INVITATION – FANTASTIC WEDNESDAY – Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani

Notes on a stone

Listening, Screenings, Movements, and Excerpts

A stone becomes a metaphor
A stone becomes priceless and unsellable
A stone becomes a hole
A stone looks at its reflection and sees an emptiness 
A stone looks for a name
A stone becomes a void with an open mouth 
A stone is a sleeping volcano
A stone becomes a study of ignorance
A stone is vain and hollow
A stone is agitated and trembling
A stone calls for home and is met with silence
A stone needs a translator 
A stone breaks its back climbing a mountain
A stone is told to dance
A stone refuses
A stone wants to be a stone

A stone is a stone

A stone
Is just
A stone

Rehema Chachage and Valerie Asiimwe Amani form a loose collective called SISINI (WE ARE). Their individual and (sometimes) collaborative practices extend across artistic, research, and writing disciplines with a focus on the mystical and sociological unearthing of history and the body (how the body remembers), delving into what it means to be a multicultural and multidimensional being using science and philosophies rooted in African sensibility. Chachage’s practice does so by employing family histories, alternative ways of knowing, and other methodologies which are both embodied and instinctual to not only navigate, but also refigure knowledge systems, historical gaps, and silences. Amani’s practice on the other hand, explores rituals that ‘othered bodies’ have employed, and are employing to survive death, mental illness, and discrimination, and how joy can persist through and despite a history of abrasion; as well as what becomes when joy has no space to persist.

We are very much looking forward to welcoming you all.