Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja

I am a PhD (Performance Studies) student in the Centre for Theatre, Dance and Performance Studies as well as at the Initiative of Archive and Public Culture. My background is in contemporary performance practice, writing and public education. My doctoral project is a practice-led research into an African concept of performance called Oudano/Uudhano/Ouvano. I am interested in how this concept which refers to the broad spectrum of performance constitutes as an archival container for trans-historic work. I am also interested in how it mobilizes transgression in contemporary performance and archival praxis. My research process is based on two projects, one being a performance work Dance of the Rubber Tree, a cross-disciplinary critical queer intervention performed in museums, theatre and archives in Germany, Switzerland, Cameroon, South Africa and Namibia. The other project is a curative intervention called Operation Odalate Naiteke which organizes radical learning and culture in Katutura, Windhoek. Both these projects work along various degrees of institutional, embodied and spatial archives. They are interested in movement formation by investing in radical trans-historic work while imagining alternative publics for arts, activism and archives.  

Publications

Mushaandja, N. (2020, forthcoming). Queering the Archive: African Praxis in Performative Writing. Book chapter in Writing Namibia: Coming of Age (eds) Vale, H; Mlambo, N and Krishnamurthy, S.

Mushaandja, N. 2020. Embodiments of Love on the Margins of Windhoek’s Cinematic Landscape  A journal article for Social Dynamics Journal. 

Mushaandja, N. 2020. Towards a Burning Museum. In Handle with Care: Post-colonial Object Matters, N, Siegard and Schramm, K (eds). Iwalewa Books: Bayreuth. 

Mushaandja, N. 2019. Black Boxes and White Cubes as Concentration Camps: Concerning Institutional Violence and Intergenerational Trauma.  In Munguía, J (ed) Libretas Pabellón Eco/Eco Pavilion. Buró-Buró , Mexico.

Benson, K; Mushaandja, N; Gamedze, A. 2019. Radical Histories ii: Ottilie Abrahams Speaks. In Kaleni Kollective (eds.) Owela the Future of Work. Windhoek: Kaleni Kollective. 

Mushaandja, N. 2019. Teacher Don't Teach Me Nonsense, Teach me Owela: A Journal Entry. in Kaleni Kollective (eds.) Owela: The Future of Work. Vol.1 Pg23. Windhoek: Kaleni Kollective.

Mushaandja, N. 2019. Documenting and Representing Legacies of Violence: (De)Coloniality? German Colonial Heritage in Africa- Artistic and Cultural Perspectives. (eds.) Goethe Institute Namibia and Cameroon.  

Mushaandja, N. 2018. When Applied Theatre is no Rehearsal for the Revolution. book chapter in Krishnamurthy, S and Vale, H (eds) Writing Namibia: Literature in Transition. Unam Press: Windhoek.