Processing Archives 

In SAVVYZAAR's new format „Processing Archives“, Lynhan Balatbat-Helbock talks with Afọpẹ́fólúwa Òjó and Monaí de Paula Antunes about their current artistic residencies in this crazy year. They are both participating in the Laogs-Berlin residency programme – a collaboration between ZK/U, Galerie Wedding, Goethe Institut Lagos, and 16/16. Afọpẹ́fólúwa Òjó has been based in Berlin these past months, while Monaí has had a virtual residence in Lagos. We will talk with them about their ways of coping or not with the tensions of this year, about their strategies for artistic practices.

Monaí will share with us the opportunities and obstacles of an e-residency and her process of archiving sounds from Lagos while being in Berlin. She will talk about radio as an experimental form of archiving, and the assets of sound in building knowledge and imagination. Afọpẹ́fólúwa introduces us to the website she is currently working on, creating a reading economy for African poetry outside of the structures and hierarchy of publishing and curation that inherently influence reading behaviours. Using a database of poems scraped from the internet and creating a database from an open call, the project will use a mailing list to randomly send out one poem a week to subscribers.

During the end of the month, both artists will install a window exhibition at SAVVY Contemporary, connecting through radio and poetry with those who pause and watch and breathe and listen.