Panafrica: Image, Sound, Text

09:30-10:30 | Welcome & Introduction

Kasia Redzisz, KANAL Artistic Director.

Sandrine Colard, KANAL Curator-at-large.

10:30-12:00 | Iconography Panel

This panel considers the making, uses, and distribution of iconic images and visual objects within the history of Pan-Africanism. We will consider what constitutes Pan-African iconography and what remains unavailable for iconographic representation.

Moderator

Elvira Dyangani Ose, Director Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona - MACBA.

Presentations

Alicia Knock, Curator Contemporary Art and Prospective Department, Centre Pompidou Paris.

Nydia Swaby, Black feminist researcher, writer and curator, London - Amy and me in the Archive: Autoethnography as a Black Feminist Archival Practice.

Hamza Walker, Director LAXART, Los Angeles.

12:00-13:30: Lunch

13:30-15:00 | Aurality Panel

The panel explores the significant role played by sound and listening, from music to political speech, within the history of Pan-Africanism. We will explore the pathways of circulation and practices of reiteration that enable the resonance of these sonic forms across the Black world.

Moderator

Adom Getachew, Assistant Professor Political Science, Race, Diaspora, & Indigeneity, University of Chicago.

Presentations

Antawan Byrd, Associate Curator Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago - Pan-Africanism, Photography, and the Public Square.

Yasmina Reggad, Independent researcher, writer and curator and performance artist, Brussels - Sikia, Tazama [Listen. Look Here].

Satch Hoyt, Multimedia and sound artist, Berlin - Unpacking Sonic Migrations From Slave-Ship to Space-Ship.

15:00-15:30: Short Break

15:30-17:00 | Poetics Panel

The panel considers how certain literary genres and forms have proved central to Pan-African discourse. We will examine the aesthetic and rhetorical contours of a Pan-African poetics broadly construed.

Moderator:

Matthew Witkovsky, Vice President for strategic art initiatives and Chair of Department of Photography and Media, Art Institute of Chicago.

Presentations:

Antoine Tshitungu Kongolo, Professor University of Lubumbashi - Po(éthique), politique et actualité du panafricanisme. 

Amanda Carneiro, Assistant Curator Mediation and Public Programmes, Museo de Arte de São Paulo - Brazil of Utopian Africa.

Nadia Nurhussein, Professor English and Africana Studies, Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore - Marcus Garvey’s Martial Ethiopianism.

17:30-18:30 | Closing Keynote

Tsitsi Ella Jaji, Poet and Bacca Foundation Associate Professor, Duke University, Durham.

18:30: Conclusion

Kasia Redzisz, KANAL Artistic Director.

Sandrine Colard, KANAL Curator-at-large.

Antawan Byrd is Associate Curator of Photography and Media at the Art Institute of Chicago. He specializes in modern and contemporary art of Africa and the African diaspora, with a particular focus on histories of photography, sound, practices of listening, urbanism, and popular culture.

Amanda Carneiro is Assistant Curator at the Museu de Arte de São Paulo (MASP) and co-editor at Afterall journal. She worked as an educator at the Museu Afro Brasil, where she also worked as Assistant Coordinator of the Education Center. Her training and research interests are related to African and Afro-Brazilian history and culture.

Elvira Dyangani Ose is Director of The Museu d’Art Contemporani de Barcelona (MACBA). Previously, she was Director of The Showroom (London), Creative Time Senior Curator, Curator International Art at Tate Modern and Curator of the eighth edition of the Göteborg International Biennial for Contemporary art.

Adom Getachew is Assistant Professor of Political Science and the College at the University of Chicago. She holds a joint PhD in Political Science and African-American Studies from Yale University. Her research interests in the history of political thought, theories of race and empire, and postcolonial political theory.

Satch Hoyt is a renowned artist born in London of British and African-Jamaican ancestry, and currently living and working in Berlin, Germany. He makes sculptures, paintings, drawings and installations, with a central sound component. Hoyt’s practice develops a Black sonic cartography, inspired by Afro-Futurism and the Black Atlantic. His work has been exhibited internationally.

Tsitsi Ella Jaji is a poet and scholar originally from Zimbabwe. She is Associate Professor of English and African and African American Studies at Duke University. She is the author of several poetry collections and of Africa in Stereo: Music, Modernism and Pan-African Solidarity (Oxford). Her current work on Black classical musicians includes poetic collaborations with several composers.

Alicia Knock is Curator at the Centre Pompidou (Paris) in the Contemporary art and Prospective Department. She works at expanding the museum towards Africa and Central Europe, through acquisitions and both thematical and historical exhibitions. She is the co-curator of the 14th Kaunas Biennale in 2023.

Nadia Nurhussein is Professor of English and Africana Studies, specializing in African American literature and culture, at Johns Hopkins University. She is the author of several publications in these research fields.

Yasmina Reggad is a Brussels-based performance artist, researcher, writer, and dramaturge. Her research and projects focus on the politics of futurity, investigates alternative systems of knowledge and artistic modes of production, and explore performative methodologies inspired by dance and performance. She co-curated the exhibition on Zineb Sedira for the French Pavilion at the 59th Venice Biennale.

Nydia A. Swaby is a Black feminist researcher, writer, and curator. Her practice engages archives, auto/ethnography, photography, the moving image, and the imagination to curate programmes and visual narratives, write research and performance texts that explore the gendered, diasporic, and affective dimensions of Black being and becoming.

Antoine Tshitungu Kongolo is a Doctor in General and Comparative Literature (Université de Lille III) and Professor at the University of Lubumbashi, poet, novelist and literary critic. His work focuses on colonial and post-colonial writing in Congo, Rwanda and Burundi, the foundations of Pan-Africanism, ecology and literature, and the critique of the epistemic dimension of Africanism.

Hamza Walker is the Director of LAXART (Los Angeles). Previously, he was Director of Education and Associate Curator at the Renaissance Society at the University of Chicago, a non-collecting museum devoted to contemporary art. He was co-curator of the 2016 Los Angeles biennial at the Hammer Museum and curator of many exhibitions.

Matthew S. Witkovsky is Vice President for strategic art initiatives at the Art Institute of Chicago; since 2009 he has chaired the museum's curatorial department of Photography and Media. Previously, he was curator at the National Gallery of Art in Washington D.C.

1 Avenue du port, 1000 Brussels.

In English.

15€ | Standard price

10€ | Student price

Lunch is included in the ticket price.

In collaboration with the Art Institute of Chicago and Museu d'Art Contemporani de Barcelona.