Afropolis

‘African cities are characterised by incessantly flexible, mobile and provisional intersections of residents that operate without clearly delineated notions of how the city is to be inhabited and used.’
—AbdouMaliq Simone

Metropolises often evoke images of flashy high-rise buildings, permanent background noise, backed-up cars and people moving quickly in all directions in their masses. New York, Tokyo, London, Sao Paulo. But what about Cairo? Lagos? Nairobi, Kinshasa, Johannesburg?

More than half of the world‘s population lives in cities. Countries of the South in particular are facing fast-paced globalisation, with the highest rates of urbanisation taking place in African cities. Beyond Western models of urban development, African cities are creating their own urban structures, topography and cultures. How do these structures work? How do the residents of these cities organise their daily lives? What discussions are taking place in Africa about the history and future of cities? And how are artists thinking about and representing urban life in Africa?

Lavishly illustrated and meticulously researched, Afropolis is the product of an exhibition developed by the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne, Germany. The book focuses on the Big Five of African cities: Cairo, Lagos, Nairobi, Kinshasa and Johannesburg, and brings together positions of artistic and cultural studies, as well as detailed histories and the specific dynamics of these African cities, in order to expand our understanding of the concept of urbanity and the phenomenon of the City from an African perspective.

This is the first time the book is available in English.

About the Editors
Larissa Förster is a research associate at the Morphomata International Centre for Advanced Studies Genesis, Dynamics and Mediality of Cultural Figurations, University of Cologne. Her doctoral thesis dealt with postcolonial landscapes of memory. She has spent long periods in Namibia and South Africa for her research, which focuses primarily on museum studies, visual and material culture, and the history and cultures of remembrance in southern Africa. She also co-curated the exhibition Namibia – Deutschland: eine geteilte Geschichte: Widerstand, Gewalt, Erinnerung shown in the Rautenstrauch-Joest-Museum in Cologne and the Deutsches Historisches Museum in Berlin (2004/2005).

Christian Hanussek, born in Frankfurt am Main in 1953, is an artist, author and curator currently based in Berlin. He studied art and art theory at the Städelschule in Frankfurt and at ateliers 63 in Haarlem (NL). His art often combines three-dimensional painting with film and video, and his works include a number of permanent installations. Since 2001, he has published a series of articles on art from Africa. In 2005/2006, he curated his project Gleichzeitig in Africa… with exhibitions, seminars and discussions in several German cities.

Kerstin Pinther is a Professor for African Art at the Department of Art History, Freie Universität Berlin. Until early 2010, she was a research fellow at Goethe University Frankfurt/Main. Within her general research fields of photography and visual cultures in West Africa, she is presently focusing on architecture and urbanity in Africa, and on specific issues related to Africa’s contemporary art and cultural production in a global context. Her most recent publication is Wege durch Accra. Stadtbilder, Praxen und Diskurse (2010). Kerstin Pinther curated the exhibition Black Paris. Kunst und Geschichte einer schwarzen Diaspora (2006). She has spent periods of research in Accra, Paris, Lagos, and Cairo.

Published by Jacana Media in association with Goethe-Institut South Africa

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Contents
Kerstin Pinther, Larissa Förster and Christian Hanussek – In Afropolis
Christian Hanussek and Salifou Lindou – Quel est l’endroit idéal?
Edgar Pieterse – Alternative City Futures
AbdouMaliq Simone – People as Infrastructure – Intersecting Fragments in Johannesburg
On Informal Architectures – A Discussion between David Adjaye and Finn Williams
Regina Göckede – The Architect as a Colonial Technocrat of Dependent Modernisation – Ernst May’s Plans for Kampala
Karola Schlegelmilch – Architectures of Particularities – Photographs and a Discussion between Karola Schlegelmilch and Christian Hanussek
Marie-Hélene Gutberlet – Cities and Cinemas – Fragments of an African History of the Urban in Cinema and of Cinema as an Urban Matter

Cairo
The Third Citizen – A Conversation with Van Leo
Viola Shafik – From Alley to Shanty Town – Representing the Nation through Cairo’s Changing City-Scape
Hany Darwish – Born in the Century of Randomness – Where Should One Be Laid to Rest?
Magdy El Shafee – Metro
Kerstin Pinther – Going Places – Image Policies, Artistic Practices, Urban Spaces

ARTISTS / PROJECTS
Wouter Osterholt and Elke Uitentuis
Rana El Nemr
Hala Elkoussy
Lara Baladi
Mandy Gehrt
Ganzeer

Lagos
Akinbode Akinbiyi – Lagos – All Roads
Peter Probst – Lagos – Oshodi – Inspecting an Urban Icon
Centre for Contemporary Art, Lagos – A Discussion between Bisi Silva and Kerstin Pinther
Denis Ekpo Culture and Modernity Since FESTAC ’77
Matthias Krings – With Spear in the City – The Adventure of Modernity in the Photo Novels of the 1960s

ARTISTS / PROJECTS
Daniel Kötter and Constanze Fischbeck
Kainebi Osahenye
Emeka Ogboh
Uche Okpa-Iroha
Olakunle Tejuoso and Weyinmi Atigbi
Emeka Udemba

Nairobi
Deyssi Rodriguez-Torres – Public Action and Privatisation of Land in Nairobi, Kenya – The Example of Mathare 4A Slum Upgrading Project
Mbugua wa Mungai – Nairobi Matatu as Social-Cultural Matrix
Tom Odhiambo – Sketches of Postcolonial Kenyan Literature – Cultural Anthropology or Creative Fiction?
Manuel Herz – Somali Refugees in Eastleigh, Nairobi

ARTISTS / PROJECTS
Masai Mbili
Slum-TV
Sam Hopkins
X-Limits Design
Laura Horelli
ETH Studio Basel

Kinshasa
Charles Didier Gondola – Tropical Cowboys – Western Movies and the Making of Kinshasa’s Bills
Gary Stewart – Congo Music
Dominique Malaquais – Rumble in Kinshasa
Filip De Boeck – Death Matters – Intimacy, Violence, and the Production of Social Knowledge by Urban Youth in the Democratic Republic of Congo

ARTISTS / PROJECTS
SADI
Pume Bylex
Méga Mingiedi
Cédrick Nzolo
Mowoso
Department of Architecture and Urban Planning Ghent University

Johannesburg
Noor Nieftagodien – The Spatial Politics of the Past and the Present – A Brief History of Alexandra
Thomas G. Kirsch –  The Technicians’ Rebellion – Electricity and the Right to the City
Sarah Nuttall – Stylizing the Self
Leora Farber and Anthea Buys – The Underground, the Surface and the Edges – A Hauntology of Johannesburg

ARTISTS / PROJECTS
Kgafela oa Magogodi and Jyoti Mistry
Sam Nhlengethwa
TJ Lemon
Ismail Farouk
Minnette Vári
Naomi Roux and Hannah le Roux
Deadheat
Sabelo Mlangeni

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