On the Poetics of Loose Ends
Fri, 25 October – Sat, 2 November 2024
| free admission |
| English, Portuguese, Spanish |
| Foyer, Ground Floor, Hall 2 |
| Part of: 99 Questions |
The “99 Questions Gathering: On the Poetics of Loose Ends” is an eight-day hybrid event blending conference and exhibition formats to explore cosmology, technology, and diverse knowledge systems through art, workshops, and discussions. The first four days focus on lectures and dialogue, while the final four feature artistic installations, culminating in a sonic intervention for reflection and engagement.
Research Nodes: “South-to-South” and “Textiles Semillas”
At its core are two research nodes, “South-to-South: A Meeting on African and Afro-Diasporic Technologies” and “Textiles Semillas: A Living Project of Weaving and Bridge-Building,” collectively developed over the past two years. These nodes shape the polyphonic program, which highlights Indigenous, Afro, and Afro-Diasporic contributions to global cosmologies, foregrounding weaving as resistance and Afro, and Afro-Diasporic technologies as decolonial alternatives to Western concepts of technology and art. This approach embraces non-extractive, reciprocal practices, built upon shared knowledge systems and collective creation.
The gathering embraces loose ends as an intentional resistance to the museal drive to categorize and hierarchise knowledge and art. Rather than being viewed as incomplete, loose ends create space for potential and new connections. This openness challenges the rigidity of knowledge systems and acknowledges that what remains unresolved allows for continued questioning and growth. Participants are invited to explore the pluriverse—multiple realities and ways of knowing—through human, machines, planetary, and more-than-human intelligences, fostering collective inquiry, transformation, and reimagined relationships between art, technology, and cosmology.
South-to-South: A Meeting on African and Afro-Diasporic Technologies explores different understandings of technology, specifically by looking into land-based and ancestral technics from Afro and Afro-diasporic communities, challenging the Western notion of progressive, high-tech-oriented approaches that often promote extractivist practices involving the exploitation of natural resources, data, and knowledge.
Textiles Semillas: A Living Project of Weaving and Cultural Bridging, on the other hand, highlights the role of a decolonial feminist practice, weaving connections between art, the body, nature, and ritual, and critiquing the binary conception that separates art and folklore, urban and rural, center and periphery. Textiles Semillas is a feminist project bringing together more the 300 female weavers in the North of Argentina that resulted in the Union Textiles Semillas.
The title of the gathering is inspired by the essay “The Tangled Planetary: For a Poetics of Loose Ends” by Martin Savransky.
Program
5:30 PM to 7:00 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
Opening: 99 Questions Gathering: on the Poetics of Loose Ends
Opening remarks from Prof. Dr. Hartmut Dorgerloh (General Director of the Humboldt Forum).
Foreword to the 99 Questions Gathering by curator Michael Dieminger
Research-Nodes: Textiles Semillas and South-to-South
A Group Presentation
An Introduction to the two research nodes Textiles Semillas and South-to-South that have evolved over the past years through profound collaborations with Textiles Semillas (Gran Chaco, Argentina), Centre d’art Waza (Lubumbashi, D.R. Congo), and Pivô Art and Research (Salvador de Bahía, Brazil). These projects, each distinct yet deeply connected, will unfold through various formats during the gathering, inviting reflection, exchange, and participation.
With:
Sara Garzón, Patrick Mudekereza, Alejandra Mizrahi, Andrei Fernández, Ramon Martins, Michael Dieminger, and Jean Kamba (host)
7:00 PM to 7:50 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
“From Curator to Kirata: Torwartds Non-Extractivist Curation” with Patrick Mudekereza
Is the collection of contemporary African art more virtuous than the plundering of ancient art from pre-colonial and colonial times? Does the fact that African artists now have a voice—officiating at vernissages and appearing on television platforms—significantly alter how their work is perceived and valued? A hasty affirmative response to these questions overlooks the persistence of an extractivist mentality in the conception and development of public and private collections in Europe and North America. This mindset perpetuates the inability to liberate the notion of art from its colonial history. In Kinshasa, artists have developed a distinct lexicon reflecting their ambition for a scene that resonates with their identity while aspiring to engage with the world. The Centre d’art Waza, focused on local practices, has coined the term “Kirata,” meaning “friends who help the artist respond to grant applications.” This term is not merely a Lingala-accented adaptation of “curator”; it represents a shift away from hierarchical, Eurocentric biases and the development of strategies for navigating a neoliberal art world while maintaining artistic integrity. This presentation will explore some of the practical applications of this concept.
About Patrick Mudekereza
Patrick Mudekereza (*1983) is an author, curator, and art historian. Patrick Mudekereza lives and works in Lubumbashi (D.R. Congo). He is the director of the Waza Art Centre. Patrick co-founded and was on the board of numerous international professional networks such as Arts Collaboratory, Another Roadmap for Arts education and Liboke, a network of independent Congolese cultural centres, as well as the International Biennial Association and ARTerial Network. He co-founded and directed the first three editions of Rencontres Picha, the Lubumbashi Biennale (2008-2015). He has organised exhibitions such as Prise de Terre (Bozar, 2010), Close Openings/Vernissage Fugaces (Lubumbashi, 2011), Mining Lubum (VANSA, Johannesburg, 2015), Silimuka (Museum of Contemporary Art GfZK Leipzig, 2017), Aire d’oiseaux imaginaires (Biennale du Congo in Kinshasa, 2019, and Bogardenkapel Brugge, 2019), Kirata (documenta fifteen, Kassel, 2022). He participated in various education and publication projects in Europe, Africa, Asia, and Latin America (Lagos Biennial, Berlin Biennial, as well as collaborations with art spaces in Colombia, Costa Rica, Indonesia, India, Germany, Switzerland, among others). He currently teaches at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Lubumbashi.
8:00 PM to 9:00 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
Infrastructures for Post-Extractivist Futures
Roundtable
This roundtable invites us to understand extractivism not only as a practice but also as a logic that shaped modernity and its institutions. We seek to explore how museums and cultural institutions can be reimagined as places of the “pluriverse”—spaces where many worlds coexist and interconnect. What infrastructures do we need to overcome extractivist principles? What kinds of new dialogues and funding models are necessary to strengthen local needs and communities and enable alternative forms of being and knowing?
With:
- Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka, founder and director of Modzi Arts in Lusaka
- Andrei Fernandez, independent curator and intercultural manager from northern Argentina
- Han Song Hiltmann, Head of Program, Stiftung Humboldt Forum
- Jean Kamba, Journalist and art critic from Kinshasa (Moderation)
- Patrick Mudekereza, director of the Centre d’art Waza in Lubumbashi
- Monica Hôff , Pivô Art and Research, São Paulo
11:00 AM to 4:30 PM
Hall 2
Language: Spanish (with English translation)
This workshop is currently fully booked. Please consider choosing a different workshop. Should you like to be put on the waitlist, please send us an e-mail via [email protected] and we will get back to you if a spot becomes available.
“Contar la tela”: Telling Stories Through Textiles
A Workshop with Diverse Voices from Textile Traditions with the Unión Textiles Semillas
The workshop “Contar la tela”, hosted by the Unión Textiles Semillas, invites you to open your mind and listen to the textiles. As artisanal fabrics, they carry stories from different territories and times. Each thread is a narrative, each fabric is a landscape through which we will travel together. The workshop includes a guided tour through three interactive stations within the installation “La crecida” presented by Textiles Semillas in the context of the 99 Questions Gathering. Each station is designed as an independent workshop space where participants can choose to engage in one or more sections. The workshop offers the opportunity not only to observe but also to participate: learn to create a Randa net (needle lace), experience weaving on a loom with sheep’s wool, and join Wichí weavers in making plant fibers into beautiful fabrics.
The title of Textiles Semillas’ collectively created artwork, “La crecida”, symbolizes the rising water level, reflecting the continuous growth and transformation of the installation. The name denotes movement, continuous growth and metamorphosis. “La crecida” is a traveling and evolving work that holds the textiles and embroideries created by the twelve groups of weavers that make up the Union Textiles Semillas. The artwork embodies the memories of different communities and peoples from Northern Argentina, becoming a living entity that transforms and expands as it moves from place to place. Join us to hear the voices of weavers to discover stories woven into the textures and patterns of different textiles, and to learn techniques and weaving methods that have been passed down from generation to generation.
The workshop “Contar la tela” invites you to be part of this experience and contribute to the ongoing genesis of this collectively created art installation, a work that is constantly growing. Throughout the workshop, the installation will continue to evolve and form new connections, culminating in a small closing ceremony on Monday, October 28th.
About Unión Textiles Semillas
The Unión Textiles Semillas brings together twelve groups of weavers, artists, and activists from different territories in Northwestern Argentina, along with an intercultural research group called “Sembradoras” (Sowers). Since the beginning of 2023, Textiles Semillas has connected various women’s organizations from rural and indigenous communities. The project aims at creating collective works and at reaffirming the possibility of growth as a result of combining actions, memories, and struggles.
Textiles Semillas is coordinated by the Argentine curators / artists Andrei Fernández and Alejandra Mizrahi. The weavers from Textiles Semillas have presented and further developed their collective works in Amaicha del Valle, Tilcara, Atamisqui, and San Miguel de Tucumán, accompanied by workshops for knowledge exchange as well as textile fairs. The project is part of the 99 Questions program at the Humboldt Forum in Berlin.
In 2024, Textiles Semillas participated in the Textile Art Day at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (MALBA) as part of the exhibition Dreaming Water by Cecilia Vicuña as well as the exhibition series “Cantando Bajito” at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York. Textiles Semillas also took part in a residency program for artist collectives at the URRA Project in Buenos Aires.
6:00 PM to 7:30 PM
Hall 2
Language: Spanish (with English translation)
To reserve your spot, simply email us at [email protected]. (Maximum 20 participants)
“We Grow Because We Come Together”
A Poetic Dialogue at the Edges with Unión Textiles Semillas
Every fabric carries within its threads the idea of an edge—a line that finishes, protects, but also connects. These edges—which we know as fringes, lace, hems, or in other forms—are the places where matter ends, and the possibility of a new narrative begins. When we look at the “telas y tierras” (fabrics and lands) of the Unión Textiles Semillas concept of constantly transforming and living, we see the edges not as boundaries, but thresholds inviting growth and transformation.
The workshop “We Grow because we come together” (in Spanish: “Crecemos porque nos juntamos”) is an invitation to work together on these edges—to expand and transform the borders of our fabrics by exploring the techniques used by this community of weavers. It is a process of co-creation, experimentation, and an invitation to engage in dialogue with the material and the stories it carries.
The weavers will guide us through various methods of edge-making — as if these edges were new paths, new stories waiting to be walked upon. The fabric-land grows into the space, its edges lifting through netting, macramé, crochet, and braiding, opening up to new forms of thinking, touching, and connecting.
About Unión Textiles Semillas
The Unión Textiles Semillas brings together twelve groups of weavers, artists, and activists from different territories in northwestern Argentina, along with an intercultural research group called “Sembradoras” (Sowers). Since the beginning of 2023, Textiles Semillas has connected various women’s organizations from rural and indigenous communities. The project aims at creating collective works, reaffirming the possibility of growth as a result of combining actions, memories, and struggles.
Textiles Semillas is coordinated by the Argentine curators and artists Andrei Fernández and Alejandra Mizrahi. The weavers from Textiles Semillas have presented and further developed their collective works in Amaicha del Valle, Tilcara, Atamisqui, and San Miguel de Tucumán, accompanied by workshops for knowledge exchange and textile fairs. The project is part of the 99 Questions program at the Humboldt Forum.
In 2024, Textiles Semillas participated in the Textile Art Day at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (MALBA) as part of the exhibition “Dreaming Water” by Cecilia Vicuña as well as the exhibition series “Cantando Bajito” at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York. “Textiles Semillas” also took part in a residency program for artist collectives at the URRA Project in Buenos Aires.
8.00 PM to 9.00 PM
Hall 2
Language: French (with English translation)
Territoires Humains III: The Museum of human meanings
A Performance by Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe
Territoires humains is an ongoing iterative project developed by Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe in 2022 that addresses the growing gap between humans that has emerged during the technological age, and the desire to reconnect. Through artistic and inter-human endeavors, the project seeks to create spaces for human solidarity and collective re-socialization.
In this iteration, titled “The Museum of Human meanings,” Joseph invites everyone to remember and to share the sensation of what it means to be human. It is an interactive performance, best described as a convivial encounter to collectively reimagine ways of being together, and to be more tactile and present with one another. In French, the term ‘Musée des sens humains’ encapsulated the different layers of the performance through the double meaning of the word ‘sens.’ In the first instance, make us think of SENSES as organs, and thus how, in this process of re-Humanization, we use our sensitivities to create spaces for physical poetic sharing. But also, in a second moment, SENS as Meanings – that an object, a gesture, a word, an image or a snippet of memory shared in a conviviality to be sought and found, can carry at a precise moment.
Through a digital collage and a monologue interspersed with exchanges with the audience, Joseph invites each and every one to share the memory of a human emotion contained in an object or gesture he has taken to the museum, in order to produce an associative and humanizing memorial space that would be formulated as the only solution for escaping our own virtuality.
About Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe
Born and based in Lubumbashi, Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe (*1995) holds a degree in Information and Communication Sciences from the University of Lubumbashi. After his studies, he specialized in Performing Arts. From theater and cinema to photography, installation and creative writing, Joseph’s artistic gesture is built around the urgency of telling and producing new narratives. His work addresses the complexity of memory and identity in a post-colonial urban context. His research and productions pay close attention to social interactions, highlighting power relations and proposing alternatives for change and togetherness. Since 2017, Joseph K. Kasau has worked both as an artist and cultural operator with organizations in Africa, Europe, and North and South America, including in his home Congo, RD. In turn, he has worked as Deputy Coordinator and Communications Officer at the Kidogo Kidogo Films Festival (2016–2019), Production Assistant at the Bya Ma Ngoma Dance Festival (2018), Editorial Assistant at the Lubumbashi Biennale (2019), Production Assistant at Ateliers Picha (2019–2021), and Senior Scriptwriter at the digital label Multimédia (2016–2021). In 2020, he co-founded the Nidjekonnexion collective in Lubumbashi, which he ran until 2024. Currently, he works as associate curator at Modzi Arts in Lusaka and is a member of Groupe50:50, a collective comprising a group of Congolese, German and Swiss artists developing a form of post-documentary musical theater.
11.00 AM to 5.00 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
To reserve your spot, simply email us at [email protected]. (Maximum 10 participants)
Inflexible code/ flexible threads by Diane Cescutti
electrifying stories into threads
This workshop offers an intertwined introduction to weaving on a 4- or 8-shaft loom, creating visual novels with Ren’py software, and using the Makey-Makey connectivity device. Participants are invited to experiment with weaving using conductive and insulating materials.
The conductive materials will transform the loom and the woven fabric into interactive tools and surfaces that connect with the Makey-Makey device. With the help of Ren’py software (a free tool for creating visual novel video games), participants will also code a short interactive story to accompany the augmented textile, turning the entire system into a video game played with a loom instead of a controller or keyboard.
The loom becomes a new interface, a new medium that allows us to write a different kind of story with touch and materiality—a story born from the interweavings of our hands and our imagination.
About Diane Cescutti
Diane Cescutti, born in 1998, is a French transmedia artist. She lives and works in Saint-Etienne, France. Cescutti studied Fine Arts and Textile at the École des Beaux-Arts de Nantes in France, Tokyo University of the Arts in Japan, and in the University of Houston in the United States. Her practice starts from the loom as the origin of computation. By tracing the history of computer code, she finds herself entangled in the world of weaving, and by following the crossing of the fibers of her loom, she arrives at its ethereal form: its algorithm. Through a histofuturist, speculative and narrative approach, she explores the historical, technological, mathematical, and aesthetic links between weaving, textiles, and computers. By employing a range of different media including weaving, sculpture, installations, video, and 3D art, she seeks to redefine and challenge our understanding of technology and textiles, as well as their roles as conduits for transmitting knowledge, data, stories, traditions, and spirituality.
In 2023, Diane Cescutti won the Faku’Gesi awards for digital art, followed by the Ars Electronica Prize in interactive Art + in 2024 which she received for her interactive installation “Nosukaay”.
5.30 PM to 6.20 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
What is it like to be Earth? By Oscar Santillán
Drawing from his interdisciplinary research, Oscar Santillán will explore concepts of decentralized cognition and challenge conventional notions of intelligence. Inspired by Stanislaw Lem’s novel “Solaris” and early cybernetics experiments by Stafford Beer and Gordon Pask, he reimagines the Earth as a living entity capable of thought and communication. Santillán’s inquiry stems from a fusion of scientific exploration and indigenous perspectives from the Andes, where concepts like ”Earthbeings” recognize the planet as inhabited by multiple forms of cognition, emerging from mountains, animals, and lakes. His current research examines if Earth itself could think, delving into how the planet’s magnetic field interacts with life forms, such as birds that navigate through iron deposits in their beaks.
In this talk, Santillán will share insights from his ongoing project, “The Interspecies Virtual Machine”, and discuss his collaborations with scientists to explore how diverse intelligences—human, animal, and even planetary—might interact and communicate. Through this exploration, he invites us to rethink our relationship with the Earth, considering the planet not just as a backdrop for human activity, but as a participant in a complex, interspecies dialogue.
About Oscar Santillán
Oscar Santillán is an artist and the founder of studio ANTIMUNDO, based between Amsterdam and Quito. His practice emerges precisely from the concept of ‘Antimundo’, a cybernetic matrix where science, fiction, and non-human perspectives converge.
Oscar received an MFA in 2011 from the Sculpture Department at Virginia Commonwealth University (USA). He has been a senior researcher at the Davis Center for AI (USA), a researcher at NIAS (NL), and is currently an advisor at De Ateliers Amsterdam (NL).
The artist has been a resident at institutions such as Jan van Eyck (NL), Fondazione Ratti (IT), Delfina Foundation (GB), the Astronomical Observatory of Leiden (NL), and Skowhegan (USA).
His solo exhibitions include MUAC (MX), Kunstinstituut Melly (NL), Radius CCA (NL), Copperfield (GB), among others. And his group exhibitions include institutions such as LACMA (USA), Yokohama Triennial (JP), NRW FORUM Düsseldorf (DE), SongEun Art Space (KR), MacAlline Art Center (CN), Irish Museum of Modern Art (IE), among others.
6.30 PM to 7.20 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
Poetics of an Emancipatory Cosmotechnics
A conversation with Paula Gaetano Adi
In this session, artist Paula Gaetano Adi will screen her short video-essay “The Robocalyptic Manifesto: Techno-Politics for Liberation”, followed by a public talk where she will present a collection of ideas to reimagine robots as comrades in the struggle to repair our planet. Drawing from her own artistic practice of making robots, she will unfold an ontological examination of technology, rearticulating the relationship between robotics, poetics, and world-making, and will speculate about robotics as a practice of resistance. During the talk and in conversation with the public and the participants, Gaetano Adi will attempt to illuminate the possibility of an ’emancipatory ’cosmotechnics’ as both a working framework from which we can reassess how we create and use technology and a praxis from which we can rethink human and robot liberation.
About Paula Gaetano Adi
Paula Gaetano Adi is an Argentine interdisciplinary artist and scholar working at the intersections of robotics, crafts and performance. Her practice draws from studies of technoscience, decoloniality and artificial life and enacts speculative scenarios that stress the power of technological speculation in illuminating new social narratives and new images of the possible. Gaetano Adi has exhibited and presented work extensively in museums, conferences, and art festivals throughout Europe, Asia, and the Americas, in locales such as the National Art Museum of China, Matadero Madrid, MejanLabs Gallery Stockholm, SECS Sao Paulo, Vancouver National Art Gallery, Pera Museum Istanbul, Centro Nacional de las Artes Mexico, Ars Electronica, Bienalsur, Getty Research Institute, among others. Creative Capital Awardee and former fellow at Argentina’s National Endowment for the Arts, the Center for Research in Engineering, Media and Performance at UCLA and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s EMPAC, she currently lives between San Juan, Argentina and Rhode Island, United States where she is Professor of Experimental & Foundation Studies at the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD).
7.30 PM to 8.30 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
The Singing of Machines: Intelligences, Technologies, and Cosmic Connections
Roundtable discussion
At the center of this concluding roundtable, moderated by Sara Garzón, is the collective exploration of the interweaving of artistic practice, technology, and new forms of knowledge. What happens when we view technology not just as a tool, but as a medium for transformation and resistance? How could technologies, intelligences, and our relationship to the Earth and machines be reimagined?
With
Diane Cescutti, Paula Gaetano Adi, Elisa Balmaceda, Oscar Santillán, and Sara Garzón (host)
11.00 AM to 11.50 AM
Mechanical Arena in the Foyer
Language: Portuguese (with English translation)
Encruzilhada do Mundo Agora
A presentation about reforesting imaginaries to live possible futures by Vanessa Orewá
The Encruzilhada (Portuguese: crossroads) is a place of possibilities. It is a spiritual, poetic, bioethical, and political space, as well as a place of formation and transformation. In the context of the afro brazilian religion of Candomblé, the Encruzilhada is a sacred place where different energies and forces meet—a crossroads between the physical and spiritual worlds. At the same time, it serves as an analytical reference to reality, reflecting the interconnectedness of practices, feelings, voices, wisdoms, and bodies from the Global South. We aim to weave critical reflections on the world in its current state and its qualitative dimensions concerning environmental relations. The Encruzilhada do Mundo Agora is a device that contributes to the cosmo-perception of our ways of being on this planet. It draws on philosophies and epistemologies rooted in African, Afro-diasporic, and Indigenous cosmo-perceptions, fueling the debate on forms of knowledge production and dissemination that perpetuate environmental inequalities and exclude racially marginalized groups from spaces of power, thereby contributing to processes of environmental injustice.
About Vanessa Orewá
Vanessa Orewá is a PhD candidate in Teaching, Philosophy and History of Sciences, at the Federal University of Bahia. She holds an M.A. in History of Africa, the Diaspora, and Indigenous Peoples from the Federal University of Recôncavo da Bahia, where she developed pioneering work on the Caretas do Mingau. Orewá believes in the potential of encounters and the manifestation of art. She understands writing as a possibility of life, a narrative through which a way of existing is formed and collage as a path to recomposing oneself. Orewá created the Apaoká Ciência Preta project. Enthusiastic about the cultural movement in the Recôncavo region of Bahia, she promoted Intangible Cultural Heritage projects. Orewá also serves as the co-founder of the Axé Eyin Women’s Center, where she works as a counter-decolonial researcher. In her teaching practice she has a critical approach to the construction and production of scientific knowledge.
12.00 PM to 12.50 PM
Mechanical Arena in the Foyer
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
“El sueño del Telar que durmió por la tarde” (The dream of the Loom that slept in the afternoon)
with biarritz
The Brazilian artist biarritzzz talks about her commissioned work, which is being shown as part of the 99 Questions Gathering at the Cosmographer in the foyer of the Humboldt Forum.
Artist-Statement:
“El sueño del Telar que durmió por la tarde” is a chant that is echoed by the wind in the form of images that move and dance and breathe while your eyes are closed. It is a dialogue between the machine, the natural landscape and a very distant dream. How would a traditional loom describe what it feels when used by generations upon generations of weavers who live surrounded by mountains? How would I, myself, translate those images decoded in my own imagination of a practice that has gotten lost in the paths of time? Starting from a point where I do not recognize hierarchies between technologies (so to say, the microchip is as technological as a manioc sieve, since both are technical instruments developed for solving human problems), I start to imagine what could be a story told by a loom used by the Union Textile Semillas. This story starts at the bottom of the Kosmograf and winds up to its top, each layer playing its role in this kosmos: first, the inside-earth fire cooks life, then the surface waters refresh the land with their translucid movements; out of the sea, the mountains are born, giving a monumental site to this everyday dance; in the sky you find luminous bodies and stars flickering and falling in constant loop; and finally the sky meets the earth with fire and melts everything, all over again.
About biarritzzz
biarritzzz (1994, Fortaleza, lives and works in Recife, Brazil) is an anti-disciplinary transmedia artist who investigates languages, codes and media. She believes that magic and the low resolution are important counter narratives to live the current cosmological dispute of realities. She has exhibited in MAM Rio, Museum of Tomorrow, Kunsthall Trondheim, State Of Concept Athens, Delfina Foundation, Satellite platform (Pivô Arte e Pesquisa), A.I.R Gallery (online), Centro Cultural São Paulo, The Wrong Biennale, FILE, The Shed NY, among others. Her works make part of the Rhizome Artbase (New Museum), KADIST Foundation and Instituto Moreira Salles collections. 2023 and 2024 PIPA Award nominee.
2.00 PM to 2.50 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
The hunters speak the same language
with Walla Capelobo
“The hunters speak the same language” is a speculative work about the energetic flow of physical and/or spiritual knowledge that has been taking place for centuries between the tropical forests of Brazil and the Democratic Republic of Congo. Both territories face the challenges of mining and its destructive consequences for human and non-human life. The work focuses on the question: How can we regenerate and raise non-domesticated/indigenous plants? Through cosmological speculation, the return of ancestral technologies that keep forests alive is imagined. The work is fundamentally inspired by the writings of philosophers Fu Kiau (Democratic Republic of Congo) and Nego Bispo (Brazil).
About Walla Capelobo
Walla Capelobo is a dark forest and fertile mud; she has a master’s degree in Contemporary Art Studies from the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Her work as an artist is characterized by the flow of time, physical and/or spiritual energy that surrounds the earth as a result of the exchange of minerals throughout history, technologies, and regeneration. Her practice addresses the sensitive issues of her existence with the support of Afro-indigenous South American technologies, speculative ecologies and decolonizing senses of nature. Capelobo has participated in residencies such as the “AI Anarchies” at the Junge Akademie of theAkademie der Künste Berlin (Germany), LabVerde (Amazonia, Brazil), Matéria Abierta (Mexico City, Mexico), CACis (Barcelona, Spain), Pivô Arte e Pesquisa (São Paulo, Brazil), and the Institute for Postnature Studies (Madrid, Spain).
3.00 PM to 3.50 PM
Hall 2
Language: Spanish (with English translation)
Between Fabric and Stars: Threads that Bind Worlds
Roundtable discussion
This roundtable with the weavers, sembradoras (planters), and curators of Textiles Semillas will introduce the development of the installation “La Crecida” and discuss how weaving can serve as a form of resistance in defending territories and memories, as well as a practice for the creation and connection of worlds. Participants will examine how these practices make alternative forms of knowledge and life visible, beyond the binary distinctions between art and craft. We will debate how Textiles Semillas challenges colonial hierarchies and definitions of art by fostering collective and transformative processes that place transcultural knowledge and pluriversal practices at the center.
With
Ángela Balderrama, Celeste Valero, Claudia Alarcón, Melania Pereyra, Tatiana Belmonte, Milagro Alvarez Colodrero, Fernanda Villagra Serra, Carla Abilés, Mercedes Cardozo, Mónica Chavez, Petrona Luere, Silvina Herrera, Catalina Guitian, Alina Bardavid, Andrei Fernandez, Alejandra Mizrahi, and Michael Dieminger (host)
4.00 PM to 4.50 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
A Poetics of Loose Ends: Speculative Infrastructures for the Planetary Present
A presentation by Martin Savransky
In this concluding talk, Martin Savransky will reflect on the ongoing and unfinished openness of “99 Questions” —and the riotous profusion of loose ends it generates— as a speculative infrastructure for reading a planetary present that resists totality and eludes finality.
About Martin Savransky
Martin Savransky is Reader in Social and Environmental Thought at the University of Bath. A philosopher and social theorist, Prof Savransky is the author of Around the Day in Eighty Worlds: Politics of the Pluriverse (Duke University Press, 2021), and The Adventure of Relevance: An Ethics of Social Inquiry (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016, with a foreword by Isabelle Stengers). He is co-editor of After Progress (Sage, 2022) Speculative Research: The Lure of Possible Futures (Routledge, 2017), and co-curator of “After Progress: A Digital Exhibition in Collaborative Storytelling” (after-progress.com).
5.00 PM to 6.00 PM
Hall 2
Language: English (with Spanish translation)
The Weave Without End: Celebrating the Art of Becoming
Roundtable discussion
The final roundtable, following Martin Savranski’s presentation, in which he explores the idea of open connections and unfinished stories in his essay “The Tangled Planetary: For a Poetics of Loose Ends”, invites us to further reflect on the concept of loose ends. This roundtable is not a conclusion, but a moment of continuity, a space for the ongoing momentum of what has been set in motion throughout the day. Loose ends are not a sign of disorder or incompleteness – they are the promise of transformation. They symbolize the possibility of weaving new connections without the need for final conclusions. This session does not see the end of the gathering as a closure, but as a beginning, an invitation to embrace the potential of loose ends – as spaces of becoming, movement, and constant interconnection.
With
Ana Roman, biarritzzz, Martin Savransky, Union Textiles Semillas, Walla Capelobo, Michael Dieminger, and Jean Kamba (host)
Humboldt Forum closed.
Exhibition open from 10.30 AM to 6.30 PM
3.00 PM to 4.00 PM
Hall 2 and Foyer
Language: Spanish (with German translation)
Guided tour of the exhibition with members of Unión Textiles Semillas and curator Michael Dieminger.
Exhibition open from 10.30 AM to 6.30 PM
3.00 PM to 4.00 PM
Hall 2 and Foyer
Language: German
Guided tour of the exhibition with curator Michael Dieminger.
Exhibition open from 10.30 AM to 6.30 PM
3.00 PM to 4.00 PM
Hall 2 and Foyer
Language: English
Guided walk of the exhibiton with artist Sarah Ndele and curator Michael Dieminger.
4:00 PM to 4:50 PM
Hall 2
Language: English
Intwined with Modzi Arts! – Conceptualising Ulemu!
With Ba Taonga Julia Kaseka
Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka is the founding director of Modzi Arts and a multidisciplinary curator. Her approach is rooted in the Zambian philosophy of Ulemu! Sharing respect and regard! She is interested in designing spaces used to learn, work and live around the artistic environment for artists and art audiences to come together and find alternative ways of engaging with ancient objects and sound within the contemporary sphere.
Ba Taonga has been curating and collecting knowledge dedicated to Zambian art and music specifically on Zamrock to reclaim lost heritages. Through trying to keep the arts alive within Modzi, she is interested in two very significant archives on Henry Tayali and Zamrock Museum. She is inviting the viewer to reflect on the approach of current African Museum’s and they’re functionality in today’s societies. She questions the references being used to gather people? The communities around art and culture? And the artist and their role in an Zambian community? Ba Taonga explores the gathering space and its design and process within Lusaka and has been building celebration portals that act as installations for use to publish different conversations around art and culture. She is excited to have the space to explore the ancient sounds of Zambia that are being kept by Humboldt Forum and find ways to collaborate these sounds within the Zamrock Museum.
About Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka
Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka is a multidisciplinary curator, mentor and designer of social spaces living in Lusaka, Zambia. Her work includes concert and exhibition producing, arts administration, curating, teaching and advocacy in Zambia and the wider region. As the founder of Modzi Arts, she has worked with numerous prominent cultural institutions in South and West Africa. Through the organization, she advocates for the value of art and cultural understanding via an approach rooted in the Zambian philosophy of Ulemu: respect and regard. The spaces she creates bring artists and art audiences together, in quest of new, alternative ways of engaging with ancient objects and traditions within contemporary art.
5.00 PM to 6.00 PM
Hall 2
Language: English/Spanish
Crossing Echos
Sonic Interventions with Edna Martinez and Miguel Buenrostro
Crossing Echoes investigates the diasporic horizon of sound, weaving together affinities, echos, and resonances of sonic practices shaped by transatlantic exchange. Artists Miguel Buenrostro and Edna Martinez approach these connections through their artistic research, with a particular focus on the auralities linking the Democratic Republic of Congo, the Caribbean, and other territories in the Americas. During their recent travels to Kinshasa, Buenrostro and Martinez engaged in a collaborative artistic exchange, highlighting the legacy of Congolese guitar in the Colombian Caribbean. As an extension of Buenrostro’s installation “Conocimiento – habilidad – espíritu”, which will be on view during the 99 Questions Gathering, this session aims to further investigate the evolving landscape of string instruments, rhythmic connections, and shared histories that resonate across the Atlantic.
About Miguel Buenrostro & Edna Martinez
Miguel Buenrostro (*1984) is a Tijuana-born artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. His work delves into the intersections of art and territory, emphasizing aural dimensions and conceiving the border as a site of knowledge production and interconnection. His mediums include cinema and sonic interventions in public spaces. Buenrostro has showcased his work in the Biennale Architettura di Venezia (2016), The Bauhaus Museum(2018), Musée National de la Rd Congo (2021) , Konsthall C, Stockholm (2022), and Museo Casa Lago, CDMX (2024). His films were presented in different international film festivals, exhibitions, and public screenings.
Edna Martinez is a Colombian-Caribbean artist whose expansive DJ sets transcend curation, distinguished by her skillful blending of African, Caribbean, and Arab genres. Hosting shows on NTS, Radio Alhara, and Worldwide FM, she continually engages in global soundscapes. Martinez considers sound an integral element of her visual work, with her artistic practice focusing on issues of restitution and sonic boundaries
Artistic Installations
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness
HD video, 8 Minutes 24 Seconds (2023)
Dzata: Repository of Thought
Audio Essay (mp3), 41 Minutes 56 Seconds. commissioned by 99 Questions at the Humboldt Forum (2024)
“Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness” is a creative research project by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent.
An intertextual conversation between the documentary and the poetic, the video operates as an in-house media assemblage created for the preservation of the institute’s activities and ideas. The audio essay, titled Repository of Thought, gives context to and expands upon the research scope of the project.
This artwork draws on the scholarship of project mentor Prof. Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, aiming to foreground indigenous technological knowledge and to explore how science, technology and innovation are part of a long interlinked process of accumulative knowledge production which extends long into the past.
The project builds on the field of techno-political research to formulate a multi-scalar history and future of technological creativity. Positioning the triumphs and failures of the everyday in the future-oriented techno-scientific, the work unfolds the idea of development as a historical process Africans shaped.
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness (2023) was supported by the Mozilla Foundations Creative Media Award 2023 and the Mozilla Foundation Alumni Connection Grant.
The work won or was nominated for multiple prizes:
- STARTS Prize Africa Award of Distinction 2024
- Priz Electronica Honorary Mention – New Animation Category 2023
- Lumen Prize for Art and Technology – Global Majority Award 2023
- Moving Image Art Prize Nominee – Rencontres Internationales Paris/Berlin 2023
Lo-Def Film Factory
Based in South Africa, the Lo-Def Film Factory’s work involves archival research, dramaturgy, and visual strategies associated with video art, collage, sculptural installation, and new media. In their mutlifaceted practice they explore and create spaces for collaborative and experimental community storytelling. The Lo-Def Film Factory was created by artist-duo Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. It began as a mobile, amateur filmmaking workshop which co-created and screened experimental video films by and for underrepresented communities. Since then, the duo’s practice has embraced both formal, monologic forms of expression, such as installations and videos, and discurcive forms, such as workshops. They are particularly interested in engaging with young people and initiating participatory projects that marry research and creation. They often use found or discarded materials, exploring the connection between primary materials and social and geopolitical issues. The duo employs performative and participatory modes of enquiry that integrate elements from performance art and new media into their research practice, working with digital technologies in a DIY practice which emphasizes co-creation and embraces mistake-making.
Russel Hlongwane
Russel Hlongwane works in the production and assembly of culture. His area of interest is in heritage, tradition and modernity in South Africa. He moves between art-making (installation and film) and curating. His performance work operates as a bridge to transmit his academic interest to a broader audience, while his writing practice spans academia, policy and art journals. He authored the peer-reviewed paper ‘Transcendental Technologies, Mother Tongues and Space’ (2022). Russel explores language (isiZulu) as a way to mobilize ideas contained in suppressed histories. His work “Ifu Elimnyama” (The Dark Cloud) was featured in six exhibitions and won the Sharjah Film Platform Jury Award. In 2020, Russel Hlongwane was part of the Bristol based Control Shift Network festival that featured filmic works from the global south confronting the relationship between technology and the continent. He recently completed a Masters of Philosophy at the African Centre for Cities.
With “Inside the Verbeek-Mwewa Collection”, Elsa M’Bala presents her artistic research on one of the most comprehensive archives documenting the artistic expressions of Lubumbashi’s working class over the past five decades. The Verbeek-Mwewa collection includes 9,596 objects, 3,974 hours of audio recordings, and 81,600 documents, offering deep insights into the personal stories of the featured artists. M’Bala has developed two playlists: The first features an interview with Sylvester Chapala, who explains the creation of the collection and his collaboration with Father Verbeek in the late 1990s. The second playlist showcases over 30 historical recordings, including hunter’s songs, birth dances, and ritual ceremonies recorded between 1980 and 2000. These recordings reflect the social dynamics of Lubumbashi’s working class. Since the recordings are housed at the Royal Museum for Central Africa in Belgium, they are difficult to access locally in Lubumbashi. Through her work, M’Bala aims to find ways of making these archives more accessible.
Elsa M’bala
Elsa M’bala lives and works between Germany and Cameroon. M’bala works integrate the total submergence of electronic sound and the rhythmical properties of Ekang/Bikutsi rhythms of the Beti people of central Africa to help us reconnect with the mythological, the spiritual, and the imaginary. Her current work uses voices and online samples in the form of transcoding, code switching, and algorithms patterns, building a fine print of electronic griotage reaching from the past into the future. Mixing analogue and digital sound machines as well as electronic and acoustic instruments to experiment with speeches, rituals and poetry. Elsa M’bala work Addis’63 is a sound performance that explores the complexities and dualities of life, always torn between the aim to balance the inner with the outer world, the spiritual quest for identity. Using the total submergence of electronic sound and the rhythmical properties of Ekang/Bikutsi rhythms of the Beti people of central Africa to help us reconnect with the mythological, the spiritual and the imaginary. As the philosopher Mudibe said, Africa is an invention, for that matter Africans have to (re-)invent themselves.
Digital collage, 2024, commissioned by Stiftung Humboldt Forum for the 99 Questions Gathering. (2024)
“El sueño del Telar que durmió por la tarde” (The dream of the loom that slept in the afternoon) is a chant that is echoed by the wind in the form of images that move and dance and breathe while your eyes are closed. It is a dialogue between the machine, the natural landscape and a very distant dream. How would a traditional loom describe what it feels when used by generations upon generations of weavers who live surrounded by mountains? How would I, myself, translate those images decoded in my own imagination of a practice that has gotten lost in the paths of time? Starting from a point where I do not recognize hierarchies between technologies (so to say, the microchip is as technological as a manioc sieve, since both are technical instruments developed for solving human problems), I start to imagine what could be a story told by a loom used by the Union Textile Semillas. This story starts at the bottom of the Kosmograf and winds up to its top, each layer playing its role in this kosmos: first, the inside-earth fire cooks life, then the surface waters refresh the land with their translucid movements; out of the sea, the mountains are born, giving a monumental site to this everyday dance; in the sky you find luminous bodies and stars flickering and falling in constant loop; and finally the sky meets the earth with fire and melts everything, all over again.
biarritzzz
biarritzzz (1994, Fortaleza, lives and works in Recife, Brazil) is an anti-disciplinary transmedia artist who investigates languages, codes and media. She believes that magic and the low resolution are important counter narratives to live the current cosmological dispute of realities. She has exhibited in MAM Rio, Museum of Tomorrow, Kunsthall Trondheim, State Of Concept Athens, Delfina Foundation, Satellite platform (Pivô Arte e Pesquisa), A.I.R Gallery (online), Centro Cultural São Paulo, The Wrong Biennale, FILE, The Shed NY, among others. Her works make part of the Rhizome Artbase (New Museum), KADIST Foundation and Instituto Moreira Salles collections. 2023 and 2024 PIPA Award nominee.
2-Channel Installation, Guitars, and Soundscape (2024)
The diasporic condition of musical instruments, their traditions, and sounds imply a form of relational production, connected to knowledge and materialities from different places, united in an action and object. The guitars from Paracho, a community located in the Purépecha plateau of the state of Michoacán with a strong luthiery tradition, are referenced by some migrant musicians from Mexico and Latin America. In Paracho, an artisanal and serial production system of various types of guitars and string instruments is developed.
In “Conocimiento – Habilidad – Espíritu” (Knowledge – Skill – Spirit), Miguel Buenrostro, with the participation of the Agustin & Enrique Enríquez, brings together different types of string instruments as well as visual exercises referencing the Enríquez Brothers guitar workshops, a family dedicated to luthiery whose production headquarters is in Paracho and whose distribution space is the La Ciudadela market in Mexico City.
In a gesture that articulates the workshop’s own history as an act of sonic interpretation and amplification of production relationships, the recorded sounds of the instrument production are heard: acts such as scraping, cutting, carving, filing, and striking that open up a repository of knowledge and an archive of usually hidden sounds. The soundscape of production and the music that the luthier himself listens to while working overlap with the sound of the guitars themselves, as a record of the practical knowledge involved in making things.
“Conocimiento – Habilidad – Espíritu” was part of Miguel Buenrostro’s solo exhibition “Saber a Qué Suena” showcased at Casa del Lago Museum in Mexico city, Curated by Julio Garcia Murillo. With the support of 99 Questions from Humboldt Forum.
Miguel Buenrostro
Miguel Buenrostro (1984) is a Tijuana-born artist and filmmaker based in Berlin. His work delves into the intersections of art and territory, emphasizing aural dimensions and conceiving the border as a site of knowledge production and interconnection. His mediums include cinema and sonic interventions in public spaces. Buenrostro has showcased his work in the Biennale Architettura di Venezia (2016) , The Bauhaus Museum, (2018) Musée National de la Rd Congo,( 2021 ) Konsthall C, Stockholm ( 2022) and Museo Casa Lago, CDMX (2024). His films have been held in different international film festivals, exhibitions and Public screenings. Miguel co-created “Nuevo Norte” a workshop in collaboration with local initiatives which investigate the politics of migration, borders and neoliberal agendas operating in the Americas
Installation. Slide projector controlled by microcomputer, 80 analog slides (35mm), and stereo audio. 2022
Building on the concept of aligning technological pasts and futures, Santillán used a microcomputer to hack an old slide projector. This allowed him to control the duration of each slide and synchronize it with a soundtrack created specifically for the piece.
The Andean Information Age transforms into a near-cinematic work. Complementarily, the images on the analog slides were produced using 3D software. These images, infused with a sci-fi energy, draw inspiration from another Andean concept: animistic entities called “huacas,” which are sacred and can exist in countless forms, ranging from mountains to handmade miniatures.
The result is a large vertical projection, composed of a sequence of 80 slides, synced to a 28-minute audio piece.
Oscar Santillán
Oscar Santillán is an artist and the founder of studio ANTIMUNDO, based between Amsterdam and Quito. His practice emerges precisely from the concept of ‘Antimundo’, a cybernetic matrix where science, fiction, and non-human perspectives converge. Oscar received an MFA in 2011 from the Sculpture Department at Virginia Commonwealth University (USA). He has been a senior researcher at the Davis Center for AI (USA), a researcher at NIAS (NL), and is currently an advisor at De Ateliers Amsterdam (NL).
Oscar Santillán completed a number of residencies at various institutions, including Jan van Eyck Academy (NL), Fondazione Ratti (IT), Delfina Foundation (GB), the Astronomical Observatory of Leiden (NL), and Skowhegan (USA).
He had solo exhibitions at MUAC (MX), Kunstinstituut Melly (NL), Radius CCA (NL), Copperfield (GB), among others. And his group exhibitions include institutions such as LACMA (USA), Yokohama Triennial (JP), NRW FORUM Düsseldorf (DE), SongEun Art Space (KR), MacAlline Art Center (CN), Irish Museum of Modern Art (IE), among others.
Wooden structure composed of frames on which the textiles made by the twelve weaving groups that make up the Union Textiles Semillas are stretched. Textiles made from llama fiber, sheep wool, chaguar, cotton, and industrial yarns. The yarns are dyed with natural dyes: rhubarb, carob tree sap, walnut, eucalyptus, yerba mate, onion, chinchilla, cochineal, beetroot, jarilla, herbs, and artificial dyes. The techniques used include knitted fabrics, ground looms, backstrap looms, frame looms, needle lace, braiding, and embroidery. Textile Video Installation. Audiovisual triptych in vertical format, mixed media: documentary footage and digital animation. Resolution: 1080×1920 px (Full HD). Commissioned by the Stiftung Humboldt Forum für das 99 Questions Gathering. (2024)
Set of textile pieces made by each of the groups that make up the Union Textiles Semillas in northern Argentina. Each work is a testament to the identity and textile tradition of different communities and peoples. In 2023, two gatherings were held with representatives from the twelve groups invited to participate in the Textiles Semillas project. During each gathering, exhibitions were held featuring a collection of textiles gathered in the first contact with the groups, displayed on self-supporting structures. The architect Paulo Vera, in collaboration with artist Alejandra Mizrahi, designed a wooden structure to support, stretch, and display the textiles. The shapes of this structure replicate the silhouettes of a mountainous horizon and the frame typically used to make some of the weavings, a structure that is generally not seen, as it serves as the support and the place where the weaving is born. As such, it is a place of transition. The structures are left visible to manipulate the textiles, here shown to highlight the importance of revealing where they come from and how their forms are constructed. The textiles were specially made for this exhibition by the twelve weaving groups in 2024. The textiles on the structure coexist with audiovisual pieces created by Alina Bardavid, based on recordings taken during trips to each of the weaver communities that display their knowledge and legacies in this evolving work.
Artists and Weavers: Achalay Tejidos (Niogasta, Simoca, Tucumán), Cooperativa La Pachamama (Amaicha del Valle, Tucumán), Flor en Piedra (Caspalá, Jujuy), Flor de Altea (Santa Ana, Jujuy), Randeras de El Cercado (Monteros, Tucumán), Silät (Santa Victoria Este, Salta), Tejedoras de Quilmes (Quilmes, Tucumán), Tejedores Andinos (Huacalera, Jujuy), Teleras de Atamisqui (Atamisqui, Santiago del Estero), Teleras de Huilla Catina (Huilla Catina, Santiago del Estero), Tinku Kamayu (Santa María, Catamarca), Warmipura (Tafí del Valle, Tucumán)
Audiovisual triptych
Concept, editing, and animation: Alina Bardavid
Camera: Alina Bardavid and Álvaro Simón Padrós
Filming assistance: Javier Díaz
Editing assistance: Álvaro Simón Padrós
Animation assistance: María José Vera and Gonzalo Tortola
Unión Textiles Semillas
La Unión Textiles Semillas brings together twelve groups of weavers, artists, and activists from different territories in northwestern Argentina, along with an intercultural research group called “Sembradoras” (Sowers). Since the beginning of 2023, it has gathered various women’s organizations from rural and indigenous communities as an artistic project that is part of the 99 Questions program at the Humboldt Forum. It experiments with the creation of collective works, reaffirming the possibility of growth as a result of combining actions, memories, and struggles.
The project is coordinated by the Argentine curators and artists Andrei Fernández and Alejandra Mizrahi. The weavers from Textiles Semillas have presented and further developed their collective works in Amaicha del Valle, Tilcara, Atamisqui, and San Miguel de Tucumán, accompanied by workshops for knowledge exchange and textile faires. In 2024, Textiles Semillas participate in the Textile Art Day at the Museum of Latin American Art in Buenos Aires (MALBA), as part of the exhibition “Dreaming Water” by Cecilia Vicuña; and the exhibition series “Cantando Bajito” at the Ford Foundation Gallery in New York. It also undertook a residency for artist collectives at the URRA Project in Buenos Aires.
6 Mask Installation, plastic chairs and old smartphones. Commissioned by 99 Questions at the Humboldt Forum.
Tell Me the Story is a poetic gesture in which artist Sarah Ndele pieces together the fragments of a broken world. In this multimedia installation, past and present, tradition and innovation merge into a living dialogue. Ndele leads us back to the roots of African storytelling, to the oral tradition that forms the heart of African literature, even as it risks fading into the shadows of modernity.
Through her unique technique, called “Matsuela,” in which melted plastic becomes tears, Ndele gives a voice to a material. Broken plastic chairs and other discarded objects, melted by fire and molded into new forms, become symbols of the fragmentation and wounds Africa has endured, but also of the potential for healing and restoration. Here, fire emerges as an act of transformation and reclamation: from the tears of broken plastic arises a new body, a renewed consciousness that reassembles the shattered parts of history.
Each mask, equipped with smartphones playing video performances in an endless loop, becomes a window into Africa’s stories. Ndele creates a multi-layered narrative that spans from the personal—as in Walé, which addresses postnatal practices in Africa—to the spiritual, as in Yemanja, a tribute to the Yoruba goddess of the waters. Other masks, such as Sentinel, Dieu Dimosi (One Eye), and Decision, challenge spiritual authority, expand the visible, and call for the reclaiming of lost narratives.
With this installation, Ndele creates not only a work of memory but also a space for renewal—an invitation to heal the fractures, reactivate forgotten stories, and discover a new language. Tell Me the Story is a call for connectedness and the reimagining of the fragments of a collective history.
Sarah Ndele
Sara Ndele was born in Kinshasa. She is a visual artist from the Academy of Fine Arts in Kinshasa. In her work, she addresses issues related to memory, roots, and the present state of education or initiation in the “Bas-Congo,” now called Kongo Central, within the Yombe tribe. She draws inspiration from Yombe masks and interprets them in her own way using plastic. Her technique is called “matsuela,” meaning tears, symbolizing that even with tears, we can build a new Africa. She also employs painting as a medium, showcasing the Masonika script and palette knife technique on canvas.
Curatorial Approach
As a curatorial approach, we understand what we call “nodes” as moments of engagement, where threads are tied together, memories are recalled, ties are deliberately untied and released. Knowledge, much like knots, is in constant flux; it can change, unfurl, give rise to new constellations, or secure others. This notion draws inspiration from ‘nodes’ in network systems: the more nodes exist, the more stable the network becomes.
Post-Extractivism and the Pluriverse
In the context of 99 Questions, the research nodes represent a commitment to sustainable and long-term collaboration, focusing on collective knowledge exchange and mutual learning. Local-specific issues are discussed in-situ by local and international participants, revealing possible connections and parallels. By engaging with the plurality of situated knowledge in these on-site inquiries, we counter a universalistic notion of knowledge. It is crucial to approach this endeavor with an anti-extractivist manner, considering forms and possibilities of collaboration that relate to the diverse needs of all partners involved.
The research nodes are an attempt to decentralize the museum, fostering new access points and narratives for harboring and passing on wisdom on material and immaterial culture. Embracing the concept of the ‘pluriverse’ (as described by Arturo Escobar or Achille Mbembe), we underscore the importance of recognizing and valuing a multitude of perspectives and ways of knowing. We advocate for a more inclusive, just, and sustainable world where diversity is celebrated and knowledge is collaboratively produced through dialogue and mutual respect. During the 99 Questions Gathering, these various Nodes converge, creating further moments of public engagement and forming intricate networks between the participants, and their communities and (scholar) kin.
For more information on 99 Questions, click here.
Participants
Alejandra Mizrahi, Ana Roman, Andrei Fernandez, Ba Taonga Julia Kaunda-Kaseka, biarritzzz, Diane Cescutti, Edna Martinez, Elisa Balmaceda, Han Song Hiltmann, Jean Kamba, Joseph K. Kasau Wa Mambwe, Lo-Def Film Factory und Russel Hlongwane, Martin Savransky, Michael Dieminger, Miguel Buenrostro, Mônica Hoff, Oscar Santillán, Paula Gaetano Adi, Patrick Mudekereza, Sara Garzón, Sarah Ndele, Unión Textiles Semillas, Vanessa Orewá, Walla Capelobo and Elsa M’bala.
Unión Textiles Semillas, Pivô Art & Research Salvador de Bahía, Waza Centre d’Art Lubumbashi