Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson (Lo-Def Film Factory) are part of the What Stays—Archiving Care Residency programme in collaboration with the JUNGE AKADEMIE of Akademie der Künste, Berlin and the Goethe-Institut Slovakia. The Subterranean Imprint Archive is a project by Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson (Lo-Def Film Factory) in collaboration with Joe-Yves Salankang Sa-Ngo. It is an ongoing research project that traces the legacy of extractive technologies in Central and Southern Africa.
The starting point of this inquiry is in the underground of the Shinkolobwe mine in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, where the uranium used in the Manhattan Project to create the atom bomb was extracted. This work seeks to layer narratives that are usually kept distinct and to visualize these historical and technological entanglements.
During the residency, a series of diagrams were created to visualise key thematic elements from the project. These diagrams are housed in an online project archive also developed during the residency. The archive contains text, sound, video and collage. A pair of newly-created 360° maps seek to manipulate Google’s Streetview technology, asking if we can dislocate, re-map, complicate, and exploit existing models to deepen and disrupt the discourse on technopolitics in Africa and abroad.
jury
Oulimata Gueye, Clara Herrmann, Markus Huber, Nora O Murchú, Helen Pritchard
credits
transmediale festival in cooperation with the JUNGE AKADEMIE of Akademie der Künste, Berlin, and the Goethe-Institut Slovakia
