The Imagined New Thinking Dialogues:

Two provocative conversations in the wake of apartheid and catastrophe

VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS, at the University of Johannesburg, in collaboration with the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice, at Brown University, are proud to launch an ongoing series of open online conversations titled, ‘The Imagined New Thinking Dialogues’. These thinking dialogues offer a space for exchange between public intellectuals whose occupations and preoccupations are rooted in the creative tradition of radical imagination. In the first two dialogues, Professors Pumla Dineo Gqola, Zamansele Nsele and Françoise Vergès connect with Ayman AlAzraq, Dr Bhavisha Panchia and Dr Refiloe Lepere to discuss imagination, museums, alternative archives and creative theories.
 
The Imagined New Thinking Dialogues are part of a long-term project between the two research centres. Seeking to facilitate a generous and generative space – focused on meaningful dialogue and productive exchanges, interactions, and future collaborations – the Imagined New (or what happens when History is a Catastrophe?) project was initiated in 2019, with a gathering of scholars, curators and artists recognised for their work with creative practices related to legacies of slavery, colonialism and apartheid. Papers in the edited volume titled, the Imagined New (or, what happens when History is a Catastrophe?) Volume 1. Working through Alternative Archives | Art, History, Africa and the African Diaspora (Iwalewahaus, 2022), reflect on the discussions that took place at this intimate gathering. The book serves as a reference point for imagining new nodes of collective thought-practice and the political potential of contemporary art in Africa and the African diaspora. It offers provocations for radical listening practices where, as Anthony Bogues records, “The papers should be read as thinking dialogues … This book is but a catalyst for further conversations and dialogue about history, the archive, aesthetics, politics and Black life today.” Taking this injunction seriously, VIAD’s RADICAL | OTHERS and the Center for the Study of Slavery and Justice extend these conversations in The Imagined New Thinking Dialogues series.
 
Contesting the very notion of the ‘new’ along with contemporary conceptions of the ‘radical’ through located and transnational ways of thinking, The Imagined New Thinking Dialogues aim to stoke the fires of those who are dedicated to thinking together about marginalised life and practices of freedom. The two launching conversations look to foster renewed visions of a decolonised world, and to enlarge the scope available to those who perform the visible and invisible labours of caring for the lives of the racialised and marginalised. In these two public conversations, the discussants consider artworks by Noor Abed, Ayman Alazraq, Refilwe Lepere, Gerald Machona and Bhavisha Panchia as alternative archives, where intersecting histories are (re)conceived and performed as grounding claims to life.

WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 2, 2024, ONLINE @18H00 SAST

Thinking Dialogue I, titled ‘Imagine you’re in a Museum, now, imagine a Post Museum’ is a performative proposition encouraging participation in the critical task of considering different structures to subvert the hold of colonial currents. Here, Dr Refiloe Lepere, Dr Bhavisha Panchia and Prof Françoise Vergès converse on past, present and future possibilities for museums, based on ethical political relationships. Taking its speech-act from Panchia’s sonic work Imagine You’re in A Museum. What Do You Hear? (2020), which shifts perceptive thought toward listening, the discussion follows Vergès’s analyses on the occupation of Palestine, where she points to the necessity for co-imagined spaces that can disrupt settler colonial institutions and extractive practices of archiving. Lepere's performance work, Postcard: Bodily Preserves (2019) attends to embodied and un-articulated archives to trouble the cannibalistic desire to house fragments of bodies.

THURSDAY, OCTOBER 3, 2024, ONLINE @ 18H00 SAST

Thinking Dialogue II is titled ‘Imagination in Emergency: Creative theories and agencies when History is a Catastrophe’. Here, Ayman AlAzraq, Prof Pumla Dineo Gqola and Prof Zamansele Nsele co-think around alternative forms of the archive, with reference to excerpts from Noor Abed’s film our songs were ready for all wars to come (2021); Gerald Machona’s film 'Vabvakure People from Far Away' (2012) and Ayman AlAzraq’s exhibition, The Lost Tapes of A Peoples’ Tribunal, 1982 (2023-2024). As the year turns toward the anniversary of October 7 and the emergency of Palestine’s siege, discussants consider the critical place of imagining the new and imagining the new in a post-apartheid paradigm. With pause for thought at South Africa’s 30th year after apartheid, they invite those gathered to co-think about global experiences of apartheid in past, present and concomitant catastrophes.

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