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  • Reaching Sideways, Writing Our WaysThe Orientation of the Arts of Africa Discourse
  • Ruth Simbao (bio), William B. Miko (bio), Eyitayo Tolulope Ijisakin (bio), Romuald Tchibozo (bio), Masimba Hwati (bio), Kristin NG-Yang (bio), Patrick Mudekereza (bio), Aidah Nalubowa (bio), Genevieve Hyacinthe (bio), Lee-Roy Jason (bio), Eman Abdou (bio), Rehema Chachage (bio), Amanda Tumusiime (bio), Suzana Sousa (bio), and Fadzai Muchemwa (bio)

How can I dialogue if I always project ignorance onto others and never perceive my own? How can I dialogue if I regard myself as a case apart from others—mere “its” in whom I cannot recognize other “I”s? How can I dialogue if I consider myself a member of the in-group of pure men, the owners of truth and knowledge, for whom all non-members are “these people” or “the great unwashed”? How can I dialogue if I start from the premise that naming the world is the task of an elite …? How can I dialogue if I am closed to—and even offended by—the contribution of others? How can I dialogue if I am afraid of being displaced, the mere possibility causing me torment and weakness? … At the point of encounter there are neither utter ignoramuses nor perfect sages; there are only people who are attempting, together, to learn more than they now know

(Freire 2005:90).

DIALOGUE AND ORIENTATION

I prefer to listen closely to those voices which seem to be speaking from a place of difference and are met with indifference

(Rehema Chachage, 2014).1
Ruth Simbao:

In Rehema Chachage’s video installation, Kwa Baba Rithi Undugu (2010), sculptural objects representing old-fashioned transistor radios are mounted on the wall, side by side (Fig. 1). Embedded in each radio is a small video screen, which reveals a figure who stands in one place while the vertical line of the radio tuner crosses her body in search of the desired frequency (Figs. 2–3). A man’s voice wafts in and out as it is periodically interrupted by unsolicited noise, revealing the [End Page 10] difficulty of relating to others when sound is interrupted or there is an absence of voice. Voice, writes Chachage, is a “prerequisite for interlocution and the construction of discourse.”2 This work engages with the assertion that to “live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree …” and to do so full heartedly with your “eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit … whole body and deeds” (Bakhtin 1984:293).3


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1.

Rehema Chachage

Kwa Baba Rithi Undugu (2010)

Mixed media installation: video (loop) and sculpture, 40 cm × 35 cm × 15 cm

Photo: courtesy of the artist


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2–3.

Rehema Chachage. Kwa Baba Rithi Undugu (2010), detail

Photo: courtesy of the artist

Rehema Chachage, a Dar es Salaam-based artist who works with video, installation, and performance, explains that her work is predominantly determined by her situatedness. Her early work draws from her time spent as a student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and she describes experiencing this situation as a “‘cultural foreigner’ and a non-South African, black female student in a predominantly white middle class … institution.” At this time, she says, her work was produced from “the point of view of a stranger, the outsider, the other, alien and often voiceless.”4

Chachage’s concern with dialogue and voice in Kwa Baba Rithi Undungu serves as an effective inroad into a multivocal conversation in the context of a scholarly journal, for “Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (Freire 2005:92–93). Dialogue, writes [End Page 11] Paolo Freire (2005:88–91), is about horizontal relationships; it is an existential necessity and an act of creation rather than an instrument of domination of one person over another. When one listens to a radio, voices can be tuned out selectively. Opinions exist as waves out there, but statements can be blocked with the turn of a dial. At times there is a crackle—a disruption of signal or an interference caused by the receiver. If one...

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