AfricaIs aCountry

The paradox of our engagement with technological apparatus

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

The paradox of our engagement with technological apparatus

By
Derica Shields

How can bodily experiences be shared, asks British Nigerian director Shola Amoo in his short film, "Touch."

Still from Shola Amoo's short, "Touch."

As the credits rolled on “Touch,” a short film by the young director Shola Amoo, someone in the audience packed into Brooklyn’s Spectacle Theater (for the Future Weird screening) exhaled “that was bomb!” With a small three-person cast including singer-turned actress Tanya Fear, “Touch” asks some big questions, of technology, and of human experience, in a way that is delicate and open-ended. How can bodily experiences be shared, and how much can be transmitted between us?

The film also probes the paradox of our engagement with technological apparatus, which can open us to strangers while at same time foreclosing shared bodily experience. Now the London-based director has released the full thirteen-minute film online. Watch it here (below) and look out for Amoo’s debut feature “A Moving Image,” a film about becoming “a 21st century creative in a rapidly gentrifying city”:

“Nina wants to create the perfect piece of art – but her creative juices aren’t flowing. Whilst she searches for inspiration, she forms a three-way relationship with an Actor called Mickey and a Performance Artist called Ayo.

“The three bond during a sweaty summer spent on rooftops, parks and art spaces in South London, as they each strive to find an artistic niche and circumvent their burgeoning mid twenties crisis. Nina discovers her creative spark between both men – but this, and their triangular relationship, is threatened when she is forced to make a choice.”

You can follow the progress of “A Moving Image” on Twitter, Facebook and the film’s website.

Now watch “Touch”:

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.