If Pan-Africanism opens the political horizon of Africa’s modernity, then its borderless imagination is best envisioned in cinema’s Africanas. In a new work commissioned for the major exhibitions on Pan-Africanism at the Art Institute, the British duo Kodwo Eshun and Anjalika Sagar of the Otolith Group have conceived a mural that studies the films directed by Senegalese filmmakers Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty between 1963 and 2003. Picture a mural that montages the spaces, bodies, faces, forms, gestures, expressions, geometries, and geographies of the cinematic Sahel imagined and invented by Mambéty and Sembène.
MASCON - A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy at (AIC) is interpeted through the video MASCON - A Massive Concentration of Black Interscalar Energy, and is presented as part of a series of exhibitions and events linked to Panafrica: Histories, Aesthetics, Politics, a multi-year research project at the Neubauer Collegium that is exploring the links between Pan-African politics and culture.
Together the Otolith Group’s mural and film essay serve as a prelude to Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, a major exhibition opening December 15 at the Art Institute that was informed by the research project and curated by members of the research team.
Digital print on Paladino Matt Polycotton Canvas
Nine parts, each part: 130 x 400 cm; overall dimensions variable
Total dimension 46.80 metres sq
