#BLACKBOX

#Blackbox is a project of critical curiosity about the knowledges circulating in African and Afrodiasporic digital arts practice. The project asks the core question: What realms of knowing are black peoples in digital arts involved in as they interface with racialised algorithms while trying to encrypt new worlds through artistic play? Named after curator Okwui Enwezor's postcolonial manifesto 'The Black Box' (2022), written for Documenta 11, the #Blackbox is space and a frame for wondering into the digital terrain of black artists along with artists who are indigenous to Africa in various ways.

#Blackbox considers ways in which African and Afrodiasporic artists are exceeding the boundaries of identity and creating spaces for play, rubbing up on different selves, reinvigorating notions of culture, refusing oppositional ways of being and knowing, making new value-systems, building digital spatial practices that leak into reality, contesting narratives of 'development', performing creative thinking, challenging notions of taste, and recomposing media within the queer mysteries of technological processes. Conceptually #Blackbox considers how BlacknessIsBuffering in the fourth industrial revolution of digital technologies.

Puleng Mongale reflects on the evolution of her self-taught practice and the exploration of themes related to spirituality, belonging, identity, and womanhood. Thembeka Sincuba discusses how algorithms pose a challenge to democracy and looks at how Natalie Paneng’s Installation ‘Ke Thlogo’ feels like home. Nondumiso Lwazi Msimanga introduces the #Blackbox project through Lunga Ntila’s faceless performances in photographic digital collage.