Fever When You Hold Me Tight

  

Rosana Sancin is an architect at Adjaye Associates.

Her practice is deeply rooted in relation, marronage, non-Western epistemologies, liberation and healing.

THIRD TEXT AFRICA: Collectivities

  

 

Alanna Lockward with Rosana Sancin

We Are Here Because You Were There: 

https://asai.co.za/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/We-are-here-because-you-were-there-Afropean-identity-as-decoloniality.pdf

Double Consciousness, Radical Sharing and Slave Revolutions

 

 

Performative lecture by Rosana Sancin at Festival Internacional d'Art Performance in Martinique:

https://beta-omk.manioc.org/s/manioc/item/13529

Deep Archive: Recent Exhibitions, Performances, Publications, Lectures, Research, etc.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rosana Sancin was featured in Third Text Africa's issue on Collectivities, Festival International d'Art Performance in Martinique, held discussions around Black Europe Body Politics event ''Call & Response'', shortlisted by Ghetto biennale in Haiti, and got invitations by Art Institute and Wilfredo Lam Arts Center in Havana, and Humboldt University in Berlin amongst others.

2017 in Wrap

                                                       Watch "Black Code/Code Noir" by Louis Henderson hERE

- Theatre of the Oppressed workshop on the site of former Yugoslavian army barracks where we used to hang out as teens after they were occupied by activists

- Coco Fusco's performance at KW (Berlin) followed by a dinner with her and Tanja Ostojic. Words May Not Be Found

- Hanging out with decolonialists in Berlin + Jeannette Ehler's book Say It Loud!

- Ingrid Mwangi's performance at Savvy (Berlin). Outwordly

- How does the world breathe now? Screening of a film Eyes of Stone by Nilita Vachani (hosted by Chus Martinez and recommended by Tejal Shah) at Savvy (Berlin). Posessed by spirits

- Berries party: A hip-hop night for queers by Stitch & Tchuani + guests

- Got a lot of support from migrant communities who have also been feedin' me and keepin' me safe: TXS! Korea, Vietnam, Tibet, India, Mexico, Lebanon, Syria, Turkey, Sudan, etc.

- Participated in Performance Festival in Martinique. It resembled a long journey

- Exhibition by some Lebanese artist at Centre Pompidou (Paris). Photos that deal with recent history of invasions looked like miniatures. Unfortunately I can't remember his name

- Didn't arrive on time for the opening of La Biennale (to see the Diaspora Pavillion and Ayrson Heraclito's Sacudimento)

- 4 attempts to get the visa to go to Havana for a residency and session with director of Wilfredo Lam art centre, Dannys Montes de Oca

- Invitation by ifa gallery (Berlin) which has a year-long programme on colonial legacies

- Patricia Kaersenhout's sound recording on black female rebels as part of her project Guess Who's Coming to Dinner, Too?

- Jayan Cherian (NYC/India) sent me his new feature film KaBody Scapes

- I wish I could see Grada Kilomba's exhibition in Lx entitled The Most Beautiful Language

 

Work Samples

Decolonial Love, Antropofagia, and the 'Sound of Kuduro' (in making) : 

Performative lecture where I aim to dismantle the ''art plantations of modernity'' and make visible the entanglements and continuities of colonialism in the present.

Following Junot Diaz I ask the questions such as: How can we overcome the horrible legacy of slavery and find decolonial love? Can two broken by coloniality of power selves really love each other?

The Antropophagic Banquet (2016) : 

The Antropophagic Banquet is a screening and discussion with decolonial agenda that presents ten artistic positions in format of short videos and a series of drawings flying-in from Buenos Aires. 

It is triggered by ´antropofagia´ and imagined as a platform for future collabs. 

 

Antropofagia means colonialism and not cannibalism. The event sets to trace its presence around the globe. Since coloniality permeates life in its entirety, The Antropophagic Banquet is an offering for the public to think and act upon its present-day forms such as racism, exploitation and disposession through ´eating and digestion´of artworks by transnational artists. As someone said before: "Coloniality is not over. It is all over."

 

#Dame los Poderes (upcoming) :

DlP activates the potential of Haitian revolution in order to dismantle the continuities of colonialism in the present such as racialization,exploitation and disposession and redefine current migration waves by positioning them in relation to slave trade and future uprisings.

Slave revolution started as a voodoo ceremony and took the masters by surprise- Haiti was the most prosperous colony in the world and Christianity the only valuable set of beliefs therefore any kind of resistance was unthinkable. This powerful moment in history, when slaves organized themselves inside the plantations to fight against oppression and capitalist enterprise on their own terms, radically shifted the way things were supposed to be. How can we reenact it in the present- in the art context and beyond? 

                                                                     

Border Dwellers (upcoming) :

Border Dwellers is a platform on art and knowledge influenced by pan-Africanism, Negritude and Afro-Futurism done in collab with artists, theorists, and activists (many of them migrants, refugees and exiles). It has Haitian slave uprising as a backdrop and connects to current struggles around the world like the movement #Black Lives Matter. 

Shape-shifting in nature, Border Dwellers will appear along the route as online platform mixing theory, poetry and creative stuff, and culminate in art event. Various artistic and theoretical positions will be presented together, creating an open, relational and safe space for action, open to proposals on new ways of socio-political organization inspired by indigenous knowledges, often developed as a response to oppression and colonialism and practiced for centuries. 

I Salt and Pepper My Mango (upcoming) :

Dear Tejal,

I wish to spend some time at Balcao experimenting on a new project that doesn't have shape yet. I'd like to depart from my life-experience, having to reincarnate various times as a queer person, constantly migrating between worlds, and a recent passing away of a friend and lover. She, whose gender wasn't easy to grasp, and whose whole life was a sharp political statement of resistance, reminds on Escrava Anastacia and other powerful women on their way to liberation.

I'd love to spend a month playing, researching, and collaborating with the community, as well as interacting with garden plants and insects around the issues of life, vitality, vibrations, co-existence, and other possible worlds. I think Goa would be a perfect setting for that. It may sound strange, but I feel like I've been there before.

Let me know if this would be possible.

All the best,

Rosana

research images: 
fka twigs + forensic architecture

                                                                            

                                                                  
                                      

 
Zami (upcoming): 

Zami is a Carriacou word meaning women who work together as friends and lovers. It is also a live event and platform on decolonial love that abruptly mixes art and theory to discuss the legacy of  ''poet, feminist, lesbian, mother and warrior'' Audre Lorde and black feminism in relation to liberation and healing. Throughout this journey, Zami stumbles upon triangular slave trade, marroon settings, art plantations, and slave revolutions.

image: ruby amanze 

                                                                 

 

One World in Relation (2013-15) :

A research, exhibition and publishing project with decolonial agenda digging on issues such as tropicality, colonialism and its resonancies, (unbearable) labor conditions and (forced) migrations.

image: Pascal Martine Thayou

                                                       


Maison Tropicale (2014) : 

Proposal for art space and collaborative platform on Sao Vicente island in Cape Verd, triggered by a theft of African modernist house by Western art collector.

image: Annabel Gueredrat&Henri Tauliaut

                                              



Kusmi Tea Sweet Love (unrealized) :
 
In the midst of a black market, a town in town, a buissness spot with unlimited traffic, where micro economy based on exchange of all kind of goods except artworks, is performed daily by immigrants from India, Pakistan, China and Guiné Bissau. Thieves? Merchants? Speculators? In the centre of Lisbon a small narrow street, where the red letters on ringbells are exclusively in chinese. Some of the apartments, however difficult to say which, host illegal chinese restaurants that differ little from common homes in order to hide their activity. The owners/cooks don't speak neither portuguese nor english and the clients choose from untranslated menus. Located on the frontier with moorish and red light district, the zone is also known for delicious indian sweets of many colours.

This project is archived on E-flux