ajabu ajabu audio-visual house @ kimweri
maangamizi & the art of return
re:sisterrr x mama mishe *
apostles of cinema
hadithi hadithi
picha la leo
semi za picha *
kuna mende kwenye mashine
cherish
tuchoree mto
manifested belonging *
Tuchoree Mto / Draw the River For Us is a creative research project initiated by Ajabu Ajabu in dialogue with inquiries into the language accrued by the reality and subsequent retelling of Tanzania’s radical past. The exploration will aim to document, and respond, to the ways in which words, terms and concepts of the Ujamaa era endure as social guides and principles, or, in the words of scholar Marie-Aude Fouéré, how such language is selected, rearranged and combined with other moral reservoirs such as the language of religion or the language of democracy. The project is both named after this positioning of Ujamaa, as a source of moral sustenance but also the use of rivers or bodies of water to provide orientation. It is a direct reference to the words offered by elders retracing former landscapes in Youjin B. Chung’s Sweet Deal, Bitter Landscapes: Gender Politics and Liminality in Tanzania's New Enclosures: “Kwanza, chora mto!” (First, draw the river).
The programme is part of SAVVY Contemporary’s UNRAVELING THE (UNDER-)DEVELOPMENT COMPLEX which celebrates Walter Rodney’s How Europe Underdeveloped Africa fifty years after its publication. It has also involved the digitization of the archive of the USARF archive --- rare issues of Cheche, Majimaji, and related editorial materials from the University Students’ African Revolutionary Front (USARF), preserved in the private collection of Professor Karim Hirji.
Visit the USARF ARCHIVE !