 Good morning. Yes, yes, I'm feeling so so excited by this conference yesterday was just amazing, you know, I couldn't sleep last night I was my mind was racing with all kinds of future projects and collaborations and challenges opportunities thinking of Brazil India Haiti and today we're in Africa and And I'm I'm honored so I want to thank the organizers Ken Manning Samantha Tracy for including me in this amazing amazing conference so and and I'm very moved because Haiti is Africa in the Caribbean so I'm I feel so proud and privileged to be introducing these four African luminaries and and I'm going to start with Professor Chakanetza Mavunga Was a full professor in the program in science Technology into site at MIT His latest book is titled and I love this title because it speaks to me personally there to invent the future knowledge in the service of and through problem-solving I Just cannot wait for this book to appear in 2023 in the MIT Press book series on global South cosmologies and epistemologies Professor Chakanetza is the series editor His professional interests lie in the history Theory and practice of science technology innovation and entrepreneurship in the international context with a focus on Africa Chakanetza and I'm very privileged to say that Join MIT as a tender track as a professor in in 08 after completing his PhD in Michigan instead of Michigan in Ann Arbor where I used to teach a long time ago in 1993 Before you were born Is the author of two books both with MIT Press the mobile workshop that sits a fly in African knowledge production in 2018 and then transient workspaces technologies of everyday innovation in Zimbabwe in 2014 Chakanetza is also the editor of what do science technology and innovation mean from Africa? Chakanetza is currently editing a second volume Everyday design maker X from the margins to the center This volume positions everyday life as a design maker experience with strong implications for design practice and Chakanetza is also the founder and convener of the global South cosmologies and epistemologies initiative which offers an annual graduate Super similar co-taught across the world by distinguished cast of global South theoreticians and design makers. I mean just just amazing So that's Chakanetza and then we're going to hear from a Kenai Mekunye with a filmmaker And I would add a pleasure to sit next to a Kenai yesterday at dinner and it was just Extremely inspiring and I cannot wait for the weekend to watch his films on Netflix So a Kenai also works in TV production and in photography. His films have gotten five nominations at the most prestigious African festival the Africa Magic Viewer's Choice 2022 Including Best Director. He's done five feature films Three of them have been released. Sylvia in 2018, Light in the Dark in 2019 One Lagos Night in 2021 All these feature films have made it to number one on Netflix in Nigeria and I've been screened at Nollywood Nollywood Week in Paris and as at all the international film festivals in all the continents of the world including the British Film Institute and the Durban International Film Institute. A Kenai has also produced short films like Las Guis Device 2017 and Counter 2015 and Oblivious 2014 Extremely prolific. Some of these films have won Africa's biggest film awards as I mentioned before So a Kenai worked for Mnet from 2011 to 2013 Then for MTV in 2013 then he started his own company called Riverside Productions He also runs a free training program Called the Imagery Program that teaches young people the art of screenwriting Acting and filmmaking from the best filmmakers in Africa. A Kenai has studied filmmaking at New York Film Academy and at Universal Studios in Los Angeles and he also has a degree in insurance from the University of Lagos and he's part of the Executive MBA program at the Lagos Business School and his adjunct faculty member at the School of Media and Communication Penetrating University. So it's those African scholars Renaissance people. I mean it's amazing the amount of different things that they do and now we're going to move to Ruth Russell. So I've been practicing this How am I doing Russell? So Russell is a cultural producer and a consultant for creative industries. He's based in Durban, South Africa His work obsesses over the tensions in heritage, modernity, culture and tradition as they apply to Black Lives His practice includes research, cultural production, design theory, writing, film and Creatorship. He's part of a number of working groups spread all across the southern African region, the African continent and more broadly the world He's shown his work all in South Africa, Europe, Argentina and the United Arab Emirates and Japan Now the best for last Jeb Chumba Jeb Chumba is a digital cultural ambassador She's the founder and creative director of African digital art, a collective and creative space where digital artists, enthusiasts and professionals can seek inspiration, showcase the artistry and connect with emerging artists. Jeb Chumba is dedicated to promoting the growth of the creative technology in Africa Originally from Kenya, she has lived, traveled and spoken around the world, promoting a commitment to the culture of technology in Africa. As an artist, African digital artist, she's passionate about creating unique digital experiences that showcase Africa's legacy of technology. And Jeb Chumba has been listed by Forbes as one of the 20 youngest power women in Africa and in the guardian Africa as one of the top 25 women achievers So we extremely extremely privileged to have this amazing cast of African innovators and activists in our midst today. So I cannot wait to listen to you all. Sorry, I can't put this down in part because I just received it from Ekena as a gift And also because it's too precious to put down in case it takes it back so I'll put it here We all said I'll put you up this way Okay Now I think this is the last time you are seeing the title I think it's gone To be replaced by a soon to be replaced by a blank slate also very deliberate because when we met for the first time with my three guests and friends We were going to talk about videography between freedom and oppression We decided that we don't want to talk about oppression because it forces us to have to respond to the past We instead want to chop the future conscious of the role of history In three main ways three or four main ways One is that it provokes and evokes hence pro evoke Secondly the work of history is to act as a tool for researching ourselves and by researching it means that which has been lost of our Erased Thirdly, it is a work of remembering ourselves Which is Not just storytelling but storytelling plus or If you prefer plus storytelling that plus is critical because it gestures towards several other things that are happening in League of storytelling and that frame Devices we use not just to use deploy but make Fourth It's a work of speculating That's what history enables us to do To engage in this work of asking what if what did not happen had happened and What if what happened had not happened Now I was trained as a very good historian whatever that meant in Back when I was at the University of Zimbabwe and then at the University of Michigan It is not the work of historians to speculate to engage in speculation but what if that kind of historical writing is not For everybody What if some of us? Need to engage in speculation as a prelude to a final move Which is speculative design making I? know design making precisely because Design is not writ large We have to it doesn't come to us Well Explained and well understood a priori Because we were not available For historical reasons When this language was formulated Now that we are there it affords us an opportunity to have to offer our somewhat belated input In other words making what did not happen happen and Making what happened not happen in the future now this Presentation will be divided into four parts After this I will be quiet and just let the images provoke and evoke the second part of it and third and fourth will focus on how we can use history as Something that is not in the distant past But lives with us every day Which some of us cannot escape? Sometimes it imprisons we prefer we much rather prefer That it acts as a tool for our self re-humanization and self-re-intellection and the assembling of our own resources to live respectable lives hence What we want to talk about first is to look at images of Africa and engage in an assembling of archives and vocabularies For storytelling our creative every day And with that I will now shut my mouth and Let the visual Come to you Thank you. I will now invite Ekena Mekunya to take us to the next phase of this presentation on Kalabasi Good morning everyone. It's such a great pleasure and honor to be here today So I'll be very brief with this before I go into Kalabasi. Well, most Everything I'm going to talk about today have been inspired from talks with professor Avunga here and Very excited to talk about these things So we talk about being witness and we talk about videography But I have a question so How have we been being witness before we had this little devices that have cameras in our You know, so are we trying to say that we were not being witness? Are we saying we were not fighting for justice? So, you know, I'm a filmmaker and I cannot be a filmmaker without the camera So I understand the power of camera. In fact, I have a job because of the camera you know but What I'm trying to say in a sense is that the camera in itself is Not so what is doing the work because something has to happen for the camera to be effective So to a large extent, it's as though we've put so much importance on that tool I'm forgetting that the camera in itself It's useless if there's nothing in front of it So there's so much work going on in that aspect that we are not looking at and something I thought to talk about But that's just on the side. So I'm going to talk about color bashing color bash to Africans color bash is very very important We used for a lot of things If you drink palm wine, for instance We don't serve it and corpse like this for some reason doesn't taste sweet when you use corpse like this When you drink it with the color bash it comes to the different taste. Trust me, you know and and It sells as a music instrument it sells as a As a jar, you know to to To keep liquids and preserve them and a whole lot of other fence So let me explain. I mean just for those that don't know what a color bash is so It it comes from a Plant that produces something like this. This is what it looks like on the tree All right, and by the time it process comes to something like this so you open the top and You could also use as a music instrument as well you know and Okay, this is Before this sorry. Oh Okay, I think there's something miss it. Okay, but it's fine So we also have some that come in around shape and it's at the end of it to get something like so You see something like this so we won't often use this so carry palm wine and It's a point is really served in something like this but before I go further yes, so You can also design it to something like this Okay, so why am I talking about the color bash? So we're talking about videography You know it's interesting that in Africa So the camera was invented in the late 18th century. Yeah, but But in Africa we have been in a way Using the camera for centuries Well, not like the kind of cameras you have today so those days See the color bash like this so we have the Well, you call them juju priests. We call them like the Europe has called them by Bala or the far priests From where I come from I'm able so we call them divya so they carry the color bash right and They put liquid in it like water, but not exactly water So those days if we needed to see what happened at certain Time, so I'll give you an instance. So let's say someone steals something and they don't know who stole it And they needed to find out who stole it So they'll go meet the divya and he will bring out his color bash and they put the liquid and He makes some incantations And before you know it It's playing you the video live In HD So I'm not too sure if it would if we could do like 3d, you know, but at least I'll show of HD You know, and it's interesting because that was how they viewed things then, you know And it could rewind and it could fast forward You know, and these were things that we're doing Centuries ago, you know, so, you know, I prefer saying Speculative so I'm asking myself. I mean these guys. I mean a lot of you are so thrilled by virtual reality now I mean these guys will play with virtual reality then So question for me is Why didn't we in Africa look for a way to develop this technology so that we could export it to America and Europe. I wish I had the answer to that question Well, but just so you know that I mean we've been playing with these things that you guys are fascinated about now we've been playing with these things in Africa for centuries and Lastly You know, there's something Barack Obama said that Africa does not need strong men in these strong institutions Unfortunately, yes, it seems like we have more strong men and strong institutions because the good thing about the video and what it does is that it gives us an opportunity to Gives us an opportunity to Document some of these incidences that happen and looking at like just Floyd's case and likes but What happens where? The institutions don't do their work So even though you have all the witnesses and you have everything Still useless So it's something that I crave for for the continent and and I know it's not just the continent because even in places like here, I mean Yeah, I know there are certain places you could bring out your camera. You could get shot and nothing will happen You know, so It can't work by itself. It also needs Things like that to be able to be effective Thank you for your time What a Kennedy didn't show you was this I think this is what he was looking for Yes, that's how you found out who had stolen something You'll make him look into the water or make a look into the water and Then you could see things that happened yesterday or that will happen or that happening now The Kalabash is also a very strong instrument for the electronic and the sound that We see in video And so to that extent it is also part and parcel of a question. We are asking What would it take to create the next generation Audiovisual capturing devices out of say the Kalabash My next guest Will begin to speculate on some of these through some of the work is doing in field Thanks prof. Good morning to you all Thanks for for being with us on a Friday morning So I'll get I'll get right into it So I'm kind of sharing these images as a way for us to start a conversation as a way to kind of Play with some ideas and to be in conversation with my colleagues in front here but but also with you all I think This part of part of the work Or at least part of the ideas that I'm that I'm kind of throwing out here is to one think of how We situates the camera On the continent that we call and know as Africa and see what kind of discourse what kind of theory starts to emerge when we don't rely On the vocabulary and the methods and uses of this tool in in the so-called wrist or not So I I should start by saying I'm one of three Collaborators that are currently developing a project that is kind of convened and and brought us here Prof here has kind of been a very strong inspiration In the making of that work and so my collaborators that you see on screen Is Amy Wilson as well as from Sonata who are based down in Cape Town? So let me Start here so the camera arrives in Africa with anthropologists The device is what introduces the native to the world Few centuries later of course introduces the native the native in a very particular and peculiar way some centuries later the natives Have charge and control over the camera. So they start to refashion and represent themselves in a very particular way. Yeah The question does remain How do we conjure? How do we make up? How do we build the stuff that we would have wanted to documents? Yeah, so what sits in place of the things that happened and because there's not the evidence There's not the documents. They are dismissed as mere myth and these myths Form the backbone and the foundation of our cosmology Yeah, and so part of the work that we are trying to do with filmmaking It starts to present to start to speculate to start to build the world that we've heard of through myth and Centuries later. We see it through science fiction speculative fiction and so on and so forth and so Much of of the images that you will encounter are trying to bring some kind of visual quality some Visuality to a myth some visuality to a productive possibility that we are trying to build and and work from so language language Begins to to serve as a repository as a place of reference for us to excavate And pull up some ideas and imaginations around our past Of course these myths are articulated in this and I'll just use one example as a way to open up this conversation expand the conversation, so In this is Zulu, Ugo Tuebola is to is to capture To hold something But Ugo Tuebola when you talk about it in a kind of mystic or transcendental dimension, it is to capture one's soul It's a way of kind of keeping diluting of not diffusing time, right and When the camera and comes to the continent and the camera becomes um Tueboli The camera person is someone who's able to capture your soul To capture so to take a photograph is of Tuebola. Um Tueboli is the camera person So it's idea that the camera or the camera person is Um Tueboli or was it Tuebola? So the capturer who can capture not just a photograph Or what becomes a photograph they are playing at another dimension a dimension that we cannot quite understand So quite literally if I have a picture of you I can do some things, right? But that's not the point The point is what else is operational here What is this other thing that makes this imaginary that kind of mobilizes and brings fuel to this imagination? And that's the kind of work that I think it begins begins to open up the possibilities And allows us to build a theory around these tools around a set of technologies And devices that have played such a critical role in oppressing as well For us now in in in liberating ourselves through through story telling The speculative Is a method that I that I deploy quite strongly in my practice. Why because it doesn't it doesn't depend on On evidence it does not depend It does not it does not depend on the truth. Yeah, it's a gesture At what's awards something and so these judges become really really interesting ways to say if we can all agree that we did this Who's to say you wouldn't do this if my Punggubwe in southern Africa Is the sites where they found the oldest gold smelted? Rhinosaurus right and this is fact Yeah Who's to say we didn't do these other things that we want to speculate upon and speculate about yeah And so these images allow us to start communicating with a younger generation Yeah, kind of putting together some kind of of of of a visual Documentation so these images are part of a film that we're currently working on that's called data the Institute's for Technological consciousness and it relies Severely or heavily on images that we cannot find out there And so what we are doing through this work is starting to produce those images and make those images Yeah, and they become really really important because they're not available Yeah, so in a way our making or future making or a filter of future building Is is in production in in that way if if you will and Part of it is also trying to like bring images that even we as Africans are not familiar to or familiar with yeah This is made through the the Dalai Program that I think one of the speakers last night's yesterday had Johnson images from which I'm Towards the end of my Sharing we'll come back and kind of open up a conversation around these images, so mind not Lastly, this is this is the tete fly and so part of part of the work in this film is working is taking inspiration from prof Mofonga's work and starting to to take what was dismissed as myth and build it into a kind of a A a Filmic world but also to take it out of a filmic world world and kind of start to make objects and artifacts Really as a way to kind of put technology in the hands of young people, you know amongst amongst other things and other people So this is a tete fly. Maybe prof can can speak to this if he wishes But it's a sculpture that Francois was my collaborator had made it features in the film And as well it features in the book of prof Mofonga So you almost start to see how we starting to build a universe you know from from myth really Yeah, but this myth is something we want to work with Yeah, this myth is our speculative and the world is only created and manufactured through speculating through playing and in effect and that's where innovation becomes possible and then lastly as Part of thinking of the relationship between the continent and the camera More recently or at least in in in the more recently There's been a phenomenon where the camera has been kind of quite pervasive and and it enters in all spaces in all circles But there's also a time when I was much younger Where the camera could not enter certain rooms. It was not invited at certain events certain moments Yeah, and again What what is at play there? Why why is it important that the camera has a set of boundaries in Places and spaces and moments where it is not invited. Yeah, and so what theory can emerge around that? Yeah Again, that's a simple that's a simple question And one could respond in a very simple question But there's something else that we're trying to kind of tease out and and build it there So that's the end of my presentation for now, and then I'll hand over back to you Prof Hello. Hi everybody It is quite surreal for me to be here because I'm actually quite a nerdy tech person and Have never belonged in any space So I constantly have to create spaces. So I'm sort of an anomaly like a very Technological person minded person like I gravitated towards that as a young child but then I'm also like sort of artistic and Philosophical about things I'm too much aware of things. So I think I've always sort of bounced around between Very many different interests and I realized that I'm very much a product of my time So my name is Chep Chumba. I'm originally from Kenya and I'm an African digital artist and When I was sort of trying to assemble my education my parents thought it was wise to put me to an Into an American missionary school in the middle of Kenya That was part of the colonial project. So Pretty much my high school Time that I was in high school. I was always constantly annoying my teachers Because they would say we're gonna study world history. We're starting in Germany World War one I'm like, where are we? We're in Kenya. What are we doing? Why are we studying this? This is pretty I was Basically set up to constantly ask the question why and in in a strange way Technology like immersing myself in technology put myself in spaces in which I could create things that really didn't possibly Exist before or like have conversations that moved forward So one of the things that I did was start something called African digital arts in 2009 as a way to archive creative projects also from all parts of the continent and The first question that I would receive from people online would be are you sure this is African? I thought there's no electricity in Africa What what is that? So I was kind of surprised that those questions came from both like people outside of Africa But mostly Africans themselves and I realized that we really had Not had many conversations around creative technology so I sort of made a point to myself to be sort of out there and have this conversations of like What would it look like if African artists and philosophers and thinkers and magicians and theorists had this internet space to like theorize and like create new possibilities and Sort of the response to that was like but we need to solve Africa's problems like First before we start dreaming like there's too many we can't even sleep as Africans We have to fix the continent So I think in response to that a lot of the work that I did went into speculative thinking and dreaming and then I was called an Afro futurist Which is really Confusing because I feel futurism has a completely separate history in America Then it did from where I come from Where I was actually much more into like African thinking about African futures so a lot of the activities that I did was into participate in projects where it was sort of propel a group of people into thinking about the future and somehow I Went sort of all different directions curating projects that Really invited a different artist to think and dream about themselves in in Africa and And inevitably I ended up back right back here to these images That the professor evoked here I Can I The more I tried to propel myself Into the future. I ended up going back into images like this and looking at them in a completely unique and different ways where I I was allowed to now sort of continue the conversation about the technologies in which My ancestors lived and I was sort of privileged by the fact that I had by design of my parents and grandparents Always a connection back to where I lived so I could literally transport myself back and live Completely the similar way that my great-grandmother I lived in her house like my great-grandmother's homeland and Basically adopt a daily life like that by becoming a farmer and then I found that this was such a unique space for us to understand the legacy of Technologies that have been developed on the continent that are much needed now in the time that we live in as we find it increasingly harder to become human because of the amount of technologies that we continue to adopt we constantly have this push and pull between Like trying to make things different, but then always pulling us back to our tendencies So I think I'll stop from there and Invite perhaps a new set of eyes and new set of ears to the conversation that we're having because much of what we're trying to do is to move past like our tendency of like how we talk about technology and the continent and Really try to play much more about like possibilities of the future. Yeah Yes, and now questions comments Hi, my name is Karen Ritzenhoff. I teach at a state university but I was very fortunate that a colleague of mine who is a sociologist Allowed me to co-edit a book on Afrofuturism in Black Panther with her and we got a lot of contributors from a lot of different disciplines from the United States and International authors to write about the Afrofuturism in Wakanda and this blockbuster success of Ryan Coogler's Superhero film and so since you are filmmakers on the panel I Wanted to ask if you could explain how Afrofuturism is different as you just mentioned for you when it's conceived in this kind of blockbuster format and What you think the film did or didn't do for a global audience did it in your perception offer opportunities for discussions or How do you see the influence of this franchise that is soon going to be followed by Wakanda forever, but also trigger the film like the woman king with Regina King My first response to The film I think is that I think that some of us have completely different imaginations than what we're offered by Hollywood and Yes, it is great that that kind of imagination is accessible, but it's certainly not new and The term Afrofuturism and African futures is a completely different thing I Would invite us to really think about the is We would have if we had an unreliable accounting of the past and How that would affect our Dreaming of the future if you knew that everything that you sort of understood about yourself and who you were the way in which the world Worked and operated was a bunch of stories that could be changed at any time like how you yourself living in this digital this Mediated digital to life that we find ourselves currently. How would you approach the way you're living every day? I think that's like a much better offering than what sort of Hollywood is doing which Yeah, I mean, yeah, I think chiptuba is responded to that really beautifully. I've got nothing substantial to add I have a question So I was thinking about the reimagining and right and and the stories that are told and not told and wondering What your thoughts on and reimagining education? using videography Images and you know what you started with in terms of Grass and and and the calabash, you know those things in in American education are not even talked about Oh Thanks, Chris so I the book daring to invent the future the subtitle is called Knowledge in the service of and through problem-solving The reason being my major claim is that At least focused on Africa I'm saying that We are producing useless knowledge And if it was useful, what is there to show for it? It's too theoretical It has not left the kinds of Papers is for which the colonizer Designed it for those that dispense it are a part and parcel of the problem of An anti-colonized mind What is essential therefore is to engage in a new kind of knowledge of Mind re-engineering After amnesia as Ganesh Dev would say What is what happened is that our knowledge systems were stripped of any essence were caricatured and We were pointed towards a knowledge system that is Western and white as The only Bridge Into modernity We may reject that claim Because it then for close the possibility of us Seeing anything worthwhile To go back into our past the other thing that happened is that the methods of Researching the past we're all about research not Researching the past in order to Remember What was dismembered part of what was dismembered and foreclosed was If for example Something was designated as witchcraft What was emphasized was the witch What was not talked about was the craft Some of us may want to now go back to that question and say what was the craft and If we did that we will not just end with speculation The challenge is to say what after speculation Because we leave our art on the verge having discovered this 30 fly object somebody somewhere in Silicon Valley takes it and develops into The next generation technology Based on our imaginations and yet we would be told that this is just a work of fiction useless fiction So it's a knowledge for us. It's no longer a knowledge For the sake of writing and publishing books Books are wonderful But people do not eat the ideas in our heads We some of us have a responsibility to our communities, which cannot be fulfilled ever by publishing That would be my response to you and my name is Brianna I'm a comparative media studies and writing lecturer here at MIT and I have a question in response to something that Russell said but I'm sure any of you could answer and so when we're talking about Reimagining and re-researching and redesigning realities It was mentioned that we didn't want to use the same methods of the of the West and a good example Was not requiring evidence to come to consensus and truth and I'm wondering if if you also are thinking about Measurements outside of Western measurements that would define the success of those truths So you mentioned just now publishing or exporting was mentioned earlier if those aren't the metrics for success What might be I will answer this very quickly then pass it on to Russell. I think for me the question My legacy will be how much lives if I touched Because for as long as I go back to my village and I find People still walk children still walk five miles to school and five miles back the same ones that I I walked and I see kids in South Birmingham Continuing to go hungry and can't find after-school programs that keep them at school doing something worthwhile and They go on the streets and they do things that you know create this cycle over and over again. I Don't think in my view. I should break about being a fully tenured full professor That's a very My My measurements perhaps of success is to have constructed some kind of intergenerational discourse would say between My son and my grandmother and and the work that I am doing is translating Ideas and imagination that were contained within my grandmother. So maybe if I give you a very practical example Through this work we we host workshops And we kind of play with this idea of objects of power So if so if like African masks or example for example our objects that are potent So we kind of invite young people who presents images to young people and we fold the room with the waist Yeah, and it's okay. Let's let's play like look at this image look at this image and they start like asking questions What's this and how does this stuff come together and it starts to kind of you know It helps them make it helps them construct, but it also helps them ask questions about the world and a really important one is that they are using as a reference our Grandmothers and our ancestors folklore and And and and so on and so if one can start to bridge that gap I think we would be kind of starting to move the needle and in some in some way Yeah, I have a question actually for a Ken about Calabashing and I wondered if It's a very basic question. Are the images stored in any way? Are they do they remain? Are they fixed because that would seem to be a huge difference between Calabashing and the video camera and it would really challenge a lot of the things that we were talking about yesterday with the importance of storage and archiving and this kind of Obsession with storing everything and I wondered if you could Explain that or answer that very basic question and then open up and and give your thoughts on archiving and storage Okay, thank you So, I mean, it's not the day that someone came with a tool called the camera that they started working on it I mean a lot of distance come from years back and you get to a point where you're presenting something that's finished And that's why we're working in the realms of the speculative to say, okay What if this thing that had been toyed with for centuries had been further developed? So I'm not saying that they had gotten to a point where They were moving around hard drives to be able to play it somewhere, you know But I want to believe that what at any point in time that they wanted to replace the coach replayed What I could not fully understand was the whole process and because it was not something that was You know for me, it's it's it's it was just trying to imagine because distance do exist It was trying to imagine to say, okay, what's if because living the realm of speculative if We had decided to go away from this point and say how could we develop it? I won't believe that if that thought had been in the minds of this for hundreds of years Then there was a possibility that could have been developed In a matter of storage, I think that most technologies that come From Africa digital technologies that have got lasted over centuries usually is To think about it you have to rethink your way of how technologies that most technologies we use today Which is very object like it's an object your phone has these functions, but most technologies had Multifunction so the kalabash for example as an instrument. It's not only decorative. It's not only something you eat It's not only something it has all of these repurposes sort of also like print and textile and patterns that are preserved and also the stories that are told when making certain technologies so for example like in beating Which is in very digital ancient African digital technology It's not only the making of the patterns the digital patterns on that are coated on the beads It's the conversations and stories that are shared along with them And then also the purposes and functions of the color coding of the beads So you have like a skirt. That's a certain color printed for a certain function over time that is past generationally So that's like a completely different way of Understanding storage and also a collective memory That has been a contribution that Africa has made and I think a lot of these Like concepts African concepts have really permeated because of digital and internet culture and now we are Almost like even in our communications with people sort of telepathic you can also kind of anticipate when your hot boyfriend's gonna text like and like before that would Be seen as kind of like crazy, but we have this really very nuanced and sensitive Very intimate relationship with devices and then all of these components from the two devices come from Africa so there's like these really hardware software cultural like relational networks of systems that Contribute to the culture of technologies and our ideas and imagining of daily life the past and the future so that's why I think Thinking about these ideas from the continent is always so interesting because there's not so much of romanticization and a fetishization of the past and objects that seems to like occur in a lot of Other spaces. Yeah Yeah, it's just gone past 10 30 and I would like to Thank everybody and to thank my guests for such a wonderful conversation