowledge, etc) as alternative epistemological strategies for rethinking conventional understanding and relationship to knowledge; and in the process, also arguing/ legitimising them as knowledges worthy of ‘mainstream’ spaces such as educational, as well as art institutions.

The events are in englisch.