Gathering #3: Future Sounds and Beyond: The Non-Aligned

Subsequent to the installation Garden of Scars, the Oude Kerk organised a comprehensive public programme under the name of Gatherings, linked to the themes of Ibrahim Mahama’s work as well as current issues. Visitors were invited to explore the artistic intervention from a different perspective through concerts, tours, performances, and other activities.

Over three weekends, the Oude Kerk invited communities of thinkers, musicians, and travellers to share stories from both sides of the Atlantic in the midst of the Garden of Scars. In its centuries-long relationship with Europe, Africa and its diaspora have faced the horrors of being torn apart. At the same time, there is a capacity for growth in this otherwise exploitative destructive relationship. Sounds and stories travelled, changed and blended together through space and time, working towards the new now and the sound that is already ringing in the ears of the future generation.

Invited by artist and curator Richard Kofi, DJ Chinnamasta, choreographer and performer Christian Guerematchi and rapper Suzooki Swift explore the meaning and diversity of black European identity through music and performance. Central to this is the concept of ‘the non-aligned’, taken from the international political movement set up during the Cold War by countries that did not want to belong to the West or the Soviet Union. What does a non-aligned positioning mean in art? Can it contribute to artistic freedom? Does it inspire our (political) identity formation or activism? And what do we feel in our bodies when we think ourselves free from dominant historiography and political systems?