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Other Desires: The African City

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Other Desires: The African City

April 8, 2016 @ 9:30 am - 5:00 pm EDT

“The insistent paradox of all Modernities is namely that they are simultaneously inward-looking and totally open to all influence and receptive to rich dialogues.”

-Okuwi Enwezor (2001:14)

Other Desires: The African City Conference considers emerging spatial practices, urban narratives and identities within African cities, but also the ways in which African cities provide a conceptual framework through which to interrogate notions of desire, liberation, beauty, memory, the reinvention of traditions, and belonging that the modern city putatively embodies.

Schedule

9:45 am Introduction
Amale Andraos, Dean, Columbia GSAPP

10:00 – 11:25am Deep Histories of Modernity: The Archive Revisited
Manuel Herz, Professor of Urban and Territorial Studies, University of Basel
Ikem Stanley Okoye, Associate Professor of African Art and Architecture,
University of Delaware
Kiluanji Kia Henda, Visual Artist
Moderated by Mamadou Diouf, Leitner Professor of African Studies, MESAAS,
Columbia University
Response by Kenneth Frampton, Ware Professor of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP

11:30am – 12:55pm Imagining African Cities (New Directions)
Issa Diabate, Managing Director of Koffi & Diabaté Architectes
Olalekan Jeyifous, Visual Artist
Nnedi Okorafor, Associate Professor of Creative Writing and Literature,
University of Buffalo
Moderated by Mario Gooden, Associate Professor of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP
Response by Mark Wigley, Professor of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP

1:00pm LUNCH

2:00 – 3:25pm Mobility
Mokena Makeka, Founder and Principal of Makeka Design Lab
Jean-Charles Tall, Co-Founder of Collège universitaire d’architecture de Dakar
Mikhael Subotzky, Photographer
Moderated by Rosalind Morris, Professor of Anthropology, Columbia University
Response by Clara Irazabal, Assistant Professor of Urban Planning, Columbia GSAPP

3:30 – 4:55pm (Social) Infrastructures : Resources, Climate And Technology
Patti Anahory, Architect, co-founder XU:collective and [un]Grounding Narratives
Sean Jacobs, Assistant Professor of International Affairs, The New School
Akin Adesokan, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature,
Indiana University, Bloomington
Moderated by Brian Larkin, Associate Professor and Chair of the Department of
Anthropology, Barnard College
Response by Justin Moore, Senior Urban Designer, NYC Department of City Planning

5:00pm Reception

5:45 – 7:00pm Closing Discussion
Mamadou Diouf, Leitner Professor of African Studies, MESAAS, Columbia University
Mpho Matsipa, Adjunct Assistant Professor of Architecture, Columbia GSAPP
and Curator of Studio-X Johannesburg
Edgar Pieterse, South African Research Chair in Urban Policy
and Director of African Centre for Cities, University of Cape Town
Moderated by Mabel Wilson, Nancy and George E. Rupp Professor of Architecture
and Co-Director of Global Africa Lab, Columbia GSAPP
Rapid urbanization on the African continent in the twenty-first century has given rise to increasing speculation about African cities as sites of innovation and creativity amongst spatial practitioners, artists, and musicians as well as cultural, economic, and academic institutions globally. This cataclysmic transformation of African societies and cities also harbors a number of spatial, political, and epistemological challenges to entrenched histories and theories of urbanism and modes of representation that are deeply rooted in the logics of panoptic time, crisis, and exploitation. However, it also presents creative opportunities and productive activities, through which African cities increasingly become sites for a diverse range of desires.

Thus infrastructural development, environmental change and adaptation, cultural production, archival practices, and new modes of representation will be considered in relation to how they might give rise to new spatial, technological, and intellectual trajectories.

Ultimately, this conference seeks to trouble the centrality of the industrial western city as the only paradigm of modernity across a range of disciplines (including but not limited to architectural history and urban studies) and also to expand the vocabularies and imaginaries that we bring to bear in our discussions on globalization and desir es for various modernities.

Ultimately, this conference seeks to trouble the centrality of the industrial western city as the only paradigm of modernity across a range of disciplines (including but not limited to architectural history and urban studies) and also to expand the vocabularies and imaginaries that we bring to bear in our discussions on globalization and desires for various modernities.

Organized by GSAPP with Professor Mabel Wilson, Professor Mario Gooden (Global Africa Lab), and Adjunct Assistant Professor Mpho Matsipa (Studio-X, Johannesburg)

Details

Date:
April 8, 2016
Time:
9:30 am - 5:00 pm EDT
Event Category:
Website:
http://events.gsapp.org/event/other-desires-the-african-city

Venue

Wood Auditorium
1172 Amsterdam Ave
New York, NY 10027 United States
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