AfricaIs aCountry

Video: Interview with artist Thando Mama

Africa Is a Country Podcast
African Five-a-Side Podcast

Video: Interview with artist Thando Mama

By
Sean Jacobs

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GWdGfKXK3U&w=500&h=307]

A 9-minute excerpt from a new short video documentary (20 minutes in all) about the South African artist Thando Mama. (The film is directed by German filmmakers Thorolf Lipp and Tobias Wendl. The bulk of Lipp and Wendl’s film work focuses on African subjects; check out their Youtube page.)

If you’re unfamiliar with Mama’s work, for both his own description as well as that of critics, see here, here and here.

* And if you’re around New York City, Mama’s media art is on show as part of “Second Coming,” an exhibition organized by curators Gabi Ngcobo, Carlos Palacios and Andrea Torreblanca, at Bard College’s Center for Curatorial Studies until May 23.

Further Reading

No one should be surprised we exist

The documentary film, ‘Rolé—Histórias dos Rolezinhos’ by Afro-Brazilian filmmaker Vladimir Seixas uses sharp commentary to expose social, political, and cultural inequalities within Brazilian society.

Reading List: Barbara Boswell

While editing a collection of the writings of South African feminist Lauretta Ngcobo, Barbara Boswell found inspiration in texts that reflected Ngcobo’s sense that writing is an exercise of freedom.

Kenya’s stalemate

A fundamental contest between two orders is taking place in Kenya. Will its progressives seize the moment to catalyze a vision for social, economic, and political change?

An annual awakening

In the 1980s, the South African arts collective Vakalisa Art Associates reclaimed time as a tool of social control through their subversive calendars.

More than a building

The film ‘No Place But Here’ uses VR or 360 media to immerse a viewer inside a housing occupation in Cape Town. In the process, it wants to challenge gentrification and the capitalist logic of home ownership.