IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST.
ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE
INVOCATIONS 12.11.2023 14:00–23:00
WITH Pelumi Adejumo, Rokia Bamba, Don Mee Choi, Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, James Notin, Farkhondeh Shahroudi, David Zink Yi with Marvin Diz, Regis Molina and Adonis Panther
FREE ENTRANCE Donations welcome
ACCESS Our space is accessible by wheelchair
STREAMING via our Facebook and Youtube channel
PROGRAMME
14:00 | Tea or Coffee? Gathering and exchanges |
15:00 | INTRODUCTION & WELCOME By the curators |
15:10 | Pelumi Adejumo One Last Prayer SONIC WELCOME |
15:30 | Farkhondeh Shahroudhi, Anja Saleh Participating in the Future of Our Languages POETRY READING |
16:30 | Rokia Bamba A note for reflection. Emphasizing hearing LISTENING SESSION |
17:30 | James Notin Sàngbá fọ́ PERFORMANCE |
18:00 | Trinidadian food by Ms Merle Dinner BREAK |
19:00 | Don Mee Choi I speak as a twin POETRY READING & CONVERSATION |
20:00 | Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung Scatta-balanz – On the importance of dismantling and remantling languages Talk |
20:45 | Pelumi Adejumo Breath to Prayer SONIC INTERVENTION |
21:15 | David Zink Yi with Marvin Diz, Regis Molina and Adonis Panther Being The Measure MUSICAL PERFORMANCE |
Hold we to the centre of remembrance
that forgets the never that severs
word from the source
and never forgets the witness
of broken utterances that passed before
and now breaks the culture of silence
in the ordeal of testimony;
in the history of circles
each point lies along the circumference
diameter or radius
each word creates a centre
circumscribed by memory... and history
waits at rest always
still at the centre
Suppose we are “participants in the future of our languages,” as the poet Ocean Vuong argues. Can we find procedures for optimising our communication to aid the creation of networks that can parasitize to proliferate and develop liberating practices?
The project IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST. ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE reflects on the parasitic nature of language [1] and its potential to facilitate the suitable climate and conditions for subversive feminist, anti-racist and de-colonial practices within art and publishing. We are interested in how that parasite can be transmitted through interactions that can also take place without our influence and how a subversive language can provoke laughter as joy and disavowal.
IT GO HAVE TO ADJUST. ON LANGUAGE AS PARASITE is a living curatorial endeavour that, through a series of exercises, research, exhibitions, and public programmes, will evolve, expand and build upon this exhibition. You are cordially invited to join us on this journey’s next step: an INVOCATIONS programme deliberating on the parasitic nature of language together and in exchange with poets and performers, journalists and DJs, scholars and musicians, activists and writers.
COLLABORATION A SAVVY Contemporary project in collaboration with Archive Kabinett (Berlin, Germany), Fankeenna (Hargeisa, Somaliland), and Alice Yard (Port of Spain, Trinidad).
FUNDING This project is funded by Hauptstadtkulturfonds.
A theory that has been suggested in varying fashions by thinkers from Jacques Derrida to Susan Blackmore and in the prolific misquoting of Octavia Butler’s literary proposal “there is nothing new under the sun” from The Lost Parables series that actually ends “but there are new suns”. The fragment of Butler’s main clause has already made its way into the world.