Seminar 2: Practicing Ubuntu for Collective Flourishing
Date & time: Thursday 3 April, 5-7pm
Guest speaker: Wakanyi Hoffman | ASCA Respondent: John Taukave | Location: AHK Culture Club, Marineterrein, Amsterdam
Imagine a world without enough clean drinking water, a world where fresh water rivers and lakes have dried up, leaving parched lands in their wake and life forms struggling, their vitality stifled. Such a world mirrors a society without Ubuntu - void of the profound inner connection that binds humanity. In this talk, Practicing Ubuntu for Collective Flourishing, I draw upon the African ancestral intelligence of Ubuntu to explore the intertwined relationship between people, land, and water. I invite you to journey through the undercurrents of Ubuntu - a philosophy that asserts, “I am because of who we all are” - and its application to modern challenges like AI innovation and its threat to fresh water access.
Wakanyi Hoffman is a storyteller, author, keynote speaker specialized in Ubuntu philosophy, a scholar of indigenous knowledge, and narrative weaver of wisdom in AI. Wakanyi is the leader of the African folktales project. She is currently an academic fellow at The New Institute in Hamburg as part of the programme on ‘Conceptions of Human Flourishing'.
Climate Imaginaries
March - June 2025 | A seminar series of four, monthly seminars at ASCA (Amsterdam School for Cultural Analysis) that run in parallel with the artistic research studios of Agat Sharma and Dorothy Blokland hosted at the Academy of Theatre and Dance, as part of the AHK Artist in Residence programme. The seminars fall within the scope of Laura Cull Ó Maoilearca’s Leerstoel in Performance Philosophy: aiming to strengthen the connections and opportunities for dialogue between the artist-researchers at AHK and researchers at UvA (University of Amsterdam).
Two seminars co-curated with Agat Sharma will address themes and questions emerging from his long term research about the history of cotton: conducting theatrical experiments exploring cotton's pre-colonial legacy, colonial extractivism and the ongoing agrarian crisis in India.
Two seminars co-curated with Dorothy Blokland will invite participants to consider the relationship between oceanic climate change and colonialism with a focus on the relationship between the Netherlands and Suriname. They will also explore the foundation of her practice in Ubuntu philosophy and how approaches to artistic and participatory research processes can embody values of interdependence and commonality across difference.
The programme as a whole will also investigate the shared concerns of both studios with the question of the nature and role of imagination in shaping less extractive, more regenerative futures in relation to bodies, lands and waters.
The proposed programme relates to topics of past ASCA seminars - such as the What is Landscape? series - and to research groups such as Mikki Stelder’s Oceanic Imaginaries, Oceanic Solidarities. Connection will be made to these past and ongoing activities by inviting ASCA colleagues to play a role (such as moderator or respondent) in the proposed seminars.
