EP12: "We are workers of the Spirit". Nkata with Koyo Kouoh
10/19/22 • 102 min
The 12th episode of Nkata Podcast: Art & Processes features a conversation with Koyo Kouoh.
Koyo Kouoh is a Cameroonian-born curator. She is a leading figure in the Contemporary art world. More specifically, she is one of the pioneers who helped shape and articulate contemporary art practices from the African continent and beyond. Her work is rooted in community and institution-building through collaborations. She is the founder of RAW MATERIAL COMPANY, an art space in Dakar that promotes critical thinking and knowledge production through artistic activities. She is currently the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Her work spans geography in a tentacular manner and no given order. So, suppose one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century is the limitations that come with mapping and shaping of the borders of the world. In that case, she is one of those remapping and tangibly affecting culture through her movement and way of being in the world.
The podcast conversation starts with Koyo recounting her earlier days. Then, prompted by Emeka Okereke, she dwells extensively on the experiences that propelled her towards her vocation as a curator.
She speaks of her encounter with Toni Morrison's Beloved, the birth of her son; her work as the editor of the German version of Magaret Busby's Daughters of Africa (1992), and meeting of the late avant-garde Senegalese artist Issa Samb. These encounters – layered unto her upbringing (having been born, raised and "bathed in the care of extra-ordinary women") in Cameroun before moving, with her mother, to France and Switzerland at the age of 13 – served as the earliest compass in a world and discipline that she would eventually help forge.
Yet, throughout the conversation, Koyo reiterates the half-truth of merely understanding her work simply as a curator.
"This is not a job. We are workers of the spirit".
The conversation meanders through myriad recollections of Koyo Kouoh's trajectory while elaborating on how they feed into her professional practice.
"I believe in Professional Genealogy".
Faithfully keeping steps with her pace of thoughtful word choices, the conversation makes a running thread from Koyo's dedication to her relationships with artists and young professionals and how that has shaped her notion of institution building.
Koyo's words are a beacon, just as they are a backbone, for artists and art practitioners interested in the wealth of hindsight.
If not for the nuggets of wisdom scattered across the length of the episode, let it be for her concluding words when she speaks of her responsibility in managing a 9,500 square metres space as the Director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Arts in Cape Town. It exemplifies the disposition Toni Morrison refers to as "Careful Optimism". In other words, we do this for joy. We do this for hope. We do this for posterity. There is nothing to prove beyond that. Yes, the work is cut out for us. Yet, the possibilities of our agency and subjectivity are humbling as much as they are empowering.
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
The 12th episode of Nkata Podcast: Art & Processes features a conversation with Koyo Kouoh.
Koyo Kouoh is a Cameroonian-born curator. She is a leading figure in the Contemporary art world. More specifically, she is one of the pioneers who helped shape and articulate contemporary art practices from the African continent and beyond. Her work is rooted in community and institution-building through collaborations. She is the founder of RAW MATERIAL COMPANY, an art space in Dakar that promotes critical thinking and knowledge production through artistic activities. She is currently the Executive Director and Chief Curator of Zeitz MOCAA in Cape Town.
Her work spans geography in a tentacular manner and no given order. So, suppose one of the biggest challenges of the 21st century is the limitations that come with mapping and shaping of the borders of the world. In that case, she is one of those remapping and tangibly affecting culture through her movement and way of being in the world.
The podcast conversation starts with Koyo recounting her earlier days. Then, prompted by Emeka Okereke, she dwells extensively on the experiences that propelled her towards her vocation as a curator.
She speaks of her encounter with Toni Morrison's Beloved, the birth of her son; her work as the editor of the German version of Magaret Busby's Daughters of Africa (1992), and meeting of the late avant-garde Senegalese artist Issa Samb. These encounters – layered unto her upbringing (having been born, raised and "bathed in the care of extra-ordinary women") in Cameroun before moving, with her mother, to France and Switzerland at the age of 13 – served as the earliest compass in a world and discipline that she would eventually help forge.
Yet, throughout the conversation, Koyo reiterates the half-truth of merely understanding her work simply as a curator.
"This is not a job. We are workers of the spirit".
The conversation meanders through myriad recollections of Koyo Kouoh's trajectory while elaborating on how they feed into her professional practice.
"I believe in Professional Genealogy".
Faithfully keeping steps with her pace of thoughtful word choices, the conversation makes a running thread from Koyo's dedication to her relationships with artists and young professionals and how that has shaped her notion of institution building.
Koyo's words are a beacon, just as they are a backbone, for artists and art practitioners interested in the wealth of hindsight.
If not for the nuggets of wisdom scattered across the length of the episode, let it be for her concluding words when she speaks of her responsibility in managing a 9,500 square metres space as the Director of Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Arts in Cape Town. It exemplifies the disposition Toni Morrison refers to as "Careful Optimism". In other words, we do this for joy. We do this for hope. We do this for posterity. There is nothing to prove beyond that. Yes, the work is cut out for us. Yet, the possibilities of our agency and subjectivity are humbling as much as they are empowering.
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
Previous Episode
EP11: "We were brought up to strive for Eloquence". Nkata with Olu Oguibe
Olu Oguibe (b.1964, Aba) is a Nigerian artist and academic living and working in the United States of America. He is one of the foremost scholars of his generation whose work constitutes a pillar of what we now know as Contemporary African art and post-colonial studies. Since 1988, he has saddled a rigorous and prolific artistic practice as a visual artist, writer, curator, professor and art historian. Put succinctly, a credible account of the history and trajectory of Post-colonial/Contemporary art from Africa and the Diaspora is unimaginable without referencing the work of Olu Oguibe.
In conversation with Emeka Okereke for the 12th Episode of Nkata: Art & Processes, Oguibe relives his childhood days growing up in the East of Nigeria. He credits his artistic inclinations to the peculiarity of his childhood upbringing and the circumstances into which he was born. Like James Baldwin or Fela Kuti, Oguibe was born a preacher's son. In the same vein, his birth preceded, by just three years, one of the most defining wars of independence struggles in the 20th century: The Nigeria-Biafra war of 1967 - 1970.
The two hours long conversation takes, as a marker, three poems from the book, "I am Bound To This Land By Blood" – an anthology of poems by Oguibe, written over 25 years. This anthology could easily be considered a sojourner's handbook. To say the least, it lays bare some of the thoughts and emotions underpinning the condition of Exile. It allows us a glimpse into visceral yet convoluted experiences of Patriotism, Love, Conscience, Self and Home(lessness).
The poems set the premise for delving into anecdotes and recollections upon which Oguibe's lifelong preoccupation threads.
He comes full circle when he insists that, all along, his has been "a search for eloquence". However, he anticipates a misreading here by grounding this notion of eloquence in the Igbo cosmology and artistic aesthetics as embodied in the works of Obiora Udechukwu and Chinua Achebe.
The conversation is riddled with references to pioneers who, working in the 20th century, paved the way for the 21st. Each name referenced is a door of history opening out to divergent trajectories. We encourage the listeners of this podcast to further research the practices of all those referenced. The tapestry of history is rich and multilayered!
The podcast is marked with timestamps to help the listener navigate the conversation.
0:00 – Early days, Family home, being Biafran and Nigerian.
10:15 – I am bound to this land by blood. The prophetic vision.
36: 40 – Conscience as a sojourner's totem
49:50 – Do Not Forget where you come from/ new Diaspora.
59:00 – The disposition of those who came before us.
90:30 – In Search of eloquence from earlier to recent body of work.
97:20 – Love, Self-love, The Road, Home(lessness).
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
Next Episode
Ep13: "When I use the term Afropolitanism, it refers to the "becoming planetary" of our predicament." Nkata with Achille Mbembe.
Achille Mbembe is no doubt one of the most influential philosophers of the 21st century. Born in Cameroun in 1957, the year that ushered in a ricochet of the independence of African nations – also known as the year of Kwame Nkrumah – in many ways, his work and disposition could be summarised as an embodiment of the spirit of the future. In this conversation moderated by Emeka Okereke for the 13th episode of Nkata Podcast, Art and Processes, Mbembe generously opens up personal spaces to offer intimate knowledge through which the intentions behind his work can be grasped.
Starting with key moments that marked his childhood, he weaves strands of trajectories together while paying tribute to the two people that mattered most in his life: his parents. He speaks of his mother as the one who taught him what joy is all about such that his life's work becomes an ongoing attempt to transform joy into hope.
The passing of his father was the most remarkable moment for him. It was also the moment he became, in all sense of the world, a person born into a "planetary world".
Throughout the conversation, his voice is measured, calm, and thoughtful, yet grounded in the conviction of its cadence. He expands on Afropolitanism, a concept which he helped to coin:
"When I use the term Afropolitanism, it refers to the "becoming planetary" of our predicament."
Most remarkably, the conversation incites the listener to contemplate a world whose cartography is in contestation without evading the indispensable question: what will become of our future in such a world whereby the rate at which we encounter each other is intensified? Mbembe offers a few pointers:
"The question becomes: What are the lines of flight that allow for a modicum of respiration – that allow for the disruption of the logic of suffocation?"
"We live in a state of interminable predicament. We have to learn to live with it in a way that is not sterile – that allows an opening to keep nurturing, at the very least, the spirit of resistance. We have to keep open the possibility of a horizon".
Although not directly, he invites the listener to re-read and re-understand the works of such influential thinkers as Frantz Fanon, Edouard Glissant and Toni Morrison for how they elucidate our times and serve as beacons for the future.
This conversation adds yet another layer of lucidity to thoughts, ideas, and propositions expounded in such seminal works as "The Critic of Black Reason", "Necropolitics", and "Out of The Dark Night" for which Mbembe is deservedly known.
Who would benefit from listening to this conversation? Anyone who is genuinely committed and, by extension, tangibly hopeful about the future of our planet.
Runtime: 73 mins.
Photo Credit: Herby Sachs
Production: E.O Multimedia LTD.
Conceptualisation: Atelier E.K Okereke
Host: Emeka Okereke
Guest: Achille Mbembe
Hi, amazing listeners! Emeka Okereke here. I am the founder and host of this show. If you’ve enjoyed the stories, insights, and creativity we bring to this podcast series, I invite you to join my Patreon community at patreon.com/EmekaOkereke. 🎉
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