Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness
Francois Knoetze, Russel Hlongwane and Amy Louise Wilson (South Africa)
Artwork description
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness is a creative research project by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent.
The title, Dzata, comes from the ancient capital of the Venda kingdom situated in northern part of South Africa which houses stone ruins built of dark blue stone.
An intertextual conversation between the documentary and the poetic, the video operates as an in-house media assemblage created for the preservation of the institute’s activities and ideas.
The project aims to foreground indigenous technological knowledge and to explore how science, technology and innovation are part of a long interlinked process of accumulative knowledge production which extends long into the past.
Building on the research of technopolitical scholar and project mentor Prof. Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga, the work takes the form of a video blending science fiction with the archival, a creative-critical text and workshop series. It traverses unexpected geopolitical imaginaries: here the crop field, smelting furnace, forest or river becomes a mobile laboratory.
The work was created in collaboration with a range of South African sound, collage and performance artists, juxtaposing traditional storytelling with AI-generated images, deep archival research and game-engine built environments, to formulate a multi-scalar history and future of technological creativity. Positioning the triumphs and failures of the everyday in the future-oriented technoscientific, the work unfolds the idea of development as a historical process Africans shaped.
Partners and collaborators
Created by:
Francois Knoetze, Russel Hlongwane + Amy Louise Wilson
Project Advisors:
Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Oulimata Gueye
Cinematographer + Editor: Francois Knoetze
Script Development: Russel Hlongwane, Amy Louise Wilson, Francois Knoetze
Screenplay: Amy Louise Wilson
Sound Designers + Original Composition: Gugulethu Duma (Dumama)
Caydon van Eck (b00n)
Production Design + Costume: Francois Knoetze
Drone Operator: Haroon Gunn-Salie
Collage Art: Duduetsang Lamola (blk banaana), Francois Knoetze, Amy Louise Wilson
Sound engineer and co-producer: Kerim Melik Becker (Kechou)
Percussionists : Fabiano Lima , Aduni Guedes de Oliveira
Cellist: Tsepo Pooe
Violin: Elizabeth Huehuentro
Assistant Editor: Peacemore Patsika
Performances by:
Russel Hlongwane
Duduetsang Lamola
Oupa Sibeko
Nolufefe Ntshuntshe
Indalo Stofile
Thulisa Mayalo
Jacques Lukoji
Anesu Alex
Philimon Rukodzi
Ragel Mahera
Peacemore Patsika
Nicole Goto
Gomez Bakwene
Voice-Over + Translation:
Babalwa Zimbini Makwetu
Russel Hlongwane
This project was supported by the Mozilla Foundation’s 2022 Creative Media Award