Photo credit:  Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum & Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi, Disrupters: This is Disrupter X, courtesy of the artists. 

The Institute for Creative Arts (ICA) launches its 2019 Great Texts/Big Questions lecture series next week, with a line-up that features acclaimed and award-winning writers, artists, academics and filmmakers.

Past Great Texts lectures have dealt with an array of texts and themes, including the Truth and Reconciliation Commission and the impact, legacy and contemporary meaning of the late Winnie Madikizela-Mandela. The theme underpinning the upcoming series is drawn in part from Kodwo Eshun’s essay, ‘Further Considerations on Afrofuturism,’ in which he writes that ‘it is clear that power now operates predictively as much as retrospectively.’ The present, Eshun argues, is saturated with articulations of the future commissioned by various powerful actors, ‘that are primarily concerned with making futures safe for the market.’

Departing from this standpoint, the intention for the upcoming Great Texts series is to offer talks that intervene in the production and distribution of these futures. The work of imagining futures, Eshun says, ‘constitutes a chronopolitical act’ – a radical attempt to re-engineer the present.

The schedule of speakers, with details about each lecture to be released shortly, is as follows:

1. Tuesday 26 February: Professor in the Department of Latino and Carribean Studies at Rutgers University, Nelson Maldonado-Torres. This lecture is hosted by the Academy of Science of South Africa (ASSAf) in collaboration with the Hub for Decolonial Feminist Psychologies in Africa and the ICA.

2. Thursday 28 February: Novelists Masande Ntshanga, Mohale Mashigo and Lauren Beukes

3. Thursday 7 March: Artists Thenjiwe Niki Nkosi and Pamela Phatsimo Sunstrum

4. Thursday 14 March: Political writer, analyst and author Dr. Ebrahim Harvey

5. Wednesday 20 March: Filmmaker Nadine Cloete

All Great Texts lectures take place from 18:00 – 19:30 at UCT’s Hiddingh Campus, 31 – 37 Orange Street, Cape Town.

Refreshments are served from 17:30. All are welcome. RSVP at: ica@uct.ac.za For more information, please contact the ICA offices at: +27 21 650 7156 | ica@uct.ac.za