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Future Europe, Visions in Time: Discussion on Europe’s Future & DJ Set, Dec. 16 2016 @ Goethe Institut Auditorium

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Date: December 16, 2016
Venue: Goethe Institut Auditorium
Time: 7 pm
Admission is free.

About

“The best future for Europe is no Europe.” (Vaginal Davis)

Struck by crisis, with racism and islamophobia on the rise and growing tensions between European nation states, Europe’s future and past seem to have lost their direction. In a moment of re-negotiation of history, identity and future there is a backlash into nationalistic nostalgia while new ideas of moving beyond capitalistic neo-colonial national states are amiss.

How can a future Europe, a future European identity look like? A Europe that constitutes itself in acknowledgement of its colonial past and globalised capitalistic present, instead of seeking refuge in overcome ideas?

These are problems and questions that shall be discussed in anticipation of the upcoming exhibition FAVT: Future Africa Visions in Time which will open in early 2017 in Nairobi. Based on the ideas of FAVT, the discussion’s title FEVT – Future Europe Visions in Time provides some fundamental questions in itself: What is Future? Who’s Future? What is Europe? Which visions are there and how did they change over time? Furthermore the exhibition conceptualises future as something linked to the past and was seeking ways how past and future can be re-connected and negotiated – for example through Optimizing, Destabilizing, Healing and Remembering or Intervening. Not focusing merely on Europe but on a Europe in relation to a world shaped by imperialist and racist policies, FEVT shall offer a platform to intervene in narrations by and about Europe as well as to talk about the ghosts of Imperialist Europe that haunt Nairobi, Kenya and the continent until today.

Turning the focus around and looking from Nairobi at Europe, the Goethe-Institut Kenya and the Worlds Loudest Library invite you to an evening of inspiring discussions, backed-up by a DJ-set by DJ Zontor, a bar and of course the usual book swap.

In cooperation with the World’s Loudest Library – WLL.

kilifi-nye-poster

Out of Town NYE Party: Kilifi New Year 2016/17, Dec. 31 2016 – Jan. 2 2017 @ Distant Relatives Eco-lodge & Backpackers – Kilifi

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Date and Time: 31st December 2016 at 16:00 to 2nd January 2017 at 6:00
Venue: Distant Relatives Eco-lodge & Backpackers, Kilifi
Admission Costs: 6000 KSh
Contact Info For Ticket Bookings: 0715660111, kilifinye@gmail.com

About
Kilifi New Year is a radically creative two-day explosion of music and tropical beach culture set on the gorgeous banks of Kilifi Creek. Incredible performers from around East Africa and the world will come together to put on a unique, technicolour show as we celebrate the intersection between African and World electronic music.

With interactive art installations, mind-bending décor, midnight burn after party, miraa juice galore, radical self-expression, laughter, madness, stalls of mind blowing diversity and proportion and too much more, our beach-side playground will be turned into an extraordinary musical exhibition!

Tickets are very limited so book your NOW!

Website: www.kilifinewyear.com

Conversations With My Mother

Out of Town/Performance: Conversations with My Mother, Dec. 16 2016 @ Uganda National Museum – Uganda

Conversations With My Mother
Date: Friday 16th December
Time: 8pm
Venue: Uganda National Museum, Uganda
Fee: UGX 30,000

About “Conversations with My Mother” Performance
This is the story of two women who find forgiveness, truth and possibly love in death. Or is it just one of them.

Fresh off her performance in Queen of Katwe from Walt Disney Pictures, Esteri Tebandeke gets back to the stage in her debut solo performance. Fusing drama, movement and song, Esteri will perform in this storytelling experience, which she co-wrote.

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LAB Launch Party by ART Lab Africa + No Posters Allowed Exhibition by Onyis Martin, Dec. 16-23 2016 @ 523 Riara Road

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Opening: December 16, 2016
Venue: 523 Riara Road
Time: 6-9 pm
Onyis Martin in Conversation (Talking Walls)

No Posters Allowed Exhibition: Until December 23, 2016
Time: 11 am – 6 pm

About
THE LAB will launch its new pop-up space with the solo show exhibition of Onyis Martin, In Conversation (Talking Walls) which will be open to the public from the 17th of December.

Examining identity as an abstract metaphor influenced by consumerism in traditional and contemporary social constructs, the artist questions the methods through which marketing and advertising borrow from traditional gender roles, class and race to then market to an audience increasingly influenced by contemporary values. Appearing weathered by urban environments, some of the walls are covered in paper ads ranging from posters selling global brands to small, local intimate offerings of personal, medical and “voodoo” services. Subliminal messages alongside the phrases “Man Up”, “Security Video Recording”, “No Posters Allowed” portray heightened tensions and changes in society and cultural codes in a fast developing economy.

Informed by his surroundings, Onyis’ paintings transcend their specificity and are representative of shifting contemporary and traditional values witnessed daily in rapidly urbanising spaces.

VIEWING DAYS:
Saturday December 17 to Friday December 23 | 11:00 – 18:00

Afro-Loving x Withdraw Symptoms

Concert: Afro-Loving x Withdraw Symptoms, Dec. 16 2016 @ the Alchemist – Westlands

Afro-Loving x Withdraw Symptoms
Date: December 16, 2016
Venue: the Alchemist Bar, Westlands
Time: 7 pm
Tickets: KES 1,200 at the Gate

About
Kenyan artistes: Prisca Ojwang and Silas Miami are set to rock Nairobi next Friday, 16th December at the Alchemist from 7:00 p.m. Hosted by celebrated media personality and artiste Patricia Kihoro, the event dubbed Afro Loving x Withdrawal Symptoms will be a celebration of African beauty through music, dance, monologues and visual stimulation – a call to all diasporans and local artistes creating dope content.

As the soulful duo share their artistic journey with the audience, they will be joined by Sage, KIU, Awuor Onyango, Jinku and radio personality/DJ G Money.

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Event: Future-Making At The Margins – Social-Ecological Transformation In Rural Africa, Dec. 14 2016 @ BIEA

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Date: December 14, 2016
Venue: BIEA
Time: 11:00 am – 1:00 pm

By Detlef Müller-Mahn, Professor, Department of Geography, University of Bonn, Germany

About
Africa is ‘rising’ and accompanying this process are ambitious new development plans and policies. Kenya´s Vision 2030 and similar long-term programs in neighboring countries are presenting maps of the future that will, if implemented, lead to massive social-ecological transformations of rural areas.

Development blueprints aim to ‘turn history on its head’, enabling previously-ignored dryland regions to become engines of economic growth for the wider benefit of these nations. The process is simultaneously redrawing the map of marginal regions and redrawing the relations between people and environments in order to gain greater control over and make ‘more productive’ use of these environments.

The paper explores the nature and spatial politics of these processes. While on the one hand the processes are having widespread differential impacts, plans are often much less ‘total’ than is imagined, creating space for different possibilities in people-environment relations. At the same time, the implementation of development schemes is full of surprises. Future-making may be understood as a combination of practices of anticipation and imagination, with largely unknown consequences.

Bio
Detlef Müller-Mahn is a professor of development geography at the University of Bonn. His research focuses on the political ecology of land use change, risk and development in East Africa and the Middle East.

His recent projects are dealing with diverse topics, including risk management strategies of pastoralists in Ethiopia; urban governance and water distribution in the city of Khartoum; and adaptation to climate change and how it can be understood as a “travelling idea” that is negotiated at international conferences (the COP 21 in Paris 2015) and local projects (Ethiopia, Kenya).

He is currently preparing a collaborative research center on “Future rural Africa”, which will address the relationship between “future-making” and social-ecological transformation.

http://www.biea.ac.uk/event/future-making-at-the-margins-social-ecological-transformation-in-rural-africa/

Kenya and South Sudan - What Next for the Peace process? | via Photo RVI

Rift Valley Forum Meeting: Kenya and South Sudan – What Next for the Peace Process? Dec. 15 2016 @ RVI Office

Kenya and South Sudan - What Next for the Peace process? | via Photo RVI
Kenya and South Sudan – What Next for the Peace process? | via Photo RVI
Date: December 15, 2016
Venue: RVI Office, Laikipia Road – Kileleshwa
Time: 10 am – 12 pm
Entry: Prior RSVP

About
On 15 December 2016, the Rift Valley Forum will host a panel discussion that will bring together experts from South Sudan, Kenya and the Enough Project to discuss the implications and potential impact of Kenya’s withdrawal from UNMISS, and its continued engagement in the IGAD-led peace process.

Discussants
Priscillah Nyagoa, Amnesty International
Peter Biar Ajak
John Prendergast, Enough Project