Afropollination aimed to encapsulate the process of artistic and social cultural pollination: facilitating the creative encounters between artists, genres, disciplines, identities, ideas, cultures, technologies and communities from various regions of Africa and Germany, taking and giving to and from one another, create new forms of expression and bringing new inspirations, works, and ideas to light while connecting to new audiences.
Music and dance have always gone hand in hand in Africa, but unfortunately when represented internationally, the two often get disentangled. With this project a group of partners – Nyege Nyege Festival, Piranha Arts and Boutique Foundation, CTM Festival, MS Stubnitz, Festsaal Kreuzberg, and WDR Cosmo Radio – wanted to re-contextualize the music through its dance element, and take it a step further by involving contemporary dancers and choreographers to create new modern interpretations to the music from the project. The focus on Africa lead both German and African artists to work on deconstructing existing hardware and software to re-appropriate and re-purpose them.
The first phase of the project took place in Uganda around the Nyege Nyege Festival 2022, with residencies before and after the festival as well as artists’ shows and debates at the festival. A second phase took place at CTM 2023 in Berlin, and at MS Stubnitz in Hamburg. A thrid phase closed the Afropollination project with an event in June 2023 at Festsaal Kreuzberg in Berlin, and with a partnership with Cosmo Radio in Cologne.
Artists
- Afrorack
- Astan & Exoce
- Binghi
- Bloomfeld
- Catu Dosis
- Chrisman
- Debmaster
- Decay
- Diaki
- DJ MP3
- DJ Paypal
- Dormant Youth
- Fannylove
- Haxan
- Jay Mita
- Jessica Ekomane
- Kabeaushé
- Menzi
- Miziguruka
- Phatstoki
- Sarah Ndele
- Shannyj
- Sisso
- Turkana
- Violaine Le Fur
- Zai and Nana
- Zoë Mc Pherson
- Zora Snake
Partners
- Nyege Nyege
- Piranha Arts and Boutique Foundation
- CTM Festival
- MS Stubnitz
- WDR Cosmo Radio
- Festsaal Kreuzberg
Afropollination was a project by Piranha Arts and Boutique Foundation / Nyege Nyege in collaboration with MS Stubnitz, Cosmo Radio, Festsaal Kreuzberg, and CTM Festival. Funded by the Fonds TURN2 of the Federal Cultural Foundation of Germany.