The Secessionist Manifestos of Certain Received Wisdoms

Abstract

In the winter sun in early 2016, 21 years after the first transmission of The Last Angel of History on ZDF in 1995, John Akomfrah and Kodwo Eshun were invited by the two editors, kara lynch and Henriette Gunkel, to discuss the film’s interventions into critical debates around black popular culture in the mid-1990s, its epistemological enquiry into modes of becoming, its analysis of the foreclosure of African political utopias, and its role in the evolution of Afrofuturism and African futures during the last two decades. The conversation between Kodwo Eshun and John Akomfrah took place on Tuesday March 15, 2016 from 7-9pm at Radio Extra Terrestrial at Galerie KIT. It was produced and presented by Miss Despoina during the exhibition We Hold This Myth to Be Potential: Investigations into Afrofuturism at Trondheim Academy of Fine Arts, Norwegian University of Science and Technology. We Hold this Myth to be Potential was curated by Annett Busch and Florian Schneider for Meta.Morf 2016: Nice to be in Orbit! The Trondheim International Biennale for Art & Technology from March 10 to May 8, 2016.