Photo of the performance Sentinelle by Sarah Ndele in 2023 17 apr –
8 mei 2024
Workshop: Maintaining the Root
Framer Framed invites you to join Maintaining the Root, a series of performance workshops on 17 and 24 April and 1 May with Congolese performance artist Sarah Ndele. Maintaining the Root is organised as part of a collaboration between Planetary Poetics – a master’s programme hosted in collaboration with Framer Framed at the Sandberg Institute – and Atelier Picha, and deals with colonial heritage and connection with ancestry through performance.
To cross a river or a path, I need the person who came before me. He can show me where to set foot. He knows if the river is deep or not, if the path I’m taking is mortal or not.
Sarah Ndele is a visual and performance artist who lives and works in Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Her work questions the memory, the roots and the present of the Bakongo people in the west of the DRC. It is based on exploring what has been lost and finding ways to reconnect to her ancestors: “If I draw on Yombé works, it’s not just to find a style or develop a singular style of writing, but it’s also a personal process: to nurture my roots, which are gradually dissipating. The more generations pass, the more history fades.”
The workshop series Maintaining the Root offers different exercises that explore the practice of ‘rooting’, which Sarah Ndele has been developing in light of the numerous losses her people have dealt with due to violent forms of colonisation in the past and present. An example of this is the loss of local languages, including the script of Luzitu – a term that means ‘intense respect’ in the artist’s mother tongue Kiyombé. Throughout the workshops, she will share her work as a performance artist, a workshop organiser, and as one of the organisers of the yearly performance festival Kin-Etelemi-Telemi in Kinshasa.
Everybody is welcome to attend the workshops, but due to limited places we would like to ask you to send a short motivation (max. 250 words) to planetarypoetics@sandberg.nl by Sunday 14 April latest.
Participants will work towards a final collective performance, which takes place on 8 May and is open to the public. Sign up here to attend!
Workshop dates
17 April | 15:00 – 17:00
24 April | 15:00 – 17:00
1 May | 15:00 – 17:00
Final performance
8 May | 18:00 – 19:30
Acknowledgments
Maintaining the Root is organised as part of a collaboration between Planetary Poetics, a master’s programme exploring key concepts of the ecological crisis hosted in collaboration with Framer Framed and Dorine van Meel at the Sandberg Institute in Amsterdam, and Atelier Picha, an independent art initiative that seeks to promote artistic creation in the Democratic Republic of Congo. Sarah Ndele’s research period and project in the Netherlands is generously funded by the DOEN Foundation.
Framer Framed is supported by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science; Amsterdam Fund for the Arts; Municipality of Amsterdam; and VriendenLoterij Fonds.
Location
Framer Framed
Oranje-Vrijstaatkade 71
1093 KS, Amsterdam
+ Voeg toe aan kalender
Educatie / Koloniale geschiedenis / Kunst en Activisme / Open Call / Performance / Planetary Poetics / Workshop /
Exposities
Expositie: The One-Straw Revolution
Een tentoonstelling samengesteld door iLiana Fokianaki over permacultuur als methodologie
Agenda
Counter-extractivism: Poetics of remedy and transmission
Een bijeenkomst ter afsluiting van cultureel werker Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi’s seminar over politiek en extractivisme bij het Planetary Poetics programma aan het Sandberg Instituut
Planetary Poetics: Ancestral Assemblage
Een middag door kunstenaar Ismal Muntaha en Planetary Poetics
Netwerk
Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi
Cultuurwerker, onderzoeker en schrijver
Sarah Ndele
Beeldend en performancekunstenaar
