From 11-13 April 2019, the Pan African Space Station, an initiative of the Cape Town-based collective, Chimurenga will land at Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA) as part of an exhibition entitled Shapes of Knowledge. PASS in Melbourne will be centred around the Australasian region’s participation (through ‘Black Australia’ and Papua New Guinea) in The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) which took place in Lagos, Nigeria in 1977.

For Shapes of Knowledge members of Chimurenga’s Pan African Space Station (PASS) will travel to Melbourne to host a three-day pop-up broadcasting studio in the gallery. Working with members from Melbourne’s diverse African communities and in collaboration with local cultural producers, thinkers, artists, activists based in the city, such as The Social Studio, PASS at MUMA will draw together a myriad of voices from across the local African diaspora. Using their studio as a capsule for further entanglement, and the history of Australia’s participation in The Second World Black and African Festival of Arts and Culture (FESTAC) as a lens through which to locate and imagine new conversations around black internationalism today, they hope to assemble historical fragments of the region’s interaction with the African continent as means to acknowledge its relevance today.

PASS will function as a radio studio, a meeting place and an exhibition space to investigate this query through visual content, as well as conversations and performances with activists and artists working in the city.

Founded by Chimurenga in collaboration with musician and composer Neo Muyanga in 2008, the Pan African Space Station (PASS) is a periodic, pop-up live radio studio; a performance and exhibition space; a research platform and living archive, as well as an ongoing, internet based radio station.

PROGRAMME//

Sista Zai Zanda will present a daily show on PASS which will explore different perspectives on community making in Australia for Africans, in collaboration with Naomi Velaphi, Ziimusic and N’fa Jones. Rapper and vocalist Lady Lash will perform live in studio. Pioneering Aboriginal reggae artist Bart Willoughby will perform live in studio. Composer, singer, trumpeter Olugbade Okunade will perform live in studio, featuring musician and producer Enoch Ogiemwanre. Multidisciplinary artist Torika Bolatagici will install a selection of publications in the studio, as part of her ongoing library project The Community Reading Room. Stani Goma will present a daily show on PASS, “Music of the Black Struggle in Australia”, in collaboration with Jason Tamiru and Gary Murray.

PASS will broadcast live from MUMA:

▪Thursday 11 and Friday 12 April from 15:00-20:00 (AEST)

▪Saturday 13 April from 12:00 – 17:00 (AEST)

Shapes of Knowledge brings together eight projects from artists, collectives and organisations from across the globe, reflecting on how we live, how we learn, and the unique ability of art to animate our sensory experiences and critical faculties. The first exhibition of its kind in Australia, Shapes of Knowledge opened at MUMA Saturday 9 February ending Saturday 13 April 2019 and has been curated by MUMA’s Senior Curator, Hannah Mathews. The exhibition reflects on the different platforms, spaces and timeframes in which knowledge is produced and shared. These projects include: A Centre for Everything (AU), Asia Art Archive (HK), Chimurenga (SA), Lucas Ihlein (AU), Annette Krauss and the shifting team at Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons (NLD), Alex Martinis Roe (AU/DE), Kym Maxwell (AU) and The Mulka Project (AU). The eight projects in Shapes of Knowledge range from an ice cream machine making coal-flavoured treats, live radio broadcasts, a cinema of Indigenous culture, test sites for future greening technology, a toolkit for feminist action, and performance lectures.Each project will be activated at various times throughout the exhibition – including bus visits to regenerative farms, morning stretch classes for Monash staff, weekend DIY workshops, a salon of feminist performances, amongst others. The exhibition focuses on the role that artists play in relation to knowledge, taking up notions of research, of the laboratory, of learning and of teaching as its central concerns.

For more information on recents events and exhibitions hosted by Shapes of Knowledge: Monash University Museum of Art (MUMA)