Screenings
Indigeneity & Digital Entanglements by Russel Hlongwane
Programme of artist films offering a counter to technology as a western construction
The ruins of history offer a host of unresolved traces that enable us to imagine the global south as a site of prehistoric technologies. It is on this basis that we use the theme indigeneity and digital entanglements to invoke a new system of thought. One that alludes to a more productive and equitable arrangement of technology, its tools and structures. A reimagined system that accounts for humanity’s multi-dimensionality and proposes a new digital political economy. This proposition rethinks technology, without hardware or software and beyond advanced algorithms.
This programme of short films offers counter evidence to the popular belief that technology is a construction of the West. This considered selection of films can be understood as a sample of cinematic expressions from Africa addressing the politics of technology and its consequences for the continent. They affirm Africa as an active agent in the production of technology through indigenous practices.
Artist Bio
Russel Hlongwane is a cultural producer and creative industries consultant based in Durban, South Africa. His work obsesses over the tensions in Heritage/ Modernity and Culture/Tradition as it applies to black life. His practice includes cultural research, creative producing, design, film and curatorship. He is part of a number of working groups spread across the Southern African Region, the African continent more broadly and internationally. He has shown work in Munich, Marrakech, Maputo, Karlsruhe, Harare, Bristol, Tokyo as well as throughout South Africa.
Dilman Dila is author of a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun. He has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2013) and for the Nommo Awards for Best Novella (2017), and long listed for the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition (2014), among other accolades. His short fiction have featured in several anthologies, and his films include What Happened in Room 13 (2007) and The Felistas Fable (2013), which was nominated for Best First Feature by a Director at AMAA (2014). See more of his life and works at dilmandila.com
Tabita Rezaire is an artist-healer-seeker working with screens and energy streams. Her cross-dimensional practice envisions network sciences - organic, electronic and spiritual - as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Navigating digital, corporeal and ancestral memory as sites of struggles, she digs into scientific imaginaries to tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Tabita is based in Cayenne, French Guiana.
Francois Knoetze is a Cape Town based performance artist, sculptor and filmmaker known for his sculptural suits and experimental video art. He was an Africa Centre Resident and 2016 laureate of the Nafasi Art Space Artist-In-Residence Programme (Dar es Salaam); and attended the OMI International Art Center Residency Programme (New York) in 2017. In 2018 he participated in Cosmopolis 1.5: Enlarged Intelligence (Chengdu) hosted by the Pompidou Centre, as well as Digital Imaginaries - Africas in Production at ZKM, Germany. In 2019 his work was exhibited at the Pompidou Centre as part of Cosmopolis #2. He is a recipient of Hivos' Digital Earth Fellowship 2019.
This programme of short films offers counter evidence to the popular belief that technology is a construction of the West. This considered selection of films can be understood as a sample of cinematic expressions from Africa addressing the politics of technology and its consequences for the continent. They affirm Africa as an active agent in the production of technology through indigenous practices.
Artist Bio
Russel Hlongwane is a cultural producer and creative industries consultant based in Durban, South Africa. His work obsesses over the tensions in Heritage/ Modernity and Culture/Tradition as it applies to black life. His practice includes cultural research, creative producing, design, film and curatorship. He is part of a number of working groups spread across the Southern African Region, the African continent more broadly and internationally. He has shown work in Munich, Marrakech, Maputo, Karlsruhe, Harare, Bristol, Tokyo as well as throughout South Africa.
Dilman Dila is author of a critically acclaimed collection of short stories, A Killing in the Sun. He has been shortlisted for the Commonwealth Short Story Prize (2013) and for the Nommo Awards for Best Novella (2017), and long listed for the BBC International Radio Playwriting Competition (2014), among other accolades. His short fiction have featured in several anthologies, and his films include What Happened in Room 13 (2007) and The Felistas Fable (2013), which was nominated for Best First Feature by a Director at AMAA (2014). See more of his life and works at dilmandila.com
Tabita Rezaire is an artist-healer-seeker working with screens and energy streams. Her cross-dimensional practice envisions network sciences - organic, electronic and spiritual - as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness. Navigating digital, corporeal and ancestral memory as sites of struggles, she digs into scientific imaginaries to tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Tabita is based in Cayenne, French Guiana.
Francois Knoetze is a Cape Town based performance artist, sculptor and filmmaker known for his sculptural suits and experimental video art. He was an Africa Centre Resident and 2016 laureate of the Nafasi Art Space Artist-In-Residence Programme (Dar es Salaam); and attended the OMI International Art Center Residency Programme (New York) in 2017. In 2018 he participated in Cosmopolis 1.5: Enlarged Intelligence (Chengdu) hosted by the Pompidou Centre, as well as Digital Imaginaries - Africas in Production at ZKM, Germany. In 2019 his work was exhibited at the Pompidou Centre as part of Cosmopolis #2. He is a recipient of Hivos' Digital Earth Fellowship 2019.
