Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

With Edition IX Bodies and Technologies (2022-2023) If I Can’t Dance tackles the complex and plural entanglements between bodies and technologies. This Radio Emma show stages a conversation between the If I Can’t Dance artistic team – Frédérique Bergholtz, Anik Fournier, Sara Giannini and Megan Hoetger – and research fellow Devika Chotoe who talk about their own entry points into this edition’s field of inquiry.

Readings, Music and conversations about other languages. With Rijksakademie residents Salim Bayri, Lungiswa Gqunta, Özgür Atlagan, and Bert Scholten.
Hosted by Arif Kornweitz and Radna Rumping. Recorded on 31st of October 2019 at the Reading Room of the Rijksakademie van beeldende kunsten in Amsterdam.

“The hell started at about half past one on the morning of... the fourteenth of June” - (Nyelele & Drake, 1985) A broadcast of the sound piece on Gaborone, 1985 (2021, 3:38 min) marks the start of the residency of artist Kim Karabo Makin, who lives in Botswana and is one of four artists selected for a Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee radio residency during 2022. "on Gaborone, 1985 considers the June 14 raid on Gaborone by the South African Defence Force (SADF) as a traumatic turning point for Botswana’s creative development – resulting in the demise of Medu Art Ensemble overnight. Positioned centrally to my Master of Fine Art body of work – the doors of culture shall be opened (2021), on Gaborone, 1985 notably includes a Radio Botswana jingle interspliced with segments from the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s (SABC) Truth and Reconciliation Commission (TRC) Special Report, as well as then-President of Botswana Masire’s reaction to the raid, and South African 80s group Future’s song, Party Weekend (1985). The featured mix unpacks an intertextual reimagining of Gaborone in 1985, where it is significantly described as the year that Botswana’s capital ‘lost its innocence’. This work importantly refocuses my initial disappointment in Botswana’s limited national archive of Medu into a generative starting point – considering the manner in which the archive lives on today. In addition, I consider how at the time, my grandmother’s radio cabinet may have brought news of the SADF raids on Botswana to my family, and the extent to which the story resounds unsuspectingly in contemporaneity, through the local lives that received this impact. on Gaborone, 1985 also introduces the cyclical nature that underscores the exhibition – by considering the extent to which the sound mix may constitute a socio-cultural symbol, and thus a tool in activating spaces as sites of memory. By looping on Gaborone, 1985 four times, I aim to recognise and commemorate June 14 as one of four raids by the SADF in Botswana in 1985. By broadcasting on Gaborone, 1985 via Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee’s platform, I aim to engage an international audience through aural storytelling, where I am particularly interested in reflecting on Medu’s suppressed narrative in Botswana as a contemporary Motswana artist myself. In addition, the hour-long broadcast (including moments of silence) is intended to provide a space to reflect on themes of transnationality, with respect to both Botswana and the Netherlands’ historical entanglements with South Africa. In this way, I hope to extend a conversation on Medu’s lasting memory across borders, and further delve into archival research on culture as a weapon or tool for change. Furthermore, with this broadcast I am interested in providing some analysis of the post-traumas of Botswana in the anti-Apartheid struggle, with respect to the Netherlands. In so doing, the broadcast of on Gaborone, 1985 via Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee will inaugurate the beginning of my residency. Going forward, I hope to reflect on the historic context of Botswana’s capital Gaborone – my hometown and the home of Medu, with a specific look at the ‘Culture and Resistance Conference’ that took place in 1982. By comparison, I will draw connections between Gaborone and Amsterdam, as the Dutch capital and self-declared anti-apartheid city, with respect to the ‘Culture in Another South Africa’ (CASA) conference that took place in Amsterdam, in 1987. In partnership with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, through this residency I aim to provide a space that reflects on themes of transnationality, with respect to both Botswana and the Netherlands’ respective positions in the Anti-Apartheid struggle." - Kim Karabo Makin

“I’ve probably inherited my mother’s exhaustion and my grandmother’s exhaustion...There’s such a thing as intergenerational debt – and it’s not just economic, it’s also energetic.” - Navild Acosta interviewed in Schon Magazine

How can we think about notions of human ‘productivity’, sleep as a space for resistance, and the enduring power structures that permeate current ideas around work and rest? Bringing together Flavia Dzodan, Quinsy Gario, and Joy Mariama Smith, we’ll engage in conversations around the politicised and racialised structure of sleep inequality and rest, the impacts of 24/7 productivity, the productive body, and activism as it intersects with these systems.

How can we talk about these questions in light of our present moment of enforced ‘rest’ for some and enforced work for others. How can we respond to the structures, fragilities, and failures of systems that are being made visible, now more than ever? Our guests speak from the perspective of their individual (and collective) practices about the intersections of activism, productivity, and rest.

In these conversations we want to highlight the relations, and metaphorical weight, between being ‘asleep’ and being ‘woke’, between being a political activist or doing nothing—questioning whether these labels can be inverted and whether there is also a power of resistance in ‘doing nothing’, in disengaging as a form of engagement. Is there a parallel to be drawn to the current situation of enforced quarantine? This idea of collective rest—and because of that collectively arriving in a safe state—is not as ‘collective’ as it seems. What are the anxieties and fears, over finances, jobs, and health, that emerge from the shut down of certain parts of our societies? And can we reach a collective state of solidarity when ‘rest’ means something different for each of us and the economy is demanding again? Should we be more ‘active’ than other times? The lockdown and the period of opening up again might be a good moment in time to rethink patterns and behaviour and to invent new habits and routines. The collective experience of the crisis is largely felt in isolation, but within its fractures new meanings of collective solidarity can emerge.

This conversation is hosted by Framer Framed, and is the second radio show in a set of two events initiated by Petra Heck and Margarita Osipian that explore the act of resting and the politicization of sleep, specifically as a weapon of resistance against "systems of oppression that have controlled and subjugated people of colour, women, and queer and gender-dissident communities"*. We are building on, and are inspired and educated by, the years of work that has been done on these topics by Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa in their Black Power Naps project. Questioning the politics behind who gets to rest, the exhaustion of activism and its necessity, and whether the act of doing nothing can be a productive power by itself.

* the words of Agnish Ray in their interview with Navild Acosta and Fannie Sosa.

DONATE. In solidarity and support you may donate via PayPal to Color Block: Pandemic Edition 2020. Funds will be used to support costs for BIPOC to engage in Color Block’s physical and online programming for a much needed retreat for healing, rest, and care. Donate here.

Part I: Listening to...the power of doing nothing, took place on Saturday May 30th 2020, 16 - 19.30h.

This event is made possible through the generous support of the Stimuleringsfonds.

Bio's

A native Philadelphian currently based in Amsterdam, NL, Joy Mariama Smith’s work primarily addresses the conundrum of projected identities in various contexts. A sub-theme, or ongoing question in their work is: What is the interplay between the body and its physical environment? Rooted in socially engaged art practice, they are a performance/installation/movement artist, activist, facilitator, curator, and architectural designer. They have a strong improvisational practice spanning 20 years. When they choose to teach, they actively try to uphold inclusive spaces.

Quinsy Gario is a visual and performance artist from the Curaçao and St. Maarten, islands in the Caribbean that share continued Dutch occupation. His work focuses on decolonial remembering and institutional disruption. He is most known for the performance art work Zwarte Piet Is Racisme. He is a Royal Academy of Art The Hague Master of Artistic Research graduate, a 2017/2018 BAK Fellow, a board member of De Appel and a recurring participant of the Black Europe Body Politics conference series. His recent writings were collected in the book, ‘Roet in het Eten’ (‘Spanner in the Works’).

Flavia Dzodan is a writer, media analyst and cultural critic based in Amsterdam. She is a senior researcher and lecturer at the Sandberg Instituut. Her research is focused on the politics of Artificial Intelligence and algorithms at the intersections of colonialism, race and gender. In her research Flavia examines the ways that technology is created and deployed to reproduce historical patterns of social control. Her current research on “Beauty and the Machine” attempts to understand how cultural analytics would operate vis a vis semiotic codes, particularly in regards to teaching machines to identify highly subjective and culturally dependent ontologies. She is the editor of the blog “This Political Woman”, where she has written about the rise of the alt-right, Big Data, networks, algorithms and community surveillance. She has been published at Dissent Magazine, The Guardian and The Washington Post among others.

A 3 part sound collage & audio-visual broadcast for Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee

Duration: 25 minutes

Production by Thabiso Keaikitse

This broadcast marks the end of the residency of artist Kim Karabo Makin, who lives in Botswana and is one of four artists selected for a Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee radio residency during 2022.

Artist statement by Kim Karabo Makin:

An intertextual audio essay which endeavours to explore the transnational space that Medu Art Ensemble has occupied historically ‘in another South Africa’, with a focus on the route that connects Gaborone, Botswana and Amsterdam, the Netherlands (via Chicago). Satellite Activism notably traces the life and legacy of Medu Art Ensemble in contemporaneity, with a particular look at themes that connect the Culture and Resistance Festival and Symposium, 5 – 7 July 1982 in Gaborone, to the Culture in Another South Africa Conference, December 1987 in Amsterdam. Additionally, with particular reference to the Art Institute of Chicago publication The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster 1979-1985, the project extends off of my exploration of ‘the living archive’ – a live sounding of the archive as expressed through lived experiences and shared storytelling, where my practice considers the DJ as an archivist.

*Use headphones for optimum listening experience.

I do not, nor do I claim to own some of the selected clips, sound/video archives. These are all available online by their respective owners for free and fair use. This collage is for research and educational purposes only. Please contact for full reference list.

Part 1: out of site, out of mind

2022

duration: 6 mins

The voice of former poet laureate of South Africa (2018) and founding member of Medu Art Ensemble, Mongane Wally Serote opens with an analogy that explains how committed cultural workers collectively formed Medu’s ethos around 1978. Picture Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa playing their trumpet and trombone respectively ‘underground’ – what might it sound like as you walked underground towards the jazz hall, and eventually ‘opened the doors of culture’. What does art in the underground look and sound like? And in what ways might this have left an imprint on the site associated with Medu’s powerful red, black and off-white poster, Unity is Power. 2935, Pudulogo Crescent, Gaborone – across from the University of Botswana (established in 1982 as the first institution of higher education in Botswana), and adjacent to the Alliance Française (a cultural centre and hub for language, arts and culture locally, notably also engaging in cinema festivals and symposiums that include both European and local film). I am interested in unpacking and sounding this specific site as holding a particular cultural significance internationally, for it’s ties to Medu, despite not having been monumentalised in our local memory. In addition, out of site, out of mind is particularly concerned with exploring methods of recording the spatial and temporal dimensions of this site, with respect to my positionality in engaging this history, as well as themes surrounding exile.

Part 2: open culture

2022

duration: 13 mins

Open culture closely documents and contrasts the Culture and Resistance Festival and Symposium, 5 – 7 July 1982, in Gaborone, with the Culture in Another South Africa Conference, December 1987, in Amsterdam. In fact, my research highlighted that there was another conference that took place in Amsterdam from 13 – 18 December 1982, entitled The Cultural Voice of Resistance, South African and Dutch Artists against Apartheid. These three conferences, festivals and/or symposiums were all engaged in the Anti-Apartheid struggle with a particular focus on cultural boycott, where the 1982 occasions closely engaged members of Medu Art Ensemble. Leading figure of Medu’s visual arts and graphic design, Thami Mnyele (whom was based in Gaborone up until he was murdered in the June 14 South African Defence Force Raid on Gaborone in 1985) is remembered as having left a lasting impression on Dutch artists, politicians and people interested in cultural exchange. His visit to Amsterdam in 1982 is said to have so inspired the running and continuation of the Thami Mnyele Foundation in Amsterdam to this day. Imagining 1982 – 1987, with respect to Gaborone and Amsterdam as sites of international activism, I am particularly interested in remembering and tracing these events approximately 2 and a half years either side of the June 14 Raid. Where 1985 is described as the year that Gaborone ‘lost its innocence’, I am concerned with investigating this moment in time as a traumatic turning point in Botswana’s Art History and subsequent creative development. Furthermore, I am interested in unpacking what connects Gaborone and Amsterdam amongst other notable cities around the world (like Chicago), as satellites, historically entangled with Apartheid South Africa and the Anti-Apartheid Movement.

“Medu’s Culture and Resistance Festival and Symposium in Gaborone, Botswana, in 1982 and the Culture in Another South Africa Conference, held in Amsterdam in 1987, are but two examples of the heightened degree of organisation that cultural activism assumed.”

(Gule in Byrd & Mings, 2020: 47)

Part 3: intergenerationally

2022

duration: 6 mins

Refocusing on the potential for the moment that marks a part of the life and afterlife of Medu from 1982 – 1987, this piece considers the extent to which this fragment of the archive lives on in us today. By drawing connections between fathers Mzwakhe Mbuli – also affectionately known as ‘The People’s Poet’ and Keorapetse Kgositsile – former poet laureate of South Africa (2006), and their respective sons, Robot Boii and Earl Sweatshirt. Intergenerationally is particularly concerned with considering sampling as a tool for curating the living archive. In so doing, I extend a conversation that presents Amapiano as well as popular music and/or culture, as methods for connecting audiences and passing on knowledge across generations.

‘’ is an extended conversation hosted by Kim Karabo Makin along with artist friends and colleagues – Ann Gollifer and Thero Makepe, at the home of the Art Residency Centre in Gaborone, Botswana.

The conversation unpacks Makin’s final outcome of her radio residency with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, a sound piece entitled Satellite Activism. In so doing, Makin engages a conversation with Gollifer in considering her practice as an archivist, as well as in unpacking the potential for an exploration of the archive as ‘living’, with specific regard to the strong presence of oral traditions in the context of Botswana. In addition, Makin engages Makepe in reflecting on the role of the DJ as an archivist of sorts, in curating the living archive. Furthermore, with a look at the cultural significance of radio in the local soundscape, the three collectively present the sort of intergenerational passing on of knowledge that Satellite Activism embraces.

In considering the life and legacy of Medu Art Ensemble in and out of Botswana, the conversation also reflects on particular moments included in Satellite Activism. Through shared storytelling, Makin, Gollifer and Makepe also unpack themes surrounding dislocation, exile, community-building, and the potential for Makin’s radio art practice going forward.

This broadcast, alongside "Satellite Activism", streamed last November 13th, marks the end of the residency of artist Kim Karabo Makin, who lives in Botswana and is one of four artists selected for a Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee radio residency during 2022.

Barrel of the soul’s many inhabitants slurp alongside the stillness which slithers past the cries, and deep beyond the breath is that sensorial forgetfulness held by these walls.

Recommended listening method: headphones, and a comfortable seat.

Mikatsiu’s research during the Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee residency focused on remote sensing, consideration of the different communication abilities of dancing spiders, questioning what is needed to sense the detached regions of one’s own body, and tuning enunciation towards melodies as they unravel stories into perceivable frequencies.

In the audio essay 'Iconographies of Belonging' artist Endi Tupja maps out several coordinates and journeys that others misread, questioned or were simply not interested in. Albania, the country where Tupja was born and grew up, is described as a place of belonging and longing that is constantly questioned: ‘where are you from? Go back to your East’. New fractured identities are born as a result.

Tupja crafts a rhythm of urgency, yet within a steady pace of clear forwardness and determination. Her voice will not stop until the threads have been revealed in all their entanglements.The artist navigates between factual descriptions and a guttural flow, where anger is allowed to flourish in new forms of tenderness. Anger about the impossibility to carve a space of discernment from outside projections, about white feminism that doesn’t live up to its good intentions, and anger about the tragic life of activist Adelina Sejdini, who was kidnapped from Albania and forced into prostitution in Italy. This audio piece contains moments of violence (rape, suicide) that can be triggering, while it simultaneously provides a space for liberation, transformation and endearment.

'Iconographies of Belonging' is commissioned by Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, as part of our series 'Near Histories', curated by Radna Rumping. For 'Near Histories' artists are invited to develop an audio piece related to a history that is 'near', whether it’s in literal close proximity, or rather a history that is still unfolding. Here the essayistic format offers a (partly) subjective take on an event or situation that isn't fully historicized.

A transcript of the audio essay with footnotes can be downloaded here.

Credits:
Concept, text and voice: Endi Tupja
Sound scape: Dirar Kalash

Soundtrack:
Featuring track by composer and musician Dirar Kalash
Popular women's Dance from Martanesh at the Folklore Concert of Popular Albanian Music 1988, Gjirokastër, performers: T. Koxheri and L. Gjoni
Song: “Me Lot Bukën Tuj Gatue” (Making Bread in Tears) performed by Drita Suҫi at the Folklore Concert of Popular Albanian Music 1988, Gjirokastër
Recording of a Call to Prayer in a mosque, soundsnap.com

“A collision with the past” is a year-long attempt at approaching the history of the Kalenderpanden, a former squat located in the East of Amsterdam. The squat was in operation between 1996 and 2000, and, after its eviction, it was turned into luxury lofts.

The piece uses archive material that the squatters from that time made available: a documented timeline of both the squatting and the eviction. It also tries to touch upon how the practice of squatting changed in the past decades, since the 2010 squatting ban, and weaves in and out of how one can still get access to the Kalenderpanden building, two decades after.

While putting together the piece, between November 2020 and November 2021, there has been a resurgence of squatting as a housing practice in Amsterdam, as well as nationwide. So with this in mind, the piece links the Kalenderpanden to the newly squatted Hotel Mokum as well as a building on Spuistraat 59 and one on Ringdijk 8, both squatted by the Anarcha Feminist Group Amsterdam.

As if to say, “Wet of geen wet, kraken gaat door” (“Law or no law, squatting continues.”)

This audio essay is commissioned by Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, as part of our series 'Near Histories', curated by Radna Rumping. For 'Near Histories' artists are invited to develop an audio piece related to a history that is 'near', whether it's in literal close proximity, or rather a history that is still unfolding. Here the essayistic format offers a (partly) subjective take on an event or situation that isn't fully historicized.

A .pdf script of the piece is available here.

Colophon:

Inspired by Rachel Sellem and Elki Boerdam, creators of the "InputParty".

Additional Voices:
Ana-Maria Guşu,
Jörn Nettingsmeier,
Jelle Baars.

Recording and Sound design:
Jörn Nettingsmeier.

Music by:
De 4 Touze Matroze;
DJ Lulu;
Kuijs Reinder Kakes Makelaardij Hypotheken Verzekeringen
and
Euronext Amsterdam, formerly The Amsterdam Stock Exchange.

With material from:
entrepotdok.squat.net;
funda.nl/koop/amsterdam;
Youtube user "vriijepiijptv";
a recent housing survey of the Onderzoek, Informatie en Statistiek department of the City of Amsterdam;

and news outlets:
itsgoingdown.org;
Vice.com/NL;
and Trouw.

The literary figure of the ekphrasis is a verbal description of a visual work of art. It has been part of literature and art discourse for centuries, and it has been crucial to the exhibition I saw it by ear, initiated by Muro Sur in Rozenstraat in Amsterdam.

Discussions of ekphrasis always seem to produce fertile associations and repercussions when thinking about the crossed boundaries between art and literature, imagination, representation and the unfolding and reproducibility of certain knowledge.

With Ilse van Rijn, Martín La Roche and Arif Kornweitz, this episode explores the history of the figure of ekphrasis, the traditional difference between poetry and painting (tradition of paragone), and how more recent poets and writers approach this categorical separation, to shed light on the exhibition I saw it by ear.

Find a list of references mentioned in the show, and for further reading on our website www.jajajaneeneenee.com

Also, this episodes contains two pieces of the vinyl record Écfrasis. These pieces stem from 2018, when Muro Sur invited 29 Chilean artists to contribute a rhetorical description of piece of art they would like to exhibit in a show in Amsterdam. The resulting descriptions are collected on a double vinyl, created with Martín La Roche and Giancarlo Pazzanese.