LATEST LISTINGS:

Brixton

Reindigenising Technology: On Afropresentism w/ Neema Githere

Thursday 14th April

Masterclass Teaching : Re-indigenising Technology on Afropresentism

Colonial frameworks rooted in “development” myths have come to dominate what we perceive to be “technology”. What does it look like to take a step beyond decolonisation towards re-indigenisation in the process of re-wiring this understanding? As Black diasporic people living in the age of Big Data, how do we navigate what Kodwo Eshun terms the “Age of Total Recall”?

This session will begin with an interactive conversation with Neema Githere, that is grounded in Neema’s Kenyan heritage and drawing from Kenyan traditional technology practices. Neema will present these ancient forms as a practical and present contribution to supporting a sustainable lifestyle within paradigms of oppression.

Neema has been theorising around Afropresentism for the past 5 years. Tying together the work of Bell Hooks and Walter Rodney through guerrilla theory—a practice that upholds conversation as the highest mode of speculation—participants will be invited to show up as experts of their own lived experiences and strategise together on how to implement indigenous technology in their day-to-day lives.

Neema Githere

is a guerrilla theorist whose work explores love and indigeneity in a time of algorithmic debris. Neema’s experimental practice, termed ‘data:healing,’ seeks to illuminate the links between technology, nature, and spirituality to investigate how working from this intersection can combat the data trauma – a term coined by Olivia M. Ross – that saturates our virtual worlds. Other projects of Neema’s include Afropresentism, a term they coined in 2017 to articulate Afrodiasporic cultural production/embodiment in the here and now; and Radical Love Consciousness, a collective that focuses on re-indigenization through grassroots learning networks.

In 2018, she left Yale University to pursue a path of unschooling, and have since lectured and given workshops in universities and cultural institutions across North America and Europe including Autograph ABP London, McGill University, Afrotectopia, Studio Olafur Eliasson, Toronto Queer Film Festival, New York University, SCI-Arc, and The Royal Art Academy at the Hague amongst others.