Events

Hadithi Hadithi | Online screening and conversation with Valerie Asiimwe Amani and Sekai Machache.

Part of Hadithi Hadithi: Place is mostly open space

7 — 21 June 2022
6:30pm GMT, 8:30pm EAT

Online

Sekai Machache, 'Profound Divine Sky', 2021. Courtesy of the artist.


LUX Scotland and Ajabu Ajabu Audio Visual House are delighted to present the third and final online screening in the Hadithi Hadithi: Place is mostly open space’ programme. The screening includes work by Valerie Asiimwe Amani and Sekai Machache and is available online from 7 – 21 June.

Access to an online the conversation between Amani and Machache on Tuesday, 14 June at 6:30pm (GMT) is also provided through the Eventive booking.

Hadithi Hadithi: Place is mostly open space’ is a new moving image exchange centred on stories from Tanzania and Scotland that reimagine space through excavation of folklore and visual myth making. The featured artists use a variety of approaches rooted in pre modern storytelling such as oral narration, anthropomorphising, improv, allegory, and other gifts of unfettered make-believe for a recreation or reinterpretation of place, history, origin and identity. Taken together the work seek to visualise what stories, encounters, epiphanies and resolutions reside watchfully in unoccupied spaces. It will culminate in the first ever moving image exhibition at the Zanzibar International Film Festival.

Programme:

Valerie Asiimwe Amani, Aichu mwii na ruwa okye [The sun and its god]’, 2022. 17 mins
Sekai Machache
, Profound Divine Sky’, 2021. 9 mins
Online screening 7 – 21 June with online conversation on 14 June at 6:30pm (GMT) /​8:30pm East Africa Time (EAT).

Valerie Asiimwe Amani, ​‘Aichu mwii na ruwa okye [The sun and its god]’, 2022
Valerie Asiimwe Amani, Aichu mwii na ruwa okye [The sun and its god]’, 2022. Courtesy of the artist.

Valerie Asiimwe Amani, Aichu mwii na ruwa okye [The sun and its god]’, 2022

Mnengeri, a sun god, wonders far beyond their skies – loosing their warmth and getting completely lost.
In an attempt to get back to where they should be, they encounter an Oracle and a Moon that aid them.
The search becomes a journey of self-discovery as their encounter reveals to them something they always knew.


Sekai Machache, 'Profound Divine Sky', 2021. Courtesy of the artist.
Sekai Machache, Profound Divine Sky’, 2021. Courtesy of the artist.

Sekai Machache, Profound Divine Sky’, 2021

The Divine Sky project utilises allegory and performance to tell a complicated history through poesis, immersive storytelling and photography. This series has taken form during the Covid-19 lockdown period when restrictions to our movements have called for establishing new ways of working and structuring artistic output. This work denotes a process of inscribing and re-inscribing thought through automatic drawing with ink on paper, indigo pigment on fabric, performance to camera, layering and overlaying.

All titles of the project are taken from the 12 stages in the indigo dyeing process. These are as follows:

Blue of Nothingness, A Hint of Blue, Milky Blue, Azure Blue, Blue of the Horizon, Ultramarine, Assertive Blue, The Divine Sky, Light Divine Sky, Deep Divine Sky, Profound Divine Sky

The film titled Profound Divine Sky was shot in the Flow Country in the Scottish Highlands. The site of a major ecological conservation project, reviving the ecosystem of the peatlands in efforts to reduce carbon emissions.


With videography and editing by Basharat Khan and soundtrack composed by Susannah Stark. The score features a varied composition of ambient nature sounds, structured around four original poems recited by the artist.


Other events in​the Hadithi Hadithi: Place is mostly open space’ programme include:

Programme 1:

Rhona Mühlebach, Excitement Is Not Part Of My Feeling Repertoire’, 2021. 27 mins
Arafa C. Hamadi
, Kujiona: In Conversation With Kevin Mwachiro’, 2020. 26 mins.
Online screening 24 May – 7 June with online conversation on 31 May at 6:30pm (GMT) /​8:30pm East Africa Time (EAT).

Programme 2:

Gertrude Malizana, Uwepo Wa Mwanamke, Presence of a Woman’, 2022. 10 min 40 sec.

Saoirse Wall, The Leaf and the Saviour Guy’, 2020. 8 min 26 sec.

Online screening 31 May – 14 June with online conversation with the artists on 7 June at 6:30pm (GMT)

Programme 4:

Zanzibar International Film Festival, 23 June, 7pm, (East Africa Time)


Organised by Ajabu Ajabu Audio Visual House and LUX Scotland, supported by the British Council – in association with Zanzibar International Film Festival.

Image descriptions:

Image 1: A Black woman stands in a long blue and white dress illuminated on the grassy bank of a still pool of reflective water. The landscape is dark but the sky is lit in gradients of blues, oranges, reds and deep purples on the horizon.

Image 2: An image of a Black woman falling through a bright blue sky. She has bright yellow braided hair and a richly patterned orange, black and silver dress. Her eyes are closed, as if asleep, and he arms are raised. The words na ruwa okye, and its god’ appear in white writing in the sky.

Image 3: A Black woman in a flowing blue and white dress crouches in profile on the edge of a pool of water, the surrounding landscape is a low horizon of bogland. Her image is reflected in the water.

Valerie Asiimwe Amani

Valerie Asiimwe Amani (b.1991, Dar es Salaam) is a Tanzanian artist and writer whose multidisciplinary explorations interrogate the representation of body erotics, language, place and memory. Working primarily with moving image, textile, collage and text, her works are interventions that aim to create bridges between the physical, metaphysical and mythical. She has exhibited in galleries and museums including Nigeria, Canada, South Africa and Germany with recent shows being Je suis moi-même le Soleil” in Paris, France and an upcoming solo performance To Dismantle a Home” at South London Gallery, London.

Amani has given various talks on Art and Activism including SOAS, University of London with The Royal African society and is also an art writer focusing on emerging African artists, on Emergent Art Space.


Sekai Machache

Sekai Machache (she/​her) is a Zimbabwean-Scottish visual artist and curator based in Glasgow, Scotland. Her work is a deep interrogation of the notion of self, in which photography plays a crucial role in supporting an exploration of the historical and cultural imaginary. Aspects of her photographic practice is formulated through digital studio based compositions utilising body paint and muted lighting to create images that appear to emerge from darkness. In recent works she expands to incorporate other media and approaches that can help to evoke that which is invisible and undocumented. She is interested in the relationship between spirituality, dreaming and the role of the artist in disseminating symbolic imagery to provide a space for healing against contexts of colonialism and loss.

Sekai is the recipient of the 2020 RSA Morton Award and is an artist in residence with the Talbot Rice Residency Programme 2021 – 2023. She recently joined Edinburgh Sculpture Workshop as a board member.

Sekai works internationally and often collaboratively, for and with her community and is a founding and organising member of theYon Afro Collective (YAC)

Ajabu Ajabu

Ajabu Ajabu is a collective of audio-visual practitioners based in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania working on the preservation, production, and presentation of audio-visual art. Their work is centred around curatorial interrogations related to deconstructing bias across film cultures, platforming underrepresented narratives and modes of storytelling, and promoting amateur and experimental practice.

Darragh Amelia

Darragh Amelia is an audio-visual practitioner and curator whose creative production challenges the patriarchal narratives and hierarchical structures that exert control over the arts. Her hybrid work in film, moving image, and radio is collaboratively driven and imagines alternative modes of both practice and access. She is a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu.

Jesse Gerard

Jesse Gerard is a storyteller from Kasulu, Tanzania, currently working as a writer and curator in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania. He has curated extensively at Nafasi Art Space, a multidisciplinary art centre, where he has worked to support the artistic development of emerging artists and culture workers. His writing has been featured in journals such as Art Monthly, Nairobi Contemporary, The Black Explorer, and OFF TO. He is a founding member of Ajabu Ajabu.

Closed Captions Both films are captioned by Valery Tough

Closed Captions Online conversation will be live captioned

Part of Hadithi Hadithi: Place is mostly open space

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