Imagi-Nation Nwar - a Pan African Space Station

From 5-9 May 2021, Chimurenga’s Pan African Space Station (PASS) will land at Lavoir Moderne Parisien in Goutte d’or, Paris, to imagine, re-examine and re-circulate sonic archives of black radicalism in the francophone world. This session will dig into the “soundtrack” , an underlying container of information and ideas that seldom gets explored on own terms.

Chimurenga departs from cinematic practice, specifically films/filmmakers (Julius-Amedee Laou, Elsie Haas, Med Hondo, Kanor sisters, Sarah Maldoror, etc) represented in the printed archive we recently installed in Centre Pompidou (Chimurenga Library), and expand the soundtrack beyond the screen to other areas of knowledge production: the street, the club, recording studios, kongossa, live performances, noise, even the magazine page.

Chimurenga imagines a live in-studio soundtrack that responds to and expands visual footage from the 2nd Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Rome 1959 – an event charged by the-then process of decolonisation and the unwelcome presence of younger, radical thinkers such as Fanon, Beti, Glissant, Beville and more. We take the cues from Fabienne and Véronique Kanor’s “La noiraude” to explore zouk as aesthetics of black transnationalism – a geography of unauthorised pleasure throughout the 1980s. Chimurenga listens to Sarah Maldoror’s records collection and her use of music on film.

In Julius-Amedee Laou’s “Solitaire a micro ouvert”, the brother of a man killed in a racist murder in Paris of the 1980s takes over of a black radio station to address the “community”. In “La Vieille Quimboiseuse et le majordome” he highlights the dialectic between the seen and the heard. Chimurenga listens to the oral history of “La coordination des femmes noires” that writer Gerty Dambury continually produces; or Gerard Lockel’s development of gro ka moden as decolonial praxis; or the Paris-based afro/astrosonic network documented in the music Jo Maka, Ramadolf, Cheikh Tidiane Fall, Yebga Likoba and more, which not only connects directly to Maldoror’s film “Un dessert pour Constance” but also puts sound to the immigrant struggles of the post-May 68 era. And brings us to the ongoing gentrification and structural violence in Goutte d’or.

Chimurenga considers Frank Biyong’s retelling of the war of decolonisation in Cameroun in his album “Ibolo Ini”, and more broadly his use of music as site of memorialising; and explore black ecologies through sound.

Chimurenga presents “Act 2” of Christian Nyampeta’s acclaimed radio-play “The Africans”.
And live performances, talks, screenings, DJ sets. And more.

Lets listen together. Go to the website of the Chimurenga to listen.

Chimurenga with: Blaise N’Djehoya (Cameroon); Marie-Julie Chalu (Martinique); DY Ngoy (Cameroon); Yebga Likoba (Cameroon); Cheikh Tidiane Fall (Senegal); Fabienne et Véronique Kanor (France); Hamedine Kane (Senegal/Mali); Elom 20ce (Togo) ; Brice Ahounou (Benin); Wasis Diop (Senegal); Roger Raspail (France); Pascale Obolo (Cameroon); Julius-Amedee Laou (France); Jean-Jacques Dufayet (France); Mylène Mauricrace (France); Maboula Soumahoro (Ivory Coast); Elsie Haas(Haiti); Amandine Nana (France); Franck Biyong (Cameroon); Hemley Boum (Cameroon); Christian Nyampeta (Rwanda / Netherlands); Christelle Oyiri (France); Célia Potiron (France); Anna Tjé (France/Cameroon); Annouchka de Andrade (France/Cameroon); Tommie McKenzie (USA); R22 tout-monde and many more.

About the african partner: 

Chimurenga (South Africa) was initiated in 2002 by Ntone Edjabe, a Cameroonian journalist and musician who lives and works in Cape Town, South Africa. Chimurenga, in constant transformation, is a pan-African platform dedicated to art and politics.

About the Lavoir Moderne Parisien

Through a demanding, open and multidisciplinary programme (theatre, music dance, poetry, performances, digital arts, new artistic forms) and by a constant the Lavoir Moderne Parisien is keen to cross-reference new ways of looking at new ways of looking at today's society, the relationship with the other and with foreigners, and provokes the meeting of emerging talents with others who are more experienced and experienced and recognised artists. The desire to accompany artists who dream of tomorrow's world, to give them the tools and to give them the tools and the necessary resonance to help as they have always done, to inhabit the world, make the Lavoir Moderne Parisien a real springboard for tomorrow's of tomorrow, a place of creation that supports artistic vitality and innovation in an atypical and inspiring venue.