Each speaker will present on their own curatorial practices, and then engage in conversation. We think through how public-facing institutions such as museums hold as a value togetherness, and consider how material culture, including contemporary art, might allow us to probe our value systems, or at least how we deliberate on them. Instead of a reading list, this class/event has an assigned playlist (see below). Contact a.benedicty@uva.nl if you would like to receive it.

Dr. Alana Osbourne is Assistant Professor of Critical Studies at Radboud University. An anthropologist and filmmaker, her research interests include sensorial anthropology and affect, the anthropology of outer space, postcolonial studies, Caribbean studies, and film. She combines her academic work with film and theatre projects

Rita Ouédraogo is a curator, researcher, and writer based in Amsterdam. Her practice entails developing and theorizing through (public writing), experimental and collaborative projects and public programmes on collaboration, archival praxis, (de)colonialism, the African diaspora, institutional power, counter-culture, popular culture, with a justice-oriented agenda. She holds an MSc in Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology from the University of Amsterdam. Ouédraogo has worked on various projects aimed at broadening access to museum collections and on projects outside institutional structures. She researches questions related to cooperation and solidarity, examining modes of collaborative practices across power differentials, especially within a decolonial framework. She is the co-founding and current curator of Buro Stedelijk, the project space of the Stedelijk Museum Amsterdam, A place to discover Amsterdam’s dynamic and progressive art scene. She is also chairman at the Mondriaan Fund of the Netherlands. She worked at the Research Center for Material Culture as Research Programmer and (Community) Collaboration officer, was curator at Framer Framed and co-curator of the Hartwig Art Foundation Special Project (2020-2021). 

Carine Zaayman  a researcher and research coordinator at RCMC. As an artist, curator and scholar, she is committed to critical engagement with colonial archives and collections, specifically those holding strands of Khoekhoe pasts. Her work focuses on the afterlives of slavery and colonialism, particularly in the Cape, by bringing intangible and neglected histories into view. Her research aims to contribute to a radical reconsideration of colonial archives and museum collections, especially by assisting in finding ways to release their hold over our imaginations when we narrate the past, as well as how we might shape futures from it. She is also co-author with Nancy Jouwe of Gids Slavernijverleden van De Kaap/ Slavery Heritage Guide of the Cape (2025).  

Playlist:

• Sun Ra -  The Other side of the Sun
• Jimi Hendricks – Third Rock from the Sun
• Parliament – Mothership Connection (Star Child)
• Outkast – Atliens
• Deltron 3030 – Mastermind
• Missy Elliott – Pass that Dutch
• Lee Scretch Perry – African Starship 
• Ibaaku – Ancestral Intelligence
• Janealle Monae – Tightrope

This lecture takes place in the context of the course: Literary Worlds: World Literature and Globalisation, in Literary and Cultural Analysis undergraduate program. The course coordinator is Alessandra Benedicty-Kokken. Any questions may be sent to a.benedicty@uva.nl