As part of the Creative Microbiology Research Colab’s (CMRC) Intra-Actions public programme, newly appointed VIAD Research Associate writer, artist, scholar and pleasure activist Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone welcomes her longtime colleague and friend Eric Gyamfi, a Ghanaian photographer experimenting with the hybrid nature of analogue, digital and chemical processes. Together Gyamfi and Johnstone invite us to share in their intimate explorations of ecological chemical processes, Black, queer erotics, interspecies futures and the various ways the more-than-human contaminate, collaborate and infect our being and how we feel through those catalysing processes.

Johnstone and Gyamfi’s conversation will be moderated by VIAD Research Assistant, Dineo Diphofa and is the third iteration of the Intra-actions series of public engagements. Conceived and facilitated by the University of Johannesburg’s newly-established CMRC and inspired by the visionary concepts of theorist Karen Barad, the engagements weave together the fabric of intra-connectedness, where practitioners are not only in dialogue but also reflect on and shape the research process itself. This novel approach fosters a profound understanding of the interplay between creative expression, scientific inquiry, and the intricate complexities of the microbial world beyond traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Ama Josephine Budge Johnstone is an Associate Lecturer at Central Saint Martins (University of the Arts London), an MFA tutor at the Sandberg Institute (Amsterdam), and a Research Associate at VIAD (University of Johannesburg). Her wider intra-disciplinary work thinks through sustainable ecologies of care and more-than-survival for BIPoC women and queer folk in the arts and academia. Ama’s writing was shortlisted for the 2023 Future Worlds Prize, she has had essays, short fiction and art writing published internationally, and her artwork has been exhibited across Europe. Ama is also in the final stages of her PhD at Birkbeck University of London; is a curatorial fellow with Frame Contemporary Art Finland (Helsinki) and EVA International (Limerick); a participant of the first Postnatural Independent Programme (Madrid); and was the 2020/21 Keith Haring Fellow in Art and Activism with Bard College (New York). Ama’s work has been translated into Twi, French (forthcoming), German and Swedish.

Eric Gyamfi (b. 1990, Ghana) is a photographer living and working in Ghana. He is interested in the medium and forms of the photographic, often experimenting with the hybrid nature of analogue, digital and chemical processes. Gyamfi holds a B.A in Information studies and with Economics from the University of Ghana (2010 to 2014), and is currently pursuing an MFA at the Department of painting and sculpture, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology in Ghana (2018 – ). He is also a fellow at the Photographers’ Master Class (Khartoum, Sudan 2016; Nairobi, Kenya 2017; Johannesburg, South Africa 2018). Gyamfi was a participant of the Nuku Studio Photography Workshops (2016) and World Press Photo West African Master Class (2017), both in Accra. He has shown work on Ecologies and Politics of the Living (Vienna Biennale 2021), The 11th and 12th Bamako encounters (2017/2019) and Fixing Shadows – Julius and I (Autograph, London, 2023) amongst many other exhibitions. 

For more information, visit www.viad.co.za or contact:
Dineo Diphofa: dineod@uj.ac.za / call 011 559 1442

Zoom meeting ID: 871 9151 5797
Passcode: 08033
Meeting Link: https://us06web.zoom.us/j/87191515797?pwd=aMvpOzz47hpff80aZJcVNZSZYM9sI8.1

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