During a three-week residency in Tangier, Morocco, my friend and colleague, anthropologist Mathangi Krishnamurthy, and I, Emeka Okereke, had the privilege of meeting Abdelmajid Hannoum, whose book "Living Tangier" served as a springboard for our research and thought processes during our residency in the city, organized and supported by The Minority Globe.In this episode of Dots of Thoughts, Professor Hannoum shares his intellectual and creative process of translating fieldwork experiences into academic work. We dive deeper into the realities of migration and its impact on the city of Tangier. Hannoum, drawing from his personal experiences growing up around some of the Moroccan children he researched, enriches our understanding of Tangier's intricate history and changing demographics.Furthermore, Hannoum elaborates on the phenomenon of death concerning the migrant body. This subject stems from his personal experience during his years of research for the book. But our narrative doesn't end there. We also delve into the realm of global cities, exploring how their manicured images often mask the disparities within them. Our observations led us to question the place of Tangier in this global context, discussing its complex identity and evolving narrative.Join us as we peer through the curtains of this multifaceted city, exploring its various aspects and discussing its complex identity and evolving narrative. Support the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

This episode was inspired by my participation in the exhibition "Prussian Palaces. Colonial Histories", taking place at the Schloss Charlottenburg Berlin.   My guest, Carolin Alff, one of the exhibition's curators, guides us through the thoughts that inform the exhibition's making. We discuss the mystery of two statues, their damaged state, a testament to the inaccessible vignette shrouding Germany's deplorable colonial past.  The statue in question was the subject of my audiovisual intervention called "Tracing Presence(s)... of Place, Body, Time."It is important to note that the relevance of this exhibition is not only in its attempt to reminisce about the past but also in how it asks pertinent questions about how the country and its people come to terms with the extent to which their past continues to inform their present where it has to do with white privilege and Western hegemony. We delve into the curatorial process and the complex decisions made behind the scenes of this exhibition. According to the organisers,  the aim was not only to showcase artefacts but to create a safe space for dialogue where history can be reimagined and considered from new perspectives.  Yet I ask: to what extent does the need to create a "safe space" come in the way of creating a space of new knowledge that offers an occasion for genuine self-reflection rather than a "glossing over" or latent gloating? With Carolin, we traverse the tricky territory of sensitive terminologies and challenging historical contexts, recognising the need for a transparent conversation that respects the histories of injustices and violence attached to these relics. Join us as we grapple with the past, confront uncomfortable truths, and underscore the importance of understanding history to shape a better present and future. This episode should inspire you to visit the exhibition from the 4th of July to the 31st of October, 2023. Support the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

If you've ever found yourself lost in the labyrinth of existence or pondering the multiverse and the many layers of our identity, my recent chat with the talented filmmaker and fashion model You Kim is sure to resonate with you. We venture into a reflective analysis of the film, Everything Everywhere All At Once - a cinematic marvel that masterfully addresses the complexities of subjectivity, truth, and the human tendency to deconstruct our world. It's a film that bears a striking relevance to the contemporary times we live in, and You Kim's insights into the narrative's artful playfulness and cliches are eye-opening.We don't just stop at analyzing the film's narrative structure. Our conversation delves, in earnest, into the symbolic aspects of the film. From its portrayal of double consciousness and paradoxes and how it paints human connection to its depiction of a younger generation grappling with the absence of collective values and religion. It's a lens through which to view the existential crises that this younger generation, born into a neoliberal world, faces. And the evolution of the mother's character in the film sparks a rich discussion on sublime love and the power of individual agency in a world full of existential uncertainties. As we close, our discussion turns reflective - the necessity of fostering a society that acknowledges the intricacies of love and relationships while nurturing the future of humanity. You Kim shares her experiences as an Asian filmmaker and how she connects with the film's depiction of the Asian diaspora. This is not just a film review but a journey of recognizing the power of stories to broaden our worldview. If you're seeking a thought-provoking conversation that challenges your perspective, join us for this riveting discussion.Support the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

In this episode of Dots of Thoughts, I am in conversation with Diana Mora. She is a ballet dancer. Her inclination to dance started from as early as the age of six, when she first watched Swan Lake. Supported by her mother, she studied and completed ballet dancing at the National Academy in her home country Bolivia. Dance became the incentive for her movement and consequent self-unravelling from then on. Finally, she moved to France to pursue her dreams as a ballet dancer. In the podcast, she takes us through the nature of the conflict she fought through in relation to her body."In France, I realised that Dance was not just ballet for me."Diana Mora's is not an archetypal ballet-dance body. In France, she was shocked to realise that ballet has less to do with Dance and more with the objectification and stratification of bodies. The technicalities required to conform one's body into a form fit for ballet dancing is stretched to the point where the body is a tool with no soul. And as with every tool, value is ensured by separating the efficient from inefficient, with little room for acknowledging and valorising difference.Since then, it has been a hard-fought journey towards reconciling the pulsating resolve to dance with the disparity of her atypical body type. This journey is also one of many border-crossings whereby, for every delimitation, self-unravelling paradoxes ensue.Diana lives and works in Berlin today. In her first Instagram post of the year, she put forward a succinct recapitulation of her relationship with her body. It read like a manifesto for taking back one's body from the clutches of colonialism and refocusing it on the necessary work of making a home we carry with us.- Emeka OkerekeHost: Emeka Okereke Guest: Diana Mora Cover Photo: Haze Kware (HKVisuals)Production: Nkata Podcast Station/Atelier E.K OkerekeSupport the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

In 2006, I remember photographing, in Paris, the protest against killings that then took place in Isreal and Palestine. In the photo, a father is clutching his little daughter on one hand, while with the other hand, waves a placard that reads “Le meme age que ma fille” (same age as my daughter). I remember feeling deeply struck by this double emphasis aimed at reiterating what should be so obvious: the trail and ensuing threads of human violence – like mitochondria – run and connect to us all. In this podcast conversation, I caught up with a longtime friend and fellow artist Bahaa Abudaya to discuss the most recent eruption of violence which took place in May 2021. Bahaa left Gaza when he was two years old. Since then, he has roamed the earth. Yet he claims: no matter where I go, I always consider myself a Palestinian even though I do not know, from lived experience, what Palestine is as a place. He goes on to explain that this deeply inward, yet unforced identification with Palestine is constitutive of his disposition as one who is in a state of permanent temporality. “I am never clear where I should be. I have developed a kind of personality through this kind of exile”. Here, we are presented with the paradox often a fixture of border-bodies: on one hand, a solace accompanies the feeling of never being beholden to a place. On the other hand, there is something about transience that denies one a sense of continuity. Rightfully so, Bahaa concludes that his life is floating somewhere in between these unresolvable polarities. His Palestine is one he anchors to a memory of displacement. He recalls an anecdotal event that took place when he was ten years old. His grandmother took him to the site where her home once stood before the occupation. The most indelible moment of the visit was witnessing his grandmother shed tears profusely. As a child, he could not understand why absence meant so much for her. Her tears became symbolic of an incomprehensible, ungraspable loss that he would carry with him as a placeholder for what it means to be Palestinian. “Every Palestinian makes his or her own Palestine for themselves”, he said in the podcast. They make their Palestine out of ruins and loss. That is why the picture of young Palestinian kids throwing pebbles at Israeli armoured tanks should be read beyond its photogenic attributes. The Israeli army, complete with its intelligence apparatus, is one of the most powerful in the world. For that reason alone, this conflict, on the part of the Palestinians, will always be one of bringing a fist to a gunfight. But that fist is clenched tight – always ready to provoke violence as intrinsic to its resistance. As Bahaa concludes, both sides are complicit in the incitement of violence, albeit at disparate scales. Is there ever going to be an end to this regurgitation of violence? I asked. No, not when violence is the first resort. Violence will sell more guns and take more lives – that’s about it. What becomes obvious is that the method and approach to the formation of the Israeli nation-state is one forged in the crucibles of 19th-century colonialism. It is necropolitics, that is, the entitlement of a nation-state to legal power – shored up by capital and powerful alliances – to inflict death with impunity. This colonial disposition is carried over to our time, thereby sabotaging hopes of the 21st century being one of healing and reparation. No one is genuinely committed to a decolonial future who shouSupport the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

Eric Gyamfi (1990, Ghana) is a visual artist working with and within photography. This podcast conversation was induced by the inclusion of his work in the book, Africa State of Mind: Contemporary Photography Re-imagines A Continent “by Ekow Eshun. Rightfully so, the conversation build’s on Eshun’s central premise of focusing on photographers/works that fall within the 21st-century timeframe. Eric Gyamfi’s work, although beautifully photogenic, accounts for processes outside and beyond the frame. He considers the photographic medium as a space to be unravelled. Thus when, in the podcast, he says “beyond wanting to represent something, I have been more interested in what a photograph is composed of”, he offers what is invariably an accessible entry point into his fundamental approach to the medium. This assertion cuts through his various bodies of work from, “Just Like Us” (published in “Africa State of Mind”) to his recent work titled “The things that are left hanging, in the air like a rumour”.  If Time is an indispensable component of photography, Gyamfi seems to be preoccupied with how space, materiality, organisms and human interactions collude to give rise to the techno-chemical reaction which becomes the photograph. “How can I organise a place (or space) as if it was a photograph?” is the question underlining his recent body of work. Yet what is unique to space if not an articulation of the crossroads between past, present and the future? What is referenced here is photography’s ability to make an event out of disparate and dispersed information, across time, some of which elude the grasp of known history and “hanging in the air like a rumour”. It is one thing to speak of a life-giving process and another to know how to bring such disposition into one’s artistic practice. When Gyamfi speaks of the intriguing possibility of non-human entities—enzymes, algae, bacteria—participating in his photosynthetic photographic process, my mind wanders off to many tangents of radiant connections between us and our world. I would think, for instance, of how allowing oneself to be preoccupied with such “little things”, as he called it, about the co-habitative nature of our world, helps our grasp of how seriously damaged our world has become. Another example comes to mind: John Akomfrah’s “Vertigo Sea” is a large scale, yet grisly, counterpart of Eric Gyamfi’s thoughts. I can’t help but think of these two references side by side. The former humanising us for a better appraisal of the latter. The podcast conversation has a lot more to offer. Especially where it underscores the much needful conversation between two photographers separated by a decade, which, if weighed against the eventfulness of the century so far, is not a mere one.Towards the end of the podcast, Eric Gyamfi pays homage to artists and photographers—Nii Obudai, Akinbode Akinbiyi, Uche Okpa Iroha, Ibrahim Mahama, and more— without whom we wouldn’t be the sort of artist and thinker he is today. Host: Emeka Okereke (Berlin)Guest: Eric Gyamfi (Accra)Text: Emeka OkerekeProduction: E.O Multimedia/Atelier E.K OkerekeArtwork(s): Eric GyamfiDesign: E.O Multimedia Music: Epidemic SoundsThis Project is supported by the Stiftung Kunstfonds Germany. Support the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

In the second episode of Dots of Thoughts Shorts, Emeka shares a few thoughts and impulses about what the inner voice means for him. Duration: 9:19 mins. Join the conversation and leave a comment on your preferred listening platform.Support the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

This is the debut episode of the bonus series called Dots of Thoughts Shorts (DoTshorts).  Emeka Okereke gives a glimpse of his thoughts regarding the notion of work, and what work has come to signify for him. The episode is  backdropped  by sonic “artefacts” made up of ambient sound and music. Listen in full at https://nkatapodcast.comAlso on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Deezer, Overcast and more. Support the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

In the 12th Episode of Dots of Thoughts, Emeka Okereke reflects on the photographic work of Lebohang Kganye. Ke Lefa Laka: Her-story,  was realised in 2013. It explores the relationship between Lebohang Kganye and her mother, who passed on three years earlier. She employs the techniques of double exposure and superimposition to “re-enter” the life of her mother and to seek out a space of communality between the living and the dead, between the past and the present wherein “she is me, I am her and there remains in this commonality so much difference, and so much distance in space and time”. In reflecting on this body of work, Emeka Okereke writes on Instagram: “I find this series enigmatically powerful. I appreciate the artist’s uncomplicated use of the photographic medium in the bridging of the past and present without closing off the space lost to imperceptible, ungraspable emotions – all of which reinforces the intimacy we can only sense but not necessarily understand.I find myself dwelling on the ambiguous duality captured in this work – reminiscent of the spiritual concept of the holy trinity, but in this case, between a daughter and mother. Yet, I am reminded of the concept of duality, of dependability, of invisibility in the worldview of the Igbo people: where one thing stands, something else stands beside it.”This statement became the prompt to reach out to Lebohang and expound on these strands of thoughts, which is this podcast episode. Listen to Lebohang Kganye as she takes us through some of the thought processes behind the work. In the conversation, she asserts: More than anything, the work also provides a space for therapy and for healing. As much as it is about loss, it is also about celebration. In that navigation of guilt [of loss] is also a celebration of a person. Listen to the full episode on nkatapodcast.com.Also available on Apple Podcast, Spotify, Deezer, Google Podcast and over ten other podcast platforms. Follow the podcast on these platforms to get notified when new episodes go live. Use the time stamps to navigate to parts of the podcast. Also, listen to the podcast alongside Lebohang Kganye's website: https://www.lebohangkganye.co.za/Want to join a growing community of supporters and reviewers of the project? Checkout out our Patreon page. Host: Emeka Okereke (Barcelona)Guest: Lebohang Kganye (Johannesburg)Production: E.O Multimedia LTD. Art works: Lebohang KganyeMusic/Composer: Kupesonics/KupeskiSupported by Stiftung Kunstfonds GermanyCreated during the Research Residency Program at The Over | Pol & Grace BarcelonaSupport the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com

In this episode of Dots of Thoughts Podcast, Emeka Okereke is joined by Ekow Eshun to reflect on the book, “Africa State of Mind” edited by Ekow Eshun and published by Thames & Hudson. The book brings together works from 52 contemporary photographers from Africa. Fundamental to the book is Ekow Eshun’s intention to “explore how contemporary photographers have presented Africanness and Africa as a physiological space as much as a physical space”.The conversation departs from the book’s periodical marker: all photographic works were made in the 21st century. It would meander across various topics while touching on conceptual considerations in the works of such photographers as François-Xavier Gbré, Hicham Gardaf, Eric Gyamfi and Lebohang Kganye. A recurrent point of consensus is that the works included in the book exemplify how today’s photographers are articulating the complex narrative of African realities. Not only do their work offer a unique yet critical gaze, but it also rescues the photographic medium from its colonial history and deployment. “There is no simplicity or singleness to Africanness”, Ekow says. One might think that this needn’t be said in 2021. This is precisely what this book hopes to achieve: These photographers show that such concerns have become secondary to image-makers of today. “If we say black is beautiful, it’s like these photographers are saying: we must question what beauty means”, Emeka adds. Where are Contemporary photographic practices from the African continent heading or pointing to? This question brings the podcast conversation towards the end while leaving enough room to account for whatever the future holds. Use the time stamps to skip to parts of the podcast. Listen on: https://nkatapodcast.comAlso on: Apple Podcast, Spotify, Google Podcast, Overcast, Deezer and more than ten other podcast platforms. Host: Emeka Okereke (Barcelona)Guest: Ekow Eshun (London)Production: E.O MultimediaMusic: Sir Kupeski DJ.  Supported by Stiftung Kunstfonds GermanyCreated during the Research Residency Program at The Over | Pol & Grace BarcelonaSupport the showThank you for listening. Follow Nkata Podcast Station on Instagram @nkatapodcast and Twitter. See the website for extensive materials: nkatapodcast.com