Bubblegum Club

Tag: researcher

  • Artist and researcher Salome Asega on multivocality, dissensus and a speculative lens

    Artist and researcher Salome Asega on multivocality, dissensus and a speculative lens

    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 Ocean is 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.

    Photography by Naima Green

  • Katleho Kano Shoro: ‘Serurubele’ poetry collection take off and the writing on the wings

    Writing can take many forms and take people on multiple journeys. South African-based poet, researcher, project manager and content editor, Katleho Kano Shoro, recognises the reflective and transformative power of words. I interviewed her about soon to be released book, Serurubele, published by South African publishing house Modjaji Books. Katleho also shared with me the metamorphosis of her personal relationship with writing.

    Tell me about the relationship you have with writing and how it has evolved over the years? Do you have a particular relationship with poetry that is different from other forms of writing? How did this come into play with Serurubele?

    I need to write. I keep a journal where I go through my thoughts, emotions, ideals and plans with myself: my level of honesty, analysis and healing through this kind of writing has grown from when I first kept a journal. As an academic within the social sciences, I am basically trained in reading and writing. And although writing my Master’s dissertation was one of the hardest pieces of writing I have ever had to produce, the process taught me discipline and perseverance where discipline falls short. I learned to understand my own writing processes, as well as the importance of writing with integrity. Oh and the more I write in general, the more I appreciate the value of editing and then of learning to let go once I have written in the best way I can. So maybe I can say my relationship with writing is one that teaches me basic life skills too.

    I have come to embrace my need for writing in order to stay sane – particularly where poetry is concerned – so the relationship has strengthened. This means that I am actively learning more about poetry and I am doing more research about the things I write about. The newer poems in Serurubele are a reflection of my growth and an embrace of this kind writing. I am in the caterpillar stages of playing around with form and learning to tame English (in the Chinua Achebe and Ntate Keorepetse Kgositsile sense) within my writing.

    Also, poetry is more than writing to me. Besides using it to reflect on the world, poetry has allowed me to speak through more than words, i.e. through performance. This, in turn, has made me more aware of presence – mine and others – within poetry spaces. This awareness feeds my writing and reach for narratives with integrity.

    ‘Serurubele’ is coming out in August 2017. Would you like to share the creative journey that you went on to put this work together?

    For starters, the journey has taken years! I had to begin seeing poetry as more than a cathartic process. I had to begin respecting the craft and profession and work on it. I am glad it has taken so long though. It has taught me to work towards goals but also be patient – especially with myself and life’s timing. Serurubele is coming out at a time when I have learnt to trust that I too am an intellectual, and that there are other creative intellectuals who have been here…who are here. This publishing journey has had its hiccups and twists; through them, I am beginning to expect that people treat me (as Motho) and my craft with respect. I too am learning to be a creative who gives poetry its due respect.

    When putting ‘Serurubele’ together did you imagine a particular reader in mind?

    At the beginning it was simply fellow poets, creatives and academics. Then it was my gran because she represented the elders I was trying to make proud. Now, I am hoping that some of the poems resonate with people who do not particularly go out searching for poetry as well as the friends (or rather age group) of my nephews and nieces. The idea of having poetry conversations with people who are not in the creative and academic industries seems like a necessary part of Serurubele’s life (as well as the poetry industries general growth).

    What are some of the themes you have covered in ‘Serurubele’? What journey can people expect to be taken on through this book?

    Well, of course each reader will have his/her own journey with the collection. But if I were to lead a tour, I would ask the reader to note that there are explorations of performance, writing and poetry throughout the collection. We begin the tour by being present and acknowledging that we carry the knowledges of many. We then move into a space of grappling with (and reaching for) different parts of identity – particularly black, African identity. Here, language, histories, pan-Africanism and masculinity are themes. Fatherhood is present. Whim, bliss and colour feature too. Then we reflect on mourning loved ones and return full cycle to the idea of not doing this life thing alone.

    Anything else you would like to mention about ‘Serurubele’?

    The name “serurubele” means “butterfly” in Sesotho. Nevertheless, the collection is mostly written in English, salted with black, African sensibilities (from my experiences and understandings) and peppered with Sesotho. You tell me if the meal works…

    What are some of the themes you like to explore through your words?

    Broadly speaking, my words and work are rooted in my understanding that creativity and art are an important space where intellect thrives. My work mostly centres on African intellectualism. Unfortunately, we are still at the point where we have to remind ourselves, as Africans, and others, that we too are intellectuals and hold many kinds of knowledge. Also, as full humans we are complex and layered. All other themes in my work tend to stem from these understandings.

    To find out the details for the launch of Serurubele or to pre-order the book, check out Katleho Shoro on Facebook or follow her on Twitter.

    Photography by Theodorah Ndlovu