Ruth First produces a general theory of power for independent states which goes a long way towards explaining why they are so vulnerable to military coups. She gives detailed accounts of the coups in Nigeria the Sudan and Ghana, and includes material on the role of the army in Algeria and Egypt showing the kinds of conflict which lead to the situation where the political machinery is short-circuited and guns do the leading. She makes use of interviews, conveying a vivid idea of what a coup means to those involved in it. 'I count myself an African', writes Ruth First,'and there is no cause I hold dearer.' And though she makes harsh judgement on Africa's independent leaderships her purpose is not to confirm irrational European prejudice but to contribute to the continent's ultimate liberation.
Is it still a turning point or already a condition? Crises and crisis talk is now everywhere and with us all the time. It may call for a new diagnosis, that of Crisis fatigue, to be in crisis with crisis. And it seems a good moment to recall that every crisis talk is embedded in a constructed narrative, mediated and framed in various ways. The critical condition of our planet lies bare and no doubt, we, as inhabitants, are in trouble and we are running out of time. Crisis effects play out at a distance or close by, depending where we live and if we can afford to ignore it or not. But how to respond to such an overwhelming, unjust crisis condition?
Following the etymological traces of the term crisis we arrive at the ancient Greek term krinô (to separate, to choose, to cut, to decide, to judge), which suggested a definitive decision. In this sense, Crisis, as a decision-making force, seems to be an attention generating magnet that regulates what comes before and after as balanced or normal. But normal for whom? Does the concept of crisis itself (the way we think of a situation as crisis) promote a logic of the binary against the linking of options? Either-or against and? If we consider crises and conflicts as sources of development and see development as non-linear and sometimes contradicting processes requiring imagination, hybrid creations and creative experimentation, we understand the absolute necessity for art and culture to be involved in the search for form-giving responses to crises.
If we think of the practice of film editing, a decision to make a cut is necessary to make a new connection between two images, to assemble, to bring sound and image in synch or let them diverge. In this sense, montage can contain and counter a narrative of crisis at the same time. In fact, in a progression of cutting, dividing and assembling a narrative can evolve in linear or non-linear ways, like working through a crisis-continuum as decision making. We can think in that way of editing as a methodology that also invites for close viewing, close listening or reading in collaborative ways. With an attention to nuances instead of contrasts. Think of the editing room as a social space.
We understand the set-up of the consortium in such a montage-way, with a framework-building approach in mind. To conceptualise narratives of crisis otherwise as a way of responding, we will explore different constellations of separation from different angles with each project partner and counter the logic of separation with methods of artistic research. By bringing world perspectives to the centre of attention, by starting to listen and learning how to learn, we aim to flip sides, build oscillating fields and floors, to strengthen capacities of imagination. Understanding Art and Culture, Industrial Design, Moving Image and Documentary Practices as bridge-making tools and methodologies for research, capable of linking analytical strengths and methodologies of Anthropology, Sociology, Philosophy, Political Theory and Economics instead of separating them. In this sense, artists, cultural workers, humanists and interpreters are seen as agents to offer narratives of entanglement against crises provoked by separation.
collective intelligence of the margins
revolution from the peripheries
as responses to concrete crisis
Post-Independent Mozambique - Worker-Researcher Lab – Ruth First as directore of the Development Course
starting outside of Europe: understanding advanced basics around moments of transition, politics in crisis and imagination with the sharp poliical analysis of
Ruth First: The Elusive Revolution (1974)
Jihan El-Tahri, (documntary filmmaker) and her current research and filmproject on Libya
Perspectiva—futures are rural
a film-festival in and of the rurals
Imagine a multi-place film festival as a site of production, addressing rural concerns and narratives of innovation through collective methodologies of filmmaking. A carefully curated selection of films across genres opens up global perspectives on “futures are rural”. With an approach to cinema as night-school, the festival offers a lively framework for learning and research.
Genalguacil/Andalusia
Petralia Soprana/Sicily
Tynset/Norway
....
Ramallah/Palestine
Tombwa/Angola
Galway/Ireland
Hanau/Germany
Nanterre/France
with a crisis of food production
research collective, “on agriculture, environment & labour in the Arab world”
After all what was wrong with a crisis of identity, for himself and for his country, even under the brightness of the sunflower? It was precisely the yellow pull of sunflowers and mangoes, dances and wisdom, that hid so many problems and crises underneath. (Search Sweet Country, Kojo Laing)
“Agent” is a term that acknowledges the small shifts in perspective and practice. (Doris Sommer, 2014)
Academic Partners:
Simon Ridley / Laboratoire Sophiapol, Nanterre
Emil André Røyrvik, Department of Sociology and Political Science/NTNU. xxxxx ++++
Evangelia Petridou, Jörgen Sparf / Studio Apertua
Conn Holohan, Galway, Centre of Creative Technology
Kodwo Eshun / Susan Schuppli / CRA, Goldsmiths.
Non-Academic research team: Jihan El-Tahri (filmmaker), Ida Brobakke (industrial design) xxx ++++
Adisory Board: Janet Roitman, Premesh Lalu, Doris Sommer xxxx ++++
Binyavanga Wainaina in conversation with Kojo Laing, Chimurenga, August 2019
Kodwo Eshun: To Win the War, You fought Sideways. Kojo Laing’s Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars
creative industries as agent and driver for change
creative skill set to respond to the complexities of crises
image making of crisis, filmmaking as research
editing, montage, assemblage
the cut, crisis, decision making
Kodwo Eshun: Reading the Laingian text as a fable of totalitarianism necessitates the rereading of the notion of the magical in the terminology of the total artwork. Rereading the magical in the Laingian text as an extension of the project of aesthetic dictatorship indicates the necessity of rethinking the relation between text and totality, form and force, fiction and servitude, futurity and virtuosity. To reread Laingian grammar in terms of the diagrams of cybernetics is to open the circuit between the engineering of temporality, the temporality of war, and the theatre of warfare as the ontology of enmity and the becoming of adversity. To reread the seventeen zones of Major Gentl and the Achimota Wars is to pass from the principle of the proxy to the pedagogy of paradox to the praxis of prediction to the poetry of preemption. To read the Laingian text is to reread the magical in its syntax of becoming. To read the Laingian syntax of becoming is to encounter the Laingian poetics of inventivism. To reread the Laingian poesis of inventivism is to confront the Laingian composition of the ‘ludicrum’. To reread the Laingian confabulation of the ludicrum is to convoke the Laingian exactitude of ‘nkwasiem’. To read the Laingian exorbitance of nkwasiem is to encounter the Laingian fastidiousness of ontogenesis conducted in the Laingian recursion of ontological slapstick.
"Though the details of its semantic history can be found in many places, it is worth reiterating that its etymology is said to originate with the ancient Greek term krinô (to separate, to choose, cut, to decide, to judge), which suggested a definitive decision." (Janet Roitman, Anti-Crisis, 2014)
“Through the rape of my imagination and of the little space that I could call my own, they come to tell me that the Negro is lazy. He cannot develop independently. But this Negro that you crushing to death with your economic and financial machinery laid the foundations of your economy. And this Negro has ensured your development.”
Kojo Laing, Search Sweet Country
“....he felt it his duty to balance this with his own type of search. The search of a fool touches other lives … Beni Baidoo usually had as much laughter with his food as possible, and finding himself in 1975, had broken up the year into different grades of laughter, sharing the teeth and noise among his friends Kofi Loww, Kojo Okay Pol, ½-Allotey, Professor Sackey, Dr Boadi and others. He brought to friendship a fine quality: nuisance value; and then flowed with his one obsession in and out of the lives he met ..."
Necessarily hybrid, conscientious cultural agency requires the collaboration of various skill sets to hitch stale and unproductive social patterns to the motor of unconventional interventions. The mixed media of unpredictable art and extra-artistic institutions that together compose constructive cultural agency obviously don’t fit into standard fields of study. On the one hand, the natural and social sciences may recognize effective programs but will probably overlook art as a partner to economic, legal, or health care advances, and therefore will miss a motor of social effectiveness.And on the other hand, humanists concerned with defending art for its own sake are likely to bypass social effects though they attest to aesthetic value.
This discord between pragmatics and aesthetics is doubly debilitating since the “adjacent possible” counts on a combination of art and science.Development needs the imagination and judgment that the arts cultivate; and the arts thrive on adaptive challenges that throw systems into crisis and require new forms. Tracking hybrid creations means stepping beyond established practices and linking onto creative experiments. (Doris Sommer, The Work of Art in the World, 2014)
Jihan El-Tahri and Kodwo Eshun in conversation, duing the Women on Aeroplanes Stopover in Frankfurt/Main, 2019. Excerpt.
When W. E. B. Du Bois founded The Crisis in 1910, as the house magazine of the fledgling NAACP, he created what is arguably the most widely read and influential periodical about race and social injustice in U.S. history. Written for educated African-American readers, the magazine reached a truly national audience within nine years, when its circulation peaked at about 100,000. The Crisis’s stated mission, like that of the NAACP itself, was to pursue “the world-old dream of human brotherhood” by bearing witness to “the danger of race prejudice” and reporting on “the great problem of inter-racial relations,” both at home and abroad. The magazine thus provided a much-needed corrective to the racial stereotypes and silences of the mainstream press—publishing, each month, uplifting accounts of achievements by African Americans, alongside stark accounts of racial discrimination and gruesome reports of lynchings. In the twelve years covered by the MJP edition (from 1910 to 1922), The Crisisalso addressed most every facet of life for black people in America, devoting special issues to such topics as women’s suffrage, education, children, labor, homes, vacations, and the war. From the start, the magazine actively promoted the arts as well, and is deservedly recognized as an important crucible for the Harlem Renaissance.
Crisis Issues 1910-1922 via the Modernist Journal Project.
