- Frequency Speaks Volumes. Turn on. Tune In.

In many parts of the African continent, slow data connections, faltering power supplies, and unaffordable data have demanded a mind-set of radical innovation from African creative technologists. In this context, cutting back and slowing down – which are now being called for in European digital culture circles – are being met with little acceptance on the African continent. This difference raises the question: have Western views dominated cultural innovation discourse and agendas?

During STRP Scenario #19: Counter Consideration, affect lab in collaboration with Faye Kabali-Kagwa gives the floor to artists from South Africa, Kenya and Ghana as they explore their work and discuss their ideas of the future. Scenario #19 takes the form of a low-tech hybrid audio experiment mimicking the transistor radio. Stumble onto an audio-diary, a flash fiction, an intimate debate between makers, explore sonic soundscapes, or tune into a live conversation. This hybrid experiment invites both online and physical audiences to participate. Toggle between stations to find your frequency either in person in the garden of DOMUSDELA, or online on the STRP festival website.

Please note: You will need to bring a phone and headphones for this experience.

Programme

16:00 - 18:00: Listen to the audio channels
Online the experience is available for 24 hours on 10 April (from 00:00 to 23:59 hrs CEST)

affect lab (Natalie Dixon & Klasien van de Zandschulp)
affect lab is a women-led creative studio and research practice. The studio, directed by Dr. Natalie Dixon and Klasien van de Zandschulp, shifts perspectives through design research, cultural insights and immersive storytelling, in collaboration with an international network of artists, programmers, designers, dancers, writers, theorists, thinkers and doers. In 2021 affect lab won the Dutch Design Award for Design Research.

Faye Kabali- Kagwa
Faye Kabali-Kagwa works as an art coordinator, curator and arts writer. She was recognized as the Mail & Guardian's Top 200 Young South Africans in 2021 and named a Salzburg Global Seminar Young Cultural Innovator in 2019. Faye explores WhatsApp as a medium for storytelling. In the theater production The Shopping Dead, Faye invited the audience to follow the play via apps, links and GIFs on WhatsApp. Her second WhatsApp project was a digital art exhibition, Dear Us, Matric 2020, where she used status updates in WhatsApp as a tool for narration.

Lo-Def Film Factory (ZA)
Actor and writer Amy Louise Wilson together with artist Francois Knoetze form Lo-Def Film Factory. Lo-Def Film Factory focuses on experimental storytelling which is collaborative and done through community.

Aluta Null (ZA)
Aluta Null is a digital artist and game designer whose work often revolves around DEAD THINGS: old, broken, or unusable devices.

Xabiso Vili (ZA)
Xabiso Vili is a South African poet, performer, and new media artist. In 2019 he was awarded the Digital Lab Africa Web Creation Prize. He is currently an Electric South New Dimensions Lab fellow for 2022.

KMRU (KE)
KMRU is a Kenyan sound artist whose work focuses on field recordings, noise, and improvisation.

Hakeem Adam (GH)
Hakeem Adam is a multidisciplinary Ghanian artist. His installation work uses sound as the narrative device to interrogate politics, freedom, and history.