Opencall: Call for participation
Akademie Schloss SolitudeThe workshop explores the intersections between Artificial Intelligence and Bantu-Kongo Animism. Through the research and praxis of artist and curator Nkhensani Mkhari, we ask and explore the immanent possibilities in refiguring our approach to AI from an anthropomorphic perspective to an animist based approach
Animism holds that personhood is not exclusively attributable to humans, there are many different types of personhood. From this perspective of projected sentience, reality becomes a composite assemblage of objects with an inner life. The workshop explores how we can use animism as a methodology and structural framework for artistic, technological and cultural production, citing intercultural indigenous animistic devices from artistic and curatorial projects of Nkhensani Mkhari, including 'Zibuyile Zinkisi'(2020 - ongoing) and the 'Misava' curatorial project amongst other examples.
This workshop stems from Mkharis current dissertation project for The New Centre for Research and Practice. Titled »Jhonnie« the Sci-Fi novel explores peripheral futurities in a world where African cosmogonies and ontological frameworks intersect with Western technologies such as Artificial Intelligence.
Nov 30th [ starting time: 9.30am ], pt. 1 presentation & talks
Through a series of screenings and discussion(s) this workshop day will surround a set of curated new media works from the Misava Exhibition and artistic projects of Nkhensani Mkhari, including 'Zibuyile Zinkisi'(2020 - ongoing).
Dec 1st [starting time: 2.00pm ], pt. 2 practical exercise
Each participating individual will need comfortable clothing, an offering (of any kind) and a notebook and a pen. The presentation will be conducted outdoors in a garden with trees or a forest setting.
site: Guibal-Saal (Akademie Schloss Solitude)
registration:
Your registration can be submitted via the Bindles.net website. We will use Bindles as a platform for ideas and content-sharing. You will have to create a user account, then apply to the [workshop] by adding your e-mail-address into the allocated space.
Please register for the dates on 30.11. and 1.12. by 28.11.
or via Email <t.dumke@akademie-solitude.de>, object: Izinto zaBantu
references:
Nkhensani Mkhari
Nkhensani describes their work as a queer meditation on transience, aesthetic sociology and redemptive futurologies; an abstract machine nomadically migrating through contemporary culture. Exploring what Individuality is, what collectivity is and what it means to share space. A study on migration, myth and cultural practices of (re)memory, rooted in counteractive ways of seeing and modes of hearing.
https://www.nkhensanimkhari.com