Pass Pop-up
PASS landing at Performa 15 Hub, New York
From 11 to 15 November 2015, the Chimurenga Library hosted PASS with a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews, and events with Chimurenga collaborators in New York, including musicians, journalists, writers, curators, and filmmakers. The live broadcast studio functioned amidst an installation that brought together pop-up stores that experiment with trade, informal economies, aesthetics and body language, music and spoken word, mobility and infrastructure.
Working with collaborators such as Brooklyn-based African Record Centre and Yoruba Book Center (established 1971); artist and educator Nontsikelelo Mutiti, setup an African hair braiding salon; and poet, choreographer, and Afrosonics archivist Harmony Holiday, ideas, thinking, and debate moved fluidly between events, transactions, broadcasts, conversations, music and records, publications, archive material, services, and objects.
Participants in the PASS program included: South African composer Neo Muyanga; Africa is a Country; Hisham Aidi, the author of Rebel Music: Race, Empire and the New Muslim Youth Culture; Moroccan poet Omar Berrada; Cuban-American artist and writer Coco Fusco; curator and choreographer Rashida Bumbray (in conversation with African Arts Festival in Brooklyn); poet, fiction writer, and playwright Rashidah Ismaili AbuBakr; Somali novelist Abdi Latif Ega; journalist and broadcaster Giovanni Russonello; and photographer Marilyn Nance.
PASS landing at The Showroom, London
In the first week of October (7-11) 2015, PASS presented a live broadcasting programme of music, interviews and events with Chimurenga collaborators, The Otolith Collective (Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar), in London. Areas of interest included the work of photographer George Hallett – who used the book jacket and record sleeve as a curated exhibition space during the apartheid era; a critical look at the concept of and crude distinction drawn between Sub-Saharan and Arab Africa; and FESTAC ’77, the Second World Black and …
PASS landing at Foundation Cartier, Paris
From 17 – 19 September 2015 , the Pan African Space Station (PASS) installed our pop-up inside the gallery of Fondation Cartier, Paris with live programming that explored the past-present-future of Congolese music cultures. This intervention featured as part of the exhibition Beauté Congo – 1926-2015 – Congo Kitoko. Contributions by Bintou Simporé (Nova), Ray Lema, Afrikadaa Magazine, Helmie Bellini trio (feat. Hilaire Penda), Andy Amadi Okoroafor (Clam Mag), DJ Mo Laudi, Dinozord and David Bovée of Schengen Shegue, Pitcho, Jolie Ngemi, Boddhi Satva …