Eric Gyamfi is a photographer living and working in Ghana. He is interested in the medium and forms of the photographic, often experimenting with the hybrid nature of analogue, digital and chemical processes. Gyamfi holds a B.A in Information studies and Economics from the University of Ghana (2010 to 2014), and is currently pursuing an MFA at the Department of Painting and Sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana (2018 – ). He is also a fellow at the Photographers’ Master Class (Khartoum, Sudan 2016; Nairobi, Kenya 2017; Johannesburg, South Africa 2018). Gyamfi was a participant of the Nuku Studio Photography Workshops (2016) and World Press Photo West African Master Class (2017), both in Accra. He has shown work on Ecologies and Politics of the Living (Vienna Biennale 2021), The 11th and 12th Bamako encounters (2017/2019) and Fixing Shadows – Julius and I (Autograph, London, 2023) amongst many other exhibitions.

Dr Ferrial Adam has been an environmental justice activist in South Africa over the past 20 years. Her work in environmental justice organisations such as Earthlife Africa and Greenpeace Africa have afforded her the ability to understand government, human rights, politics and environment from a grassroots lens. Ferrial currently hold the position of Executive Manager of WaterCAN, an initiative to build citizen science activism that empowers civil society through water testing and monitoring, thereby driving corrective actions through accountability and advocacy. She has also served as the Chairperson of the board of the South African non-profit Organisation Undoing Tax Abuse (OUTA) from 2018 until 2021. Ferrial holds that science and environmental information can build community organisations and power to challenge corporations and government.

Stacy Hardy is a writer, researcher, lecturer and editor whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, the individual and society. Her critically acclaimed plays and award-winning librettos have been performed globally. Hardy is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Wits University, an editor at the Pan-African platform Chimurenga, a partner in the African creative writing teaching initiative Saseni, and a founder of Ukuthula, a project that develops new writing from and against gender-based violence. She has hosted interdisciplinary workshops and writing intensives in diverse locations and online and has facilitated graduate seminars and writing workshops worldwide.

With support from Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society, the University of Chicago & Creative Writing, School of Literature, Language and Media, University of the Witwatersrand. Special thanks to Tamara Guhrs, Bongani Kona, Laila Soliman, Nancy Mounir, Neo Muyanga, Kaushik Sunder Rajan, Asher Gamedze, Daniel Borzutzky, Shepi Mati, Kadiatou Diallo, Juanita Dragon Praeg, Leora Farber-Blackbeard & The Ghosts.

The scene with a breathing machine links the poetry and politics of breath to larger geopolitical structures—mining, industrial labour and the racialised history of respiratory diseases like tuberculosis affecting marginalised communities. Breathing and breath is explored as a decolonial strategy in African and indigenous spiritual practices, as an act of reclamation in protest (chanting, singing) or music (jazz, reggae), and as a form of feminist resistance against patriarchal structures.

The scene in the optometry centres on treatment systems and the violence of the gaze. The pathologisation of black bodies and female bodies is traced to the invisibility of illnesses including mental health syndromes. This topic continues into the scene in the consulting room which, here, links the violence of the gaze to diagnostic systems. Consent and agency become the lens through which to interrogate how diagnostics stigmatises certain bodies, and the way the state and society inscribe disease on certain populations as a form of biopolitical control. The “specialist” and “cure” mentality of Western medicine is contrasted to indigenous holistic, restorative and community-based practices.

This video concludes with a contribution of a more generous practice of care that might evolve to embody a medicine that cares not just for the body, but for the soul, the community and the environment.

BIOGRAPHIES

Mutsawashe Mutendi is an associate lecturer in the Social Anthropology Department at the University of Witwatersrand. Her work interrogates the intersections of social and health vulnerability and precarity in the lives of female artisanal miners and explores the body’s permeability to toxic substances and conditions of life, and how these are woven into the lives of those to come. In addition, Mutsawashe has been involved in community engagement initiatives that promote health and gender equity, and social justice, in mining. Her research interests include the extractives industry, health, occupational lung diseases, Tuberculosis, obstetric and reproductive healthcare, mobility, migration, peace, development and urban livelihoods.

Stacy Hardy is a writer, researcher, lecturer and editor whose work explores the intersections of embodiment, the individual, and society. Her critically acclaimed plays and award-winning librettos have been performed globally. Hardy is a lecturer in Creative Writing at Wits University, an editor at the Pan-African platform Chimurenga, a partner in the African creative writing teaching initiative Saseni, and a founder of Ukuthula, a project that develops new writing from and against gender-based violence. She has hosted interdisciplinary workshops and writing intensives in diverse locations and online and has facilitated graduate seminars and writing workshops worldwide.

Louise Westerhout brings the intimate experience of disability, medical interventions and recovery into her work. As a performer, Louise invites the witness’ gaze, subverting the ableist stare, exposing prejudice and demanding that the witness looks – that they see a body which holds autonomy. As a therapist and educator in conflict resolution and transformative justice, they wish to broaden queer Crip culture and create a haven for disabled people to find validation and allyship. Their work subverts ableist narratives, suggesting new paradigms of viewing and understanding a queer, disabled, older body. In this way, Louise dedicates her work to exploring themes of post-humanism, anti-speciesism, trauma, healing and social justice. Their performances have been featured on numerous South African and international platforms, and form part of creating of new communities based on equality.

BIOGRAPHY

Russel Hlongwane works in the production and assembly of culture, focusing on heritage, tradition, and modernity in South Africa. He moves between art-making (installation and film) and curating. His performance work serves as a bridge to transmit his academic interests to a broader audience, while his writing practice spans academia, policy and art journals.

Lo-Def Film Factory (Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson) is a DIY artist duo working across archival research, dramaturgy, and visual strategies using video art, collage, sculptural installation and virtual reality. The duo aims to create a space for storytelling through the democratisation of filmmaking via video, and they run workshops and collaborate with various communities, valuing the transmission of ideas and lived experience over high production values.

This project was supported by the Mozilla Foundation’s Creative Media Award (2022) and Mozilla Foundation Alumni Connection Grant (2024), and received the following awards: Award of Distinction (2024): STARTS Prize Africa (Ars Electronica); Honorary Mention (2023): Prix Ars Electronica – New Animation Award; Lumen Prize (2023): Global Majority Award; and Moving Image Art Prize Nominee (2023): Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin.