Fak'ugesi Talks: Premonition and Digital Imaginaries
Thu Sep 6, 10:00 - Thu Sep 6, 17:00
Wits Art Museum
ABOUT
A talks and discussion session hosted by Fak'ugesi Festival and WiSER in association with Digital Imaginaries, expanding on the second leg of a three city project, which started in Dakar, Senegal in May and will conclude in Karlsruhe, Germany in November 2018. This second leg at WAM - Digital Imaginaries: Premonitions, is a collaboration between social scientists and artists, imagines and critiques.
Fak'ugesi Talks: Premonition and Digital Imaginaries will explore how digital data practices shift how uncertain futures are anticipated and predicted. This will take place alongside the exhibition to engage an exploratory debate on questions surrounding visual research, data, knowledge and decolonisation in a globalised information society.
Program will include a tour of the exhibition and a focus in on the subject of vernacular algorithms, followed by a series of talks with leading theorists, philosophers and artists. Please note that the day includes tea and lunch.
Program Outline: 6th Sept.
Wits Art Museum
10:00 - 10:45 -- Exhibition Tour and Presentation by Fiona Rankin-Smith & Dr. Tegan Bristow focusing on the Vernacular Algorithms and African Fractals projects of the exhibition.
University Corner, 19th Floor
11:00 - 11:30 -- Response to Digital Imaginaries: Premonition by Sarah Nuttall
11.30- 12.15 -- Aesthetics of African Machine Learning with Keith Breckenridge and Richard Rottenburg
Tshimologong Precinct, 41 Juta Street (walk from UC)
12:30 - 13:30 -- Lunch at Tshimologong Precinct, with focus view on Marc Lee's installation 'EchoLocation' at Tshimologong.
University Corner, 19th Floor
13:30 - 14:00 -- Presentation by Artist Marc Lee on "EchoLocation", Interactive Digital Art, Streaming Media and Language Diversity in Africa. (Supported by Pro Helvetia).
14:00-15:00 -- Fak'ugesi Africa Digital Residents 2018. A focus on 'vernacular algorithms' as the theme of Fak'ugesi Festival 2018.
Presenting: Nkhensani Mkhari (Johannesburg), Joshua Chiundiza (Harare), Yara Mekawei (Cairo), Abhiyan Humane (New Delhi), Anoop Saxena (New Delhi), and Mathilde Buenerd (Geneva). (Supported by Pro Helvetia)
The Point of Order (walk from UC)
17:10 -- WalkAbout of Fak'ugesi Residents Exhibition at the Point of Order as the start of First Thursday
Digital Imaginaries is a joined project of Kër Thiossane and Afropixel Festival in Dakar, Wits Art Museum and Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival in Johannesburg, and ZKM | Center for Art and Media Karlsruhe, funded by the TURN fund of the German Federal Cultural Foundation (Kulturstiftung des Bundes). The workshop series Competences and Visions for the Digitization of Africa in Dakar and Johannesburg is financed by the GIZ commissioned by the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development.
Cover image: Installation view of Tabita Rezair's work PREMIUM CONNECT at the Wits Art Museum for Digital Imaginaries: Premonition. Photo by Mark Lewis.