Seminar 4: 21 - 23 May 2025

A definition:

Predicament

"A difficult, unpleasant, or embarrassing situation; a plight, a quandary."

The situation is problematic and stressful, the choices at our disposal are limited or undesirable. There is an urgent need to pay attention… to make a decision.

Something in the word predicament suggests a condition that is not only unresolved, but also somehow incapable or unwilling to yield to a full and complete resolution. A predicament is also a sudden affair – that is to say that one finds oneself in a predicament, suddenly. The predicament is then all consuming… The Oxford English Dictionary defines it as a ‘quandary’, a marsh or a physical hole that one could literally sink into. One finds oneself in a predicament in the same manner that one finds oneself in a hole in the ground – suddenly, unexpectedly and unpredictably. Yet to the onlooker, it is entirely predictable. 

"Prediction" is the act of declaring what the future holds—a projection of possibility. "Predicament", by contrast, is the work of categorizing reality, of naming the conditions that constrain us.

Medu’s predicament was the fact of political oppression through racial apartheid, exile and the paradox that producing art that was aimed solely at raising the consciousness of the people, would not be enough. To simply illuminate the quandary within which they were born, such that the people could see their way out would be only a necessary first step. In order to climb out of the hole of racial apartheid, it was not sufficient to open one’s eyes, you must also use your arms. 

Therein lies the paradox, to struggle out with arms is as necessary as it is deadly. It carries with it the risk that you must take to resolve any predicament – you must act, you must be resourceful, you must be bold. You must be able to see, but you must also be able to move – move with the knowledge that your vision will be obscured, and your movements will be targeted. Medu was targeted, and their people were killed – sinking them into an entirely different physical as well as metaphysical quandary – suddenly, but expectedly and predictably. The choices at our disposal are limited and undesirable.

Statues also die. What is their predicament?

Wednesday 21st:
Morning (10:30 – 12:30)

• Introducing Kelly Krugman (SAVVY ZAAR)
• Working on SAVVY Radio contributions

(12:30 – 13:00)

• COOP Summit conversation / check-in with Peter and Flip

Afternoon (14:15 – 20:30)

• 14h30

• Continuing work on SAVVY Radio contributions

• 16h30 - 20h30
• The Tone of Intimacy (With Muyang Teng)

Thursday 22nd:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• Statues also Die (1953)

Afternoon (14:15 – 20:30)

• 14h30

On Restitution, Rehabilitation, and Reparation

Planning for COOP Summit

Friday 23rd:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• Introducing Aude Christel Mgba

On Restitution

Afternoon (14:15 – 20:30)

• Site Visit (TBC)

Seminar 3: 27 - 29 March 2025

Shards of Cinema

Glossary:

Mirrors
Ancestry
Catch up
Principles
Third 
Cinema
Camp
Temper

“I make the revolution; therefore I exist. This is the starting point for the disappearance of fantasy and phantom to make way for living human beings. The cinema of the revolution is at the same time one of destruction and construction: destruction of the image that neocolonialism has created of itself and of us, and construction of a throbbing, living reality which recaptures truth in any of its expressions.”

The Medu Art Ensemble's film material, along with much of their other work, was largely destroyed in 1985 when the South African Defense Forces raided their compound in Gaborone, Botswana. This raid targeted Medu and other cultural workers who had organised themselves both culturally and militarily against the apartheid regime and resulted in the loss of a significant portion of their archives, including films, posters, scripts, and other materials.

First principles 

1. “The camera is the inexhaustible expropriator of image-weapons. 
2. “The projector will shoot 24 frames a second”.

During our gathering, we will engage with filmic material that primarily takes the form of the essay or extends beyond it, exploring the frontline, rubble, and camp image as expressions of embeddedness in struggle—beginning with the manifesto of Third Cinema and the wave of manifestos that era carried. Reflecting on these within the current political moment will allow us to examine the line between "fiction" and documentary, regardless of genre: What films and images are shaping our political discourse and reality today? How might they continue to contribute to the laboratory of national liberation?

We will follow themes of exile, displacement, the erasure of place, the eradication of people, and the echoes of our present political moment.

What remains constant is the question of return—not to a home intact, but to its ruins.

Day to Day

Thursday 27th:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• Introducing Sarah Zeryab (Towards a third Cinema)
• The case of Sharq al-Adna

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• 14h30

• On United Screens with Abhishek Nilamber

• 16h

• Africa Addio (1966)
• We will oscillate between fascist/colonial, first, second and third cinema. We might find some of the materials we study quite offensive.
• Statues Also Die (1953)

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• Film Screening - 
• Materials tbc

Friday 28th:
Morning (10:30 – 13:30) SITE TBD

• (Slow) reading - Student led

• Excerpts of “The Intimacies of the Four Continents” with Muyang Teng

• Following the reading which touches on themes of liberal humanism, freedom and underdevelopment, we will watch excerpts from “The End of Poverty” and other relating clips

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• Listening session with Sarah Zeryab - into the audio-visual
• Brief reading followed by film screening (materials tbc)
• Excerpts from
•  Luta ca caba inda
• Jean Luc Goddard - After Victory

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

There are many films which we will try to screen at different points throughout the confluence. These times are tbd

• Ousmane Sembene - Camp de Thiaroye (location tbd)

Saturday 29th:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• Excursion in planning - Details to follow
• TBC

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• TBC

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• TBC

Seminar 2: 14 - 17 January 2025

EVERY TIME A EAR DI SOUN

Glossary:

Love
Media
Revolution
Transmissions
Static
Jam
                            No condition is permanent. 

“Every plane that streaked the sky, every armored tank advancing in the dawn were as many spots of sunlight in the settler's anxious and uncertain world.”

Another member of the ensemble, Manuela García Aldana will join us to jam, to hear, to listen, to tune in and to fine tune. 

We will endeavour to find the subtle in the crackle and the melody in the lack of it. We will visit the profane. If we’re lucky, we’ll find out from where the radio gets its silence.

Tuesday 14th:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• Sonic introduction of Manuela García Aldana 

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• (slow) reading 

• This is the voice of fighting Algeria
• The African National Congress's Radio Freedom and its audiences in apartheid South Africa

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• Introduction to COOP project 

Wednesday 15th: 
Morning (10:30 – 13:30)

• 10:30 sharp

• Leaving for Shengen border
• Introductions and warnings while on the way to the Shengen border
• Listening session at the border (Leo Asemota - Intermission Transmission)

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• Reflections on Border visit
  • SAVVY Funk with Leo Asemota and Manuela Garcia Aldana
• Every Time A Ear di Soun
• Reading material tbc. 

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• Battle of Algiers (screening)

Thursday 16th:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• (Slow) reading and laying anchor (student led)
• Talks at the Yenan forum on literature and art (with Qiaoling)
• What is the contemporary? (with Liam)

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• (in)dependent work on radio shows

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• (in)dependent work on radio shows

Friday 17th:
Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• Finalising Radio shows

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• COOP Radio presentations

Seminar 1: 10 - 12 December 2024

On Words and Sincerity

A glossary for our introductory confluence.

Breath
Ensemble
Community
Plea
Sincerity
Tools
Value

The ideas that laboured on Thami Mnyele began their work on him while he was still young. They moulded him. Sharpened him. Eventually, they wielded him. They wielded him into the expression of Thami Mnyele that we know him to be today. The third of five children. The son of a man who preached (and did other things). The son of a woman who did domestic work (and did other things). A son who grew into a person who would take up the fight for his own and his country’s freedom. A son who wielded both the rifle and the paintbrush. 

Revolutionary ideas expressed Thami Mnyele in many ways. As these ideas expressed him, they were constantly in pursuit of an ever greater sincerity. For a time, that sincerity of expression eluded them as it eluded him. It eluded them for reasons of which we can only speculate… As a result perhaps, of Thami’s own unpreparedness. As a result perhaps of his inability to serve as a suitable conduit for these ideas. The capacity for honesty. The capacity for sincerity.

………..

We will begin our COOP study group with an exploration of words and ideas. Words that we know, words we have borrowed, words we have invented, words we might take for granted. We will explore our ideas. Ideas we might share, ideas we would like to understand better, ideas that might oppose one another, ideas that are working on us. 

“Our work hasn't yet developed above the mere stage of protest: we're still moaning and pleading. And even that we do with inferior craftsmanship and insincerity. We must partake actively in the struggle to paint sincerely.” - Thami Mnyele

Tuesday 10th:

Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• • Introductions and interruptions
  • Discussion of COOP expectations

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• Forest walk and reading camp. We will introduce the pedagogical and discursive methodologies of this coop.
• “[Reading slowly] is opposed to a ‘close reading’ that suggests very careful examination can yield a transcendent meaning from within the text. Our reading is slow because we read together not to master the reading but to unlearn each time what we know. We don’t study to graduate, to get credit, to finish. We study to help each other get incompletes. We study to go into debt with each other. We read slow to let things fall apart, to help each other fall apart, to hold each as we fall apart.” 

• • Harney,Thompson (Ground Provisions, 2018)
  • Ground Provisions
  • Slow reading Pedagogy of the Oppressed - Chapter 2
  • Slow reading Walter Benjamin with Leo Asemota

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• • • Film Screening: Battle of Algiers, 1966

Wednesday 11th: 

Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• • Collaborative writing Exercise

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• • Ghassan Kanafani - Letter from Gaza 
  • Listening session

Evening (20:00 – 22:00)

• • Film Screening - tbc

Thursday 12th:

Morning (10:30 – 13:00)

• • Listening session

Afternoon (14:00 – 19:00)

• • Collaborative writing exercise
  • COOP presentations on “Sincerity”