Christian Nyampeta

This Time Tomorrow: Radio Play as Lo-Fi Futurism

23–28 August 2021

Course format
Webinar

Participation
Online only

Teaching Language
English

What to bring
Computer/laptop with camera, microphone and keyboard, headphones, research questions / material.

Requirements
Willing to work in groups.

Maximum number of participants
15

Participation fee
€ 420,– (€ 360,–)

The title of the course is This Time Tomorrow: Radio Play as Lo-Fi Futurism, after a play of the same name by Ngũgĩ wa Thiong’o. The course is conceived as an open workshop, in the sense that it will be a process of rehearsal and playback, editing, reviewing, re-writing, remixing, etc, towards an audio-visual play.

The process will facilitate the assembly of a collaboratorium, with practices ranging from writing, scenography, performance, fashion, graphics and more. The course is open to practitioners working in painting, sculpture, photography, film, etc. Each participant will produce their own output, in concert with the output of their fellow-participants. The course is an invitation to take part in generating cultural montages by inhabiting each other’s works. Each output will be at the service of the collaboratorium. For example, a participant’s (image of a) painting can become a prompt, script, background or prop for another participant’s own performance. This approach is a reflection on the post-independence conditions under which the works of reference emerged, borne of an insistence on the role of culture in the struggle for justice and liberation. The course suggests that these enduring historical conditions mirror and, in some ways, inform the rapidly changing contexts of the present moment. As such, in the course, “output” is preferred because the process has priority over “outcomes.” The course is an iteration of École du soir, The Evening School, which draws from the legacies of militant cinema and its modes of assembling contradictions and suspending antagonism. I envision that the work-week will unfold like a distributed and situated film-set.