ABOUT
The [i]:her(e), otherwise[/i] curatorial proposition is conceptually anchored in the interrogation of the architectural brief as both a site and context of power. The briefs, having been formulated in silos of privilege, rendered them a tool of value creation that sustains the reproduction of structural inequality, while perpetuating erasure in the practice of the discipline.
Through a mise-en-abîme format, saay/yaas*—four African co-curators—propose their own brief within the brief of Saison Africa2020. Conceptualized as a bureau de change, they develop an online platform as a community for knowledge and value production through intimate encounters and exchanges. A set of acts, each structured as call-and-response, invites successive responders to interrogate and jointly construct the architectural brief in a public act of knowledge/content production while operating across different scales and modes of belonging, practice, and representation.
The responders are African-diaspora women spatial makers and thinkers; a demographic historically and continually excluded from the practice of knowledge creation, but whose diverse practice approaches birth a multitude of forms and modes of spatial/curatorial/collective practice.
Sindi, Anahory, Abengowe, Yehouessi / Yehouessi, Abengowe, Anahory, Sindi.
INVITATION
“Fantasies, which do not represent us, but the white imaginary. They are the denied aspects of the white self which are re-projected onto us, as if they were authoritative and objective pictures of ourselves. They are however not of our concern.” - Grada Kilomba
Dear friends and colleagues,
When tasked with interpreting the Saison Africa2020 Architecture project brief, saay/yaas was inspired by strategies that recognized African and diasporan forms of expression, resilience, and creative content, whilst simultaneously providing a counterweight to dominant preconceived, fixed, and homogenizing notions about Africa “...to explain to those who have the privilege not to know”. saay/yaas held the “typical” architectural exhibit to be a form of static display with limited and limiting criticality, in response, the digital platform her(e), otherwise was created.
As an adverb, otherwise, “modifies or qualifies an adjective”, “expressing a relationship of place, time, circumstance, manner, cause, degree, etc.” The use of this word in the title her(e), otherwise, read as her, here, otherwise, alludes to the complex relationships, in space and time, inherent to being and constructing a practice as a woman and African/diasporan in the predominantly male, white, economically privileged, and western-centered discipline of architecture.
her(e)otherwise is a living, constantly mutating chronicle of ideas, a receptacle of valuable inputs that stages a framing of questions around the multiplicities of understanding and practicing architecture all the while in constant dialogue with the relationships, experiences, conditions, and intelligences specific to Africa and the diaspora. The site addresses the urgent need to gather an open, interactive, and expanding community of black women engaged in the broadest possible range of spatial practices and acts of self-determined belonging.
We invite you to craft your own way of “showing up” by offering your work, thoughts, references, delights, horrors, musings, ideas (visual, sonic, or textual), finished, (in)complete or dreamed projects, questions, statements, or polemics with no limits or expectations. These offerings can be made publicly or anonymously. You can appear as a practice, collaboration, collective, or individual. In turn, we call on you to successively call on others within the African/diasporic body to make their own offerings, and in this way to progressively bring into the community a wide expanse of thinkers and practitioners.
saay/yaas - abujapraiaparisjohannesburg