On the 23rd and 24th September, CHR’s Aja Marneweck will be collaborating in the Imaginary Futures project on live performances at the Global Periphery Contemporary Imaginaries of Space, Multiple Voices Hybrid Conference at the Leonardo/Olats Observatory of Arts and Techno-Sciences in Paris.

Convened by artist Marcus Neustetter (Johannesburg/Vienna) the Imaginary Futures project brings together an experimental dialogue of creative producers from different disciplines and contexts to look at what our shared peripheral perspective of a space-future might look like.

The experimental, co-produced hybrid performances in Paris will feature Fatou Cissé (Dakar) and Marcus Neustetter (Vienna), Thulisile Binda (Johannesburg), Aja Marneweck (Cape Town), Xolisile Bongwana (Johannesburg), Mine Kleynhans (Bloemfontein), Teddy Mhlambi (Bloemfontein) and Ciara Struwig (Johannesburg).

In the past 5 years the Imaginary Futures projects has responded to empowering new perspectives, responding to shifts caused by the pandemic, and testing new opportunities for co-production across the globe with productions that range form socially engaged planetarium performances and films to participatory virtual experiences.  Invited to present a performance at the Global Periphery 2-day symposium a selection of the Imaginary Futures team from different parts of South Africa engage virtually with each other, with the host artist Marcus Neustetter, and live performer Fatou Cisse in Paris in a performance lecture that provokes abstract dialogue and shares responses to key thematic questions around our relationship to space. The intention is to allow different perspectives, discipline, languages, contexts and resources to become the opportunity for experimental expression and result in two public participatory virtual experiences in the Global Periphery programme.

Global Periphery is a symposium exploring contemporary imaginaries of space through examples of artistic creations and of activities from the space sector with voices from multiple continents and locations. Global Periphery is part of the More-Than-Planet project , an international cooperation project between Stichting Waag Society (NL), lead partner, Zavod Projekt Atol (SI), Ars Electronica (AT), Digital Art International ART2M (FR), Northern Photographic Centre (FI) and Leonardo/Olats (FR).  Global Periphery is part of a conceptual understanding of the planet as a global dynamic system.  As we witness more countries joining the space faring nations, the arrival of private companies in the so-called “New Space”, as major new astronomical instruments have been deployed in South America, Africa and in Space, as we are questioning anew what the Human presence in space should be and our inhabiting our own Planet, it is a perfect time to reconsider space imaginaries.