Welcome to the second seminar of the art series «Sensing: Between an amoeba and an atom» at Kunsthall Trondheim. April 4. we invite you to an exhibition tour in «Sowing Somankidi Coura. A generative Archive», a lecture «Refusing to be Resilient Thusly: Soil, Care and Postcolonial Futures» by Shela Sheikh and a screening of «A Letter From My Village» (1976) by Safi Faye, a program proposed by Raphaël Grisey.

SEMINAR PROGRAM:

5pm
Guided tour in the exhibition «Sowing Somankidi Coura. A generative Archive» together with Raphaël Grisey, Bouba Touré and Diol Mouhamadou (Kàddu Yaraax).

The exhibition examines the history of the permaculture and archives of «Somankidi Coura», a self-organized cooperative at the Senegal River in Mali that was founded by a group of former African migrants and activists in France in 1977 after the Sahel was hit by a severe draught.

6.30pm
Lecture: «Refusing to be Resilient Thusly: Soil, Care and Postcolonial Futures» by Shela Sheikh

Shela Sheikh is Lecturer in the Department of Media, Communications and Cultural Studies at Goldsmiths (University of London), where she convenes the MA Postcolonial Culture and Global Policy and co-chairs the Goldsmiths Critical Ecologies Research Stream. She lectures and publishes internationally. Her research interrogates various forms of witnessing, between the human, technological and environmental. A recent multi-platform research project around colonialism, botany and the politics of planting includes “The Wretched Earth: Botanical Conflicts and Artistic Interventions”, a special issue of Third Text co-edited with Ros Gray (vol. 32, issue 2–3, 2018), and Theatrum Botanicum (Sternberg Press, 2018) edited with Uriel Orlow, as well as numerous workshops on the topic with artists, filmmakers and environmentalists.

8pm
Screening of «A Letter From My Village» by Safi Faye (1976)
Safi Faye (b. 1943) made her first short film, La Passante, in 1972, and in 1975 she became the first sub-Saharan African woman to direct a feature film: Kaddu Beykat (Letter from My Village). Faye is today recognized as one of Sub-Saharan Africa’s most prominent directors. Centred on a romance, Kaddu Beykat (Letter From My Village) chronicles the daily lives of people in Fadjal, a rural Senegalese village, and their struggle with the state land policies, and agricultural politics.

This screening is supported by La cinémathèque Afrique and Institut Francais.