The Black Lunch Table (BLT) is an oral-history archiving project staged as an ongoing collaboration between visual artists Heather Hart and Jina Valentine. Since its inception in 2005, BLT has been engaging communities, questioning dominant narratives and histories of acceptance through facilitating candid conversations. Placing itself firmly at the intersection of authorship, reflections and living attitudes in an internet age.
The lunch table is centred around the idea of a literal as well as a metaphorical table —participants are invited to come together and share thoughts, ideas and experiences around critical discourse. This idea of sitting together and engaging in critical discourse goes a long way towards removing the separation between the intellect, the body and the soul. A sense of community is formed and previously disembodied knowledge becomes accessible through an integration with lived experience.
BLT is geared towards cultural producers and local communities of the African Diaspora including academics, emerging artists, curators and researchers —focussing on writing and rewriting contemporary history. This rewriting forms part of an important aspect in questioning who breaks through the art canon; how we measure and value art and which stories we chose to prioritise.
The BLT prides itself as a vector through which interdisciplinary and intergenerational discussions find new life, with these discussions further playing a role in canonising previously erased and forgotten narratives. One could think of this as a recounting of contemporary cultural history, which speaks to the creation of new knowledge. Thereby deconstructing and redefining our relationship with existing knowledge systems and allowing for a multiplicity of narratives as well as the decolonisation of that knowledge.
Archiving is an important part of the project, further recognising that publication and documentation form part of representation where authorship is treasured. “Each roundtable’s dialogue will be documented on our online archive. The archive structure will enable web visitors to search this dynamic database using a variety of metadata tags.” – BLT website. This archiving aspect is further achieved through what is called the Wikipedia edit-a-thon, where participants can contribute robust Wikipedia entries on various artists in the African Diaspora.
Marginalised communities and artists on the fringe continue to be sidelined when it comes to global discourse and critical conversations —our stories often reduced to subjective tales in relation to the more “objective truths of the dominant culture”. BLT assists in bringing forth these ideas and narratives, allowing for divergent interpretations and reinterpretations.
Initiatives such as these play a critical role in normalising the idea of speaking the unspeakable and telling stories that have been muted. With a dedication on bringing forth new agendas, a space is created to push beyond the tired conversations that are often facilitated by the comfortable dominant culture. Through its facilitation, BLT is reminding us that telling our own stories is a form of resistance in a world that continues to be exploitative, exclusionary and elitist.
As an artist and a researcher, Salome Asega‘s practice is a celebration of multivocality and dissensus. The relationship between her practice as an artist, and her roles as a researcher and teacher, is an interconnected one. Each of these aspects inform and filter into one another. Asega explains that this connection comes from their collective ability to offer useful methods for igniting questions and picking through ideas. I interviewed Asega to find out more about her work.
Could you please share more about your creative and academic background?
I spent a year after finishing my undergrad degree tinkering with hardware and making interactive visuals for my friends in performance and music. This eventually brought me to a community of artists who were also working with technology in exploratory ways. I did an MFA at Parsons at The New School in Design and Technology, where I’m now a faculty member.
I also come from a family of science and math people. When my family bought our first computer, my uncle, who was studying computer science at the time, used to mail me floppy discs of games he was working on. I don’t think I understood this as a creative technology practice at the time, but I like to thank him now for jump starting my infatuation with all things digital.
In your bio you describe your practice as one that “celebrates dissensus and multivocality”. Could you please unpack why this is the foundation of your practice, and how you filter this through in your textual and visual projects?
So many of my projects involve a collaborative or participatory process, which is grounded in conversations where we are making certain conceptual or design decisions. This very messy, messy process is sometimes rendered invisible when what’s in an exhibition is a final art object. When I say I celebrate multivocality or dissensus/consensus, I’m saying I value the process of working in community and I also acknowledge that it’s not easy.
Having looked through your ongoing project, POSSESSION and your recent participation in the group exhibition To Break The Ocean, it appears that water is of particular interest to you, specifically the historical and cultural significance of water and its connection to Blackness and the African Diaspora. Could you please share more about your interest in this, and how you unpack this in POSSESSION and To Break The Ocean?
I grew up in the desert, so I think the water is a natural draw for me. Beyond that, I’m curious about the ways the ocean and water show up in visual representations of time like how the ocean can represent the kalunga line in West African cosmologies. The ocean then becomes the split between cycles of past, present, and future, and also different dimensions– real world, spirit world. There is a speculative lens in much of my work and water presents itself as a material to do this thinking.
Your participation in the group exhibition To Break The Oceanis with Iyapo Repository. Could you please share more about the idea behind this resource library and how it has evolved since its inception?
Ayodamola Okunseinde and I started Iyapo Repository in 2016 during a residency with Eyebeam, an organization here in New York. The project has so many entry points for us. We were thinking a lot about the rising number of e-waste sites on the continent and the ways we’ve seen folks repurpose those materials to make something new and beautiful. We were also thinking about the places we show up in mainstream science fiction narratives, and black folks are primarily shown as extras if they’re even shown at all. We were also thinking about access and literacy to digital tools, and how we could leverage our access to certain institutional spaces to bring resources out. Somehow we combed all these questions and concerns together and developed a pop-up resource library and workshop series that asks participants to build future artifacts with us using hardware, virtual reality, and some digital fabrication techniques. It’s been extremely energizing to take up space in speculative futures with other black people.
Iyapo Repository focuses on physical and digital “artifacts”. Why was it important for you to include both kinds of artefacts? And how have you collated these to ensure their value and meaning to not get stripped away when placed in the context of a collection/archive?
Our inclusion to have both physical and digital artifacts in the repository was to ensure we were designing for multiple methods of engagement. We can dream up and create artifacts with our participants remotely, but also also in real life. The engagements, conversations, and creative exchanges are what ultimately make up this project. I’m interested in getting folks to speculate and design collectively.
When we show the artifacts in an exhibition, we include the original manuscript drawings and writing done in the workshop to provide contextual evidence for the final object. These documents are signed by our participants to make sure they are given credit as the archivist who “discovered” the artifact.
Could you please share more about the Iyapo Repository and how participants become archivists influenced by how they imagine the future? Who participates in these workshops?
We partner with museums, universities, festivals, community organizations, and after school programs to host us. I’m always thinking about how we can make unlikely partnerships to redistribute resources from one place to another. So if we’re working in a larger institution I want to make sure we’re also partnering with a community organization who can bring in their networks to participate in the project with us and take ownership of Iyapo Repository in that iteration.
The project Level Up: The Real Harlem Shake is also interesting in its use of video game language and interaction. Please share more about the choice to develop this as a video game? Is this a kind of commentary on cultural appropriation, digital cross-dressing or identity tourism?
In 2012, DJ Baur came out with a song called “Harlem Shake” that prompted people to make viral videos of them and a group of friends shaking wildly. Soon these videos took the top hit position over videos of the original Harlem Shake meaning you’d have to do some deep internet digging to find the original dance. I worked with curator Ali Rosa-Salas and dancer Chrybaby Cozie to develop a project that could counter this cultural erasure and assert the Harlem Shake as a dance form that is studied, learned, and passed off to others.
You are also the co-host of speculative talk show Hyperopia: 20/30 Vision. Please share more about the show and how it connects to the other work that you do?
Hyperopia: 20/30 Vision is a radio show Carl Chen (Lasik) and I (ConVex) started in 2015 at bel-air radio. Derek Schultz (DJ D) and Leila Tamari (LENZ) joined shortly after. The show originally was a way for us to ask experts to speculate the near future of their fields. Each episode, we want to imagine some essential element of a future — alternative economies, reproductive health, sustainable architecture, etc — and the ways technology creates opportunities or challenges towards the visioning. The format changed slightly for us to also have conversations as a team about our anxieties and optimisms around technological development presently. This show is another way think through ideas of futurity collectively.
What are you working on at the moment?
I’m currently a Technology Fellow at the Ford Foundation evaluating the arts and cultural strategies through technology lens. I’m spending the summer writing and reading in preparation for new projects this fall.
Is there anything you have lined up for this year that you would like to share with our readers?
I have a residency with Pioneer Works in Brooklyn lined up for this fall. I’m also working with Geng (PTP) to produce a performance for Abrons Art Center at St Augustine’s Church in November. We’re pulling a group of artists together to think through the architectural history of this Church that tells an early history of segregation in New York.
Fashion. Art. Music. These are three creative spheres that are often intertwined with one another. The Art’Press Yourself festival, organized by the agency DARAJA CONCEPT, took place in Paris on 3-4 November, and aptly represented this intersection. Described as an afro-urban festival, designers, filmmakers and artists with roots spreading across Europe and Africa were brought together to share their work which tied into the slogan for this year’s festival, ‘Back to the Afrofuture’. Playing on the cyclical notion of time, this slogan references Afrofuturist thinking.
The backdrop with the words ‘Art’Press Yourself’ surrounded by adinkra symbols greeted guests as they walked through the entrance of the festival’s location, Pan Piper. This was created in collaboration with POSCO. Festival-goers were invited to sit on a hand-woven chair and use various props representative of the festival and different African religious and mythological stories for photographs. However, the use of the backdrop transformed throughout the festival, with people being given pens to write messages and draw on the white spaces between the letters. This is symbolic of the collective production of language, making a connection to the way in which images have played a significant role in the foundation of African lettering and preservation of knowledge. Considering how young the festival is, it moves towards its importance in bringing together artists and designers and making a collective mark on framing fashion, design and music inspired by African and African Diaspora experiences.
The three levels of the venue allowed for a seamless definition of spaces, making it easy for attendees to navigate the festival. The first level included an exhibition space for artists and designers of all kinds to share their work. Gold jewelry, items sourced made from various African countries, accessories customized by artists, and original art pieces.
Ensuring that the festival catered for different interjections and reflections on creative practices, the third level of the venue was used for a fashion show, performances, a film screening as well as a talk on Afrofuturism. A display of the dance style vogue by Matyouz Ladurée and Félicia entertained festival-goers during the day on Saturday. Jean Fall, the founder of Cinewax, shared with audiences a video describing different elements of Afrofuturism and its significance as a school of thought and lens through which to view the experiences of black people. This was followed by the short film by female filmmaker Wanuri Kahiuthat uses Afrofuturist motifs as a way to interrogate environmental issues in Kenya, and the globe more generally. There was also a projection of Alexis Peskine‘s movie ‘Raft of Medusa’.
With the film setting the mood for a conversation which underlines what these motifs are and what they mean, UK-based digital artist Ashley Straker shared the stage with Bubblegum Club’s Editor Christa Dee to have a question and answer session facilitated by Laurie Pezeron (founder of READ! CLUB) about Afrofuturism. The enthusiasm and curiosity expressed through the audience members’ questions highlighted the significance of the conversation and the interpretation of it as a therapy, a methodology, an imaginary, tool for critique as well as a connection to a past, present and future which is expressed through writing, fashion, art and music.
The festival had an open-ended closure, allowing for conversations and networking to continue post the event.
To find out more about the festival visit Art’Press Yourself on Facebook and Instagram.
Below is a list of artists, designers and other participants to get a feel for the kind of collective creative energy that was present at this year’s festival:
Fashion
ASO GLOBAL. HARRIS M. MADEMOISELLE BLE. SOUL and ROOTS. KEIKO. SECRET SAMPLE. L’ATELIER DE BOJEL. ICOM ASSO. EKEEYA. KOROSOL AFRICAN ARMURE. KORY WADE. ALICIA DELYSSIME. ITFA
Accessories
MA COULEUR A SES MERVEILLES. AYIZANA. NOOR ART. OH LA CRANEUSE. NOIR FLUO EVA SAM. BAZAR WAX. OHEA. AFRICAN STYLIA DECO. NUBYA. DE BENGUE. LA FABRIKAWAX. EBENE CHIC. NATTY KONGO MLKREATIONS. NACHO JEWELS.
Visual Arts
LAURIE-ANNE BRACCIANO. ASHLEY STRAKER. HANEEKS. PRINTED SOLES. LEA PALOMA. MARY CREA ART. KIRIIKOO PINEAPPLES.
Beauty and other categories
REAL B COSMETICS. KISSORO TRIBAL GAMES. NYEUSI CREA LOCKS. MELLE LEE ZA. SERGE KPONTON.
Disillusioned by the idea that the Internet is a democratic space, digital artist Isaac Kariuki centres his work around internet culture, the body, autonomy and identity. I had a conversation with him about these themes, as well as his zine, Diaspora Drama.
Having studied a BA in Digital Art, Isaac confesses that playing around with Photoshop was where he learnt most of what he uses to create his work now, which is a combination of solo, collaborative and commissioned work.
As he started delving into more theoretical work, he realized that there was not much talk about the Internet in conjunction with African identities, or non-Western identities. “As someone who is from Kenya and who got on to the Internet thing very late as opposed to Western countries, I found we have our own structure and our own way of connecting with the Internet”. Isaac is interested in exploring those structures and relationships to connectivity, expressing that he thinks that the Internet is something that we can tether to what is going on politically, socially and culturally in non-Western countries, specifically African countries. Hence his focus on internet cultures and identity. “It is about what works in certain countries in certain contexts. So since the Internet is a Western territory, we have to go around it in certain ways to not get lost inside the western context and just like feed into it”.
Isaac’s ongoing SIM Card project was recently part of the exhibition Potentially “Flawless” in Toronto. In this project he looks at supposed “third world countries” and their relationship to the internet, and connectivity in general. With African countries having heavily embraced the cellular boom, he critically explores how cellular culture has become restricting and overwhelming. His work is a commentary on the monopoly that certain service providers have, and the limited narrative around connectivity created through their marketing strategies. As a way to subvert or mock the institutions that put forward this limited narrative, Isaac replicated the aesthetic of the advertising or what you would see on a SIM card, such as a smiling person. As a next phase in this project Isaac is working on developing a limited number of working SIM cards.
“I enjoy how people of colour use the Internet,” Isaac syas. Coming from the understanding that the Internet is an unsafe space for people of colour, seeing people of colour create spaces where they can represent and express themselves is encouraging for Isaac. With the Internet being flattened out in the sense that anyone who has access to it can create a page, Isaac enjoys how people of colour are creating safe zones in the scary, unsafe structures of the online where other people of colour can get access to information. When asked how he would re-imagine the Internet, he expressed that the main servers would be situated in remote places across the world so that it could be taken out of the control of large American corporations.
In keeping with the need for outlets for people of colour to share information represent themselves, Isaac started his zine Diaspora Drama in 2015. Using the word ‘Diaspora’ was important because he wanted to connect it with more light-hearted content about people of colour and their relationship to the Internet. Volume 1 of Diaspora Drama will be sold at the DIY Culture festival in London in May.
Glowing in the soft morning Lisbon light, her radiance exudes beyond the digital screen. Laetitia Lotthé voice echoes in Parisian lilts. Embodying a cross-cultural experience – with a mother from Central Africa and father from France – she moves between spaces with adaptability and ease.
Laetitia first experienced Johannesburg at the impressionable age of twelve. After attending the local French School Lycée Jules Verne she left South Africa and returned to Paris to complete her studies in business management. However, she had already lost her heart to the city of gold.
Her pre-adolescent years are peppered with memories of playing hide-and-seek with her sister amongst reels and reels of fabric at the Oriental Plaza. A tactic used in order to resist immanent boredom at the thought of being dragged to yet another material store by the hands of her mother. As a bespoke tailor, Laetitia’s mother acted as the figure who first immersed her in fashion. She remembers reading the designer magazines scattered around the house and the bolts of material in her home-bound studio.
By the time Laetitia reached high school, she was already designing pieces for her mother to execute. Some of which still reside in her vast wardrobe. However, she soon found that her real interest was located in the business of fashion. On annual vacationing trips to France as a teenager, she would source and then buy popular breakdancing brands to sell out of a car boot to local b-boys, monopolizing the market of the sought after goods.
Her parents soon announced, “you’re meant to be doing business” a quality they recognized in her even as a young child. After an internship post-studies at Dover Street Market Laetitia’s career was launched into Comme des Garcon where she has spent the last six years. The Japanese fashion label translates to ‘like boys’. Her journey at the brand began doing wholesale, she now operates as brand manager for Gosha Rubchinsky.
Comme des Garcon follows a particular philosophy and “doesn’t follow trends”. The space runs like a family in which one is encouraged to grow organically. Employees multi-task and juggle the twenty other fashion lines at the company – including Gosha Rubchinsky. The new line has become an incredible success as “one of the hottest brands on the market at the moment”.
Laetitia reflects that, “I love the brand, because I love the designer”. She went on to say, “Gosha is such an amazing person. What I like, is that he has a specific goal – to inspire young people, especially in his environment. He grew up in Moscow where I think young people don’t really have anyone to look up to, and they don’t understand what they’re able to do or not.”
The young designer has begun to destabilise some of the perceived obstacles around breaking into the fashion industry. “He is really inspiring teenagers to start and do their thing and go for it. I think for me, that is the most important.” He navigates around the purely capitalist model of consumer goods into something more meaningful. Their casting system operates predominantly through Instagram – a space that is becoming increasingly important as teenagers online have developed a virtual community through branded identity and an affinity towards Gosha.
Fashion exists on a personal level; Laetitia uses it as platform of self-expression beyond the confines of her career. On an evening shoot with South African photographer, Chris Saunders, she was captured on the streets of Paris. Located nearby her home – the space is a central melting-pot of cultural and class experience. The road transitions from clusters of sex workers into ‘Little Africa’ further down the road – peppered with the salons Laetitia has hair braided at. A “beautiful chaos” is how Laetitia describes it. A space of in-between and everything.
Look 1 – Laetitia wears: Jacket by Ovelia Transtoto, Top by Jacquemus, Skirt by Comme des Garçons Girl and Shoes by Eytys
Look 2 – Laetitia wears: Top by Jacquemus and Dress by Pull & Bear
Look 3 – Laetitia wears: Jacket by Comme des Garçons Black, Top (vintage Tommy Hilfiger), Sweatpants by Gosha Rubchinskiy, Shoes by Nike
Look 4 – Laetitia wears: Top by Gosha Rubchinskiy, Dress by Comme des Garçons Tricot, Jeans (vintage Levi’s 501), and Shoes by Monki
Artist Roberta Rich has been in residence at Assemblage Studios since February 2016. Her time at Assemblage now culminates with an exhibition of new works and an artist discussion between herself and artist Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi.
Roberta Rich was born in Geelong, Australia 1988. Her work examines notions of authenticity with regards to concepts of identity. Rich draws from her autobiographical position as a primary source of research, exploring how her South African and Australian identity simultaneously ‘pass’, ’fails’ and ‘speaks’ within varying contexts. Particularly focusing on constructions of ‘race’ identity, Rich attempts to subvert racial stereotypes with ambiguity, satire and humour in her video, installation, performance and text projects. Her engagement with language is part of a sustained practice seeking to deconstruct the problematic representation(s) and language of ‘race’ that continues to inform identity construction. The work developed during her residency at Assemblage respond to instances of cross-examination encountered, South Africa’s history, the (personal) relationship the artist has with this history, what it means to be ‘Coloured’ and attachment(s) to such language, fetishism of African identity and the complexities within diasporic African identities, through the form of tapestry, silkscreen prints, photography and text.
DENY / DENIAL / DENIED opens on Thursday 12th May at 6pm and will close with the artist discussion on Sunday 15th May, 2pm at Bubblegum Club.
