Artist Talks – Mamadou Diallo

Digital Imaginaries - Africas in Production | Opening Weekend


[17.11.2018]


On the weekend following the opening of the research and
exhibition project »Digital Imaginaries – Africas in Production«,
a comprehensive supporting program was offered at the ZKM.
In addition to discussions with artists from various African
countries, there had been guided tours through the exhibition
with the international curators and artists, as well as a coding
workshop and a maker's brunch with representatives of maker
spaces from Togo, Ghana, Senegal and local initiatives from
Karlsruhe.


Artist Talks
featuring Younes Baba-Ali, Tegan Bristow, Mamadou
Diallo, Oulimata Gueye, Francois Knoetze, Marion
Louisgrand Sylla, Marcus Neustetter and Jamal Nxediana
moderated by Julien McHardy


Africa is changing – radically – and digitization is playing a
pivotal role. On this continent that has the world’s youngest
population, digital practices are emerging that transform
Africa’s societies and their global perception.
Apps and digital content developed in Africa are increasingly
entering the global technosphere. African digital infrastructures
meanwhile remain marked by local and global asymmetries despite
the widespread use of mobile phones. New forms of digital
inequality are accompanying the rise of a number of
well-connected digital hubs and scenes. African digital
innovations and practices still rely on infrastructures dominated
by the Global North, and increasingly also by China.


The exhibition and research project »Digital Imaginaries«, which
was developed in collaboration with partners in Dakar and
Johannesburg, takes this contradictory diversity of digital
phenomena in Africa as its point of departure. Like the
exhibitions, workshops, and events that took place in Senegal and
South Africa as part of the project, the contributions now to be
seen at the ZKM are by no means confined to describing digital
transformations. Many of the works featured in this show engage
with African histories, practices, and conditions to glean
inspiration for emancipated digital futures that will withstand
market-oriented interests and post-colonial hegemonies. Starting
from artists’ positions which have developed in various countries
on the African continent and in the African diaspora, the works
featured in the exhibition articulate the necessity for more
diverse, richer global digital imaginaries.