“Before it is a play, this is a poem, before a poem it is a man, and, before a man, it is a pretext to breathe.” -- Sony Labou Tansi

Consider a curriculum devised by Sony Labou Tansi.* Imagine it is three (perhaps four) dimensional. What might it look like? Does it have a soundtrack? A smell component? Is it prone to time travel? 

If we take seriously the notion, offered by the Angazi, but I’m sure project and, more broadly, by the Chimurenga experiment, that learning (lest we choke) is best done out of school, some positions must be left at the door. First among these is that of the expert. I am no specialist of Sony. I will neither lecture nor impart knowledge. My proposal is this: to convene a conversation that is a pretext to breathe. 

Suppose a breathing machine designed by Sony Labou Tansi.

About Dominique Malaquais

Dominique Malaquais is Senior Researcher at CNRS (Institut des Mondes Africains, Paris, France) and co-director, with Kadiatou Diallo, of the experimental curatorial platform SPARCK (Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge). Her work addresses intersections between political violence, economic inequity and the making of urban cultures in the late capitalist present. Recent projects include reflections on Africa-Asia exchanges as effected through the visual arts, literature, urbanism and spirituality (Afrique-Asie: arts, espaces, pratiques, co-edited with Nicole Khouri and published in 2016) and Archive (re)mix (2015), a collection of essays on the production of art, visual and textual, as an exercise in exploring archival materials and techniques, co-edited with Maëline Le Lay and Nadine Siegert. Malaquais sits on the editorial board of several journals and reviews (Chimurenga, Politique africaine, Savvy, among others) and is Past President of ACASA, the Arts Council of the African Studies Association.