Conversations with Neighbours, Archive of Forgetfulness

This set was performed by DJ ElKontessa on the 27th October 2021, at the Goethe-Institut Alexandria, Egypt. It forms part of an assembly of works curated by Ali Hussein AlAdawy titled 'When the Archive is Speculative, Fatigue with Visualising the Future may Fade' حينما يأتي الأرشيف كخيال,ربما يتبدد عناء تصور المستقبل. It is the 5th regionally curated project as part of the Archive of Forgetfulness (archiveofforgetfulness.com) funded by the Goethe-Institut. 

In this final episode of ‘Conversations with Neighbours,’ we ask how we might trace the afterlives of the trans-saharan trade routes of the 8th century? We travel through time and memory with Morrocan writer and translator, Omar Berrada, as he excavates the hidden histories of his once enslaved great, great grandmother; We travel from from Ilorin to Timbuktu with scholar, Moshood Jimba as he recounts the journey that led him to establish a manuscript collection on his return to Nigeria; And we hear from musician Amino Belyamani, of the healing purposes of Gnawa music in Morocco, and the languages and syllabi that are unique to Ewe music from Ghana. Omar Berrada extends special thanks to M'barek Bouhchichi, Hatim Belyamani, and NourbeSe Philip.

Conversations with Neighbours is co-curated by Huda Tayob and Bongani Kona, with production support and editing from Andri Burnett, design work by Graeme ‘Boeta Gee’ Arendse, and design and social media by Zakiyyah Haffejee. This podcast series was made possible with funding from the Goethe-Institut.

In this episode Conversations with Neighbours, we ask how the global Swahili worlds might reframe our thinking of connections across waters. We ponder with Kenyan novelist Yvonne Adhiambo Owuor on the Swahili name for the Western Indian Ocean and the importance of telling unvoiced stories; Halima Ali reads the work of Haji Gora Haji, a Zanzibari poet and seafarer whose biography is enfolded in the waves of the ocean; and we travel to the docks in Cape Town with visual artist Meghna Singh, who draws us into the invisible world of mobile populations immersed in new forms of economic servitude at sea.

In Episode 6 of ‘Conversations with Neighbours,’ we ask what do lines of flight reveal of our shared planetary futures? We ponder on the speculative histories of ‘Black flight’ with Zimbabwean architectural designer and researcher, Thandi Loewenson; we travel from Cape Town to Nagasaki, with South African architect and writer, Ilze Wolff, in search of health, care and Black peace on earth; and with Angolan composer, Victor Gama, we trace the arc from Thomas More’s Utopia to apartheid South Africa’s nuclear weapons programme in the unfinished work of anthropologist Augusto Zita.

In Episode 5 of Conversations with Neighbours we ask how larger histories of non-alignment, anti-colonial revolt and pan-africanisms are inscribed into the landscape? Sudanese writer, Jamal Mahjoub, shares a reading of “Rumble in the Nile” (2015) which chronicles the early years of promise heralded by Jaafar Nimeiry’s ascent to power in Sudan in the 1970s. And Jihan el-Tahri questions why we date African independence to Ghana in 1957, and not Egypt in 1952. She tells us more about her film trilogy: Tragedy of the Great Lakes (2000); Cuba, an African Odyssey (2007); and Behind the Rainbow (2009).

In Episode 4 of ‘Conversations with Neighbours,’ we ask what remains of the political and cultural ideas that imagined Africa as the 'utopia of a borderless world'? Ghanaian architect and scholar, Kuukuwa Manful, reflects on the place of minor histories in deepening our understanding of pan-africanism; Nigerian writer, Emmanuel Iduma takes us with in his search for an atlas of a borderless world; Egyptian sociologist Sara Salem takes us up in the air as she unravels the workings of coloniality and capital from the vantage point of the sky.

In this episode 3 of Conversations with Neighbours, we ask what personal and political histories emerge via infrastructures of mobility? You will hear of bonds of kinship that not only survive the crossing of vast territories, but reject borders, ruptures and distances. You will travel on trains that have lost all sense of time and follow in the footsteps of a writer traversing South Africa’s longest highway on foot. Guests include Nubian Egyptian architect and researcher, Menna Agha; Novelist from the DRC, Fiston Mwanza Mujila; South African writer, Hedley Twidle; and Ghanaian architect and researcher, Kuukuwa Manful.

In this episode of Conversations with Neighbours, we speak to Princess Zinzi Mhlongo, Eric ‘1 Key’ Ngangare and Omnia Abbas Shawkat about war and its remnants. Coming of age in a time of great turmoil – in the DRC, Rwanda, Sudan and South Africa. The importance of telling stories that contest both history and statehood and other forms of silence and organised forgetting. We also ponder on what it means to produce work that can contend with the violence of our present.

In this first episode of Conversations with Neighbours, Huda Tayob speaks to Jumoke Sanwo and Ali Al-Adawy on questions of archives, untranslatability and opacity. This first conversation points to archives as an imaginary space of possibility - raising questions around the place of performance and the body, and the epistemological implications of engaging with the untranslatable and opaque. We ponder on the Yoruba word for archive, reflect on the music and lyrics of Alexandrian rapper Wegz, discuss the work of Jelili Atiku and question the implications of the Arabic translation of Thomas Mofolo’s novel Chaka under Nasser’s rule in Egypt.

A podcast series featuring artists, musicians, curators, researchers and theatre-makers from across the African continent.