THE IMAGINED NEW (or, what happens when History is a catastrophe?)
BLACCK PHOTO LIBRARIES | A CONTRIBUTION TO MARKET PHOTOWORKSHOP IN ANTICIPATION FOR BLACK SONICS
01 - 03 October, 2021 | Virtual (from our homes and work spaces to yours)
10 - 12 May, 2019 | UJ Arts & Culture Centre
Candice Jansen and her team at Market Photo Workshop will lead a programme of pre-recorded and live combinations of image, photography, sound, spoken word, music with under and over tones of jazz interspersed with thoughts from Matseliso Motsoane, Peter Magubane, Thabang Monoa, Deb Willis, Lindelwa Dalamba and many more. VIAD is excited to contribute a jazz listening session, produced ahead of the upcoming Black Sonics: Heritage as Heresy programme.
The Market Photo Workshop will be hosting a talk about the Black Photo Libraries project on Thursday 30 September 2021, at 14:00 - 15:30 before the launch, click here to get the meeting link.
In African and African Diasporic art practices, we see the possibility of an alternative set of archives, in which histories and possible futures are reconceived, embodied and performed as radical claims to Black life.
In May 2019, the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice (CSSJ), Brown University, and the Visual Identities in Art and Design Research Centre (VIAD), University of Johannesburg, collaboratively hosted a series of curated conversations and interdisciplinary engagements entitled,The Imagined New (Or, what happens when History is a catastrophe?) – Working Through Alternative Archives: Art, History and the African Diaspora.
The first in a series of three workshops, this gathering of thinkers, curators and artists proposed a rethinking of ‘the archive’ – or rather, of ‘alternative archives’ – in relation to art, history, and the African Diaspora. Inflected by the radical Black imagination implied in the overarching idea of The Imagined New, and its corollary, What happens when History is a catastrophe? key points of discussion centred around Black memory (as performing archives of the imagined new), enactments of refusal (in relation to Black precarity, and creative strategies for living otherwise), and the necessary rethinking of African and African Diasporic sacral art practices. These discussions and conversations were led by Anthony Bogues, Surafel Wondimu Abebe, Tina Campt, Geri Augusto and Saidiya Hartman.
The Johannesburg workshop hosted approximately thirty scholars, artists, curators and cultural workers from South Africa, Mozambique, Ethiopia, Brazil, the United States and the Caribbean. In addition to extensive time allotted for conversation and discussion, the programme included an exhibition walkabout of ISISEKELO, by photographer Jabulani Dhlamini; the South African launch of Prof Cheryl Finley’s book Committed to Memory: the Art of the Slave Ship Icon (2018); a performance and screening of sorry not sorry by Alberta Whittle; and a panel discussion convened by Johannesburg Art Gallery Chief Curator Khwezi Gule, focused on challenges facing curators of colour in negotiating the institutionalised logics and exclusions of colonisation.
Drawn from the exceptionally rich engagements facilitated through this initial workshop gathering, the first in a series of three special edition journal publications will be published in Callaloo, the premier journal of literature, art, and culture of the African Diaspora. The following two workshops are scheduled to take place at Brown University, Providence, in 2020 and Addis Ababa University in 2021. As a workshop and journal series, The Imagined New will inform the curation of a major touring exhibition to be launched in South Africa in 2022.
The programme also included:
The South African launch of Cheryl Finley’s recent publication, Committed to Memory – The Art of the Slave Ship Icon (2018, Princeton University Press)
sorry not sorry | A screening & performance by Alberta Whittle
Museums for whom, Museums for what? A panel discussion with Thomas J. Lax (Museum of Modern Art, New York), Ingrid Masondo (Iziko South African National Gallery), Molemo Moiloa (MADEYOULOOK), and Cláudia Rocha (Museu Nacional de Belas Artes, Rio de Janeiro). Facilitated by Khwezi Gule (Chief Curator, Johannesburg Art Gallery).
THE IMAGINED NEW. Workshop rationale & objectives | Facilitated by Anthony Bogues
LIVING HISTORIES. Black memory as performing archives of the Imagined New | Facilitated by Surafel Wondimu Abebe
REFUSAL. Black precarity, and creative strategies for Living Otherwise | Facilitated by Tina Campt
THE EVERYDAY AND ITS OTHER FUTURES. Rethinking African/Diasporic sacral art practices | Facilitated by Geri Augusto (download audio)
CLOSING REFLECTIONS | Facilitated by Saidiya Hartman & Anthony Bogues
Background:
A rich tradition of critical work around African and African Diasporic art and culture was opened up over the second half of the 20th century by the 1956 Paris conference of Black Writers and Artists, and the 1969 Pan African Festival of Algiers - not to mention the work of, amongst others, the Art Society in Nigeria, the Black Arts Movement in the USA, and the Caribbean Artists Movement of the 1960s. On the Continent, dialogues initiated in these radical departures have been further developed through debates that both attended and followed important biennales in Dakar, Bamako and Johannesburg, and more recently Lagos, Kampala and Lubumbashi.
This discursive tradition has been further enriched but also complicated by the growing attention given to modern and contemporary African and African Diasporic art practices, through a range of exhibitions and publications: from contested mega-shows like MOMA’s 1984/5 "Primitivism" in 20th Century Art: Affinity of the Tribal and the Modern to the more critical responses of Okwui Enwezor, Chika Okeke-Agulu, Kobena Mercer and others. Negotiating this framework, this first convening ofThe Imagined New sought to shift the conversation through a deeper consideration of how living histories work in Black memory and creative practice, as alternative archives that offer a plurality of imagined futures.
Adopting an intimate and trans-disciplinary format, this gathering brought together a diasporic community of scholars, curators and artists recognised for their work and preoccupations with creative and curatorial practices related to legacies of slavery, colonialism and apartheid – as well as alternative approaches to history-making, the ‘archive’, and the political work of the radical Black imagination.
The programme comprised a series of open, three-hour conversations around a series of key themes. Each of these sessions was facilitated by an invited participant.
Visit the Imagined New website.