Some of The Nest Collective’s work is seductive, haunting, provocative. “This One Goes to Market” is funny, from the beginning, and it’s cutely* subversive in that what’s beautiful about it isn’t what’s true about it. The short revolves around the production of a spectacular showing by a Nairobi-based visual artist who knows that Afrofuturism is on trend. Her construction of the Afrofuturistic context out of which her work emerges is just as poetic and stimulating as the images themselves. Mobile penetration. Segregation.
That language, it’s so right. Where does such insight come from? Kui says “You can never run out of things to say,” and I thought, that’s it, that’s the hook. I’m looking forward to more of We Need Prayers.
When I hear someone admit that they’re unbothered by the possibility that what they do will be seen as derivative, because they’re more concerned with whether it works toward other objectives that are important to them, I am so relieved. It’s not that I think there’s nothing new under the sun or that being cynical makes you sound smart; it’s just exciting to see people acting out the backstory of how art gets away from the artist and whatever publics they might have had in mind—acting on that knowledge. I love that Kui is a portrayal of an artist who is like artists I’ve met: she’s genuinely creative and brilliant, but occasionally frustrated, and that’s why she’s also savvy. She’s worldly. Patricia Kihoro realizes her thoughtfully in performance. You could take every word she says as Kui seriously, but if you do that, the hazard isn’t that you won’t be in on the joke—it’s that you’ll forget she’s a human being.
Artists aren’t some special race of humans who express themselves authentically 100% of the time and share their motivations with everyone as soon as they’re prompted. Neither are Africans! So, it’s unreasonable to the point of absurdity to expect the full potential of contemporary African artists’ consciousness to burst out of everything they do, to learn everything they have to teach you, all at once. I enjoy seeing that played to comic effect.
Obviously, when I laugh with the characters poking fun at Afrofuturism during the photo shoot, I’m laughing at myself. Patricia Kihoro and Sheba Hirst, in their conversation with Dr. Njoki Ngumi on the Nest Collective’s Facebook page, question what it means to take up Afrofuturism as a term that defines what African artists do from the outside. There is definitely a tendency in the United States and Europe, and I know Black Americans participate in it, to impose a vision of the future on the world that gives voice to our desires.
did somebody say Black Americans project our desires onto Africans’ lives? ¡no me digas!
In one variety of this scenario, someone—a movement, or a band you’ve never heard of—emerges as the true revolutionary who figures out the right way to do all the things we’ve been doing wrong, and they have the generosity of spirit to show us how we can do it, too, but we’re either not smart enough to appreciate it or too deluded to want it. That’s one of the scenarios acted out in “This One Goes to Market.” In the quotes attributed to Kui and the imaginary reception of her work, I can see how people might run away with the expectation that Nairobi will be the place where it happens—whatever it is. I’m no less interested in learning what motivates artists in Nairobi after viewing this short and an interview with its creators, but I’m less inclined to think that it will fulfill my expectations for what Afrofuturism means to artists working there, because it sounds like they don’t need the same terminology that I do to understand what they’re doing.
Special thanks to Dr. Njoki Ngumi and/of The Nest for soliciting my thoughts on this. But more importantly, much respect. I love seeing people doing good work, and I have a lot to learn from them—just not all at once!