Welcome everyone to
the
Penny Stamps Distinguished Speaker Series. Blinky Bill folks.
Yeah. More to come. So you're in luck. Welcome to the Penny Stamps Distinguished
Speaker Series. My name is Christina Hamilton, I'm the series director.
Today, I am thrilled that we are officially opening our regular season of
talks here in Ann Arbor with Kenyan Afrofuturists, Osborne Macharia and
Blinky Bill and their friends.
Yeah, we got more folks with us today than you know.
I want to thank our partners for their support of today's program,
Design Cores, Detroit month of design, celebrating 41 design events this
month of September, so check out Design Core and the Charles Wright Museum
of African American history downtown in Detroit, check that out too, and
Michigan Radio 91.7 FM. We hosted our very first event of the season
actually last Saturday at the Charles Wright Museum in Detroit with a brand
new partnership for the series where we hosted these same gentlemen that
we're going to hear from today. We're very excited about this new partnership
and so look for more to come in Detroit at the Charles Wright from
us. In addition to the speaking gigs that these gentlemen are doing while
they're with us, they have been in residence all week in downtown Detroit
through our Witt Residency Program and they've been working on a brand new
project that they are going to talk to you a little bit about
today, and you will see some of the fruits of their labor
while they've been here in the city. For those of you who are
joining us for the first time who have no idea what the Penny
Stamp Series is, a quick word of explanation for you. Penny Stamp Series
is a program of the Stamp School of Art and Design,
which looks to present creators and innovators as a way for our students
to connect with the creative leaders of the day, both on the stage
here and with the other folks here in our midst. We take
place most Thursdays here at the Michigan Theater. We're always free.
We function as an open classroom for the whole region and community,
so all are welcome to join us always. We have a dynamic line
up of guests to challenge and inspire you this season. The details of
this are in our new season calendar, which is available in the lobby.
So if you didn't get one
on the way in, you can get one on the way out,
or you can find us at pennystampsevents.org or join us on our Facebook
page at Penny Stamps Series and plan to be here most Thursdays.
I have one event announcement for you today before we get going.
This Saturday at the University of Michigan, Museum of Art, right down
street here on State Street, we will be presenting another Witt artist residency
project, The Speaker. This is an interactive installation by Greek artist,
Zafos Xagoraris, who is here in our midst with us today.
Welcome Zafos. The speaker is an exploration of American protests from the
1960s to today. This is combining archival material that's been sourced
from our Bentley Historical Library here on campus and it will include an
interactive soap box where visitors to the installation are able to relive
or rebroadcast past moments of protest. You can bring something to read.
There will also be historical texts available for you to read or you
can communicate your very own message in this present moment. So join us
and make your voice heard. This is a one day only event this
Saturday, September 15th, beginning at 11:00 AM, going to 8:00 PM,
at the Museum of Art on State Street, the gallery, the big glass
gallery outside, and your voices will actually be heard outside on the street,
and there's going to be a very cool car there that will look
like you're standing on top of, so don't miss it.
This project is also a part of 90%. This is a campus wide
effort at the University of Michigan in leading non partisan voter registration.
We want 90% of our eligible students actively engaged in voting,
and voter registration will also be available on Saturday at the museum.
Oh yeah,
good deal. It's a good deal. Just a few thoughts on our season
theme: Turn.
It's a long story how we came up with this, but it's also
the longest definition in the dictionary, which was quite shocking to me.
And you have to look at a proper dictionary; not online and not
an abridged one, but a proper dictionary. The definition of 'turn' actually
takes two and a half whole pages. This is evidence to its many
uses and forms and perspectives. And after all, our planet turning in the
universe is the only true constant that we have.
So
perhaps some of the best, most poetic words on the subject.
I've thought a lot about this. Of course the Byrds song,
Turn! Turn! Turn! I advise you all listen to it. But perhaps more
poetic is Simple Gifts, which is a Shaker dance song which Aaron Copland
famously incorporated into Appalachian Spring
with Martha Graham when she danced that in 1944. And the key lyrics
to that are, "'Tis a gift to be simple, 'tis a gift to
be free, 'tis a gift to come 'round where we ought to be,
to turn turn will be our delight, 'till by turning, turning we come
'round right." So I hope this season gives each of us a chance
to take a turn, make a turn, so to speak. And very fitting
here today, we begin this season with a look at Afrofuturism and these
artists who are turning an age old narrative in new directions.
We will be having a Q&A today. Not in here. This will be
directly following the stage program. You can join us if you go out
this theater, take a left, go down the hall, and a right before the
bathrooms, there's the screening room; another theatre within the theatre.
Join us there directly after and you can meet these gentlemen and ask
them questions. Please do remember to turn off your cell phones.
And now to give a proper introduction to our guests, please welcome great
partner of the Penny Stamp Series, the Charles Wright Museum's Vice President
of Public Programs, Charles
Ferrell. Good evening. And I would like, if you could so that she
can hear you, a round of applause for Christina Hamilton, the visionary
for this great and exciting program.
The Charles H. Wright Museum of African American history in Detroit is very
happy to partner with Ann Arbor to connect this region. We're working
not only with this series but with the Cinetopia International Film series
out of the Michigan theater, as well as the university musical society.
We think it's very important to connect this region, and in turn to
connect a world around very phenomenal programming.
I was deeply moved and inspired when I saw these artists that you will see
later today. And it's artists who are very important in our society because
they have a way of visioning, a way of seeing reality in new
and different ways. And it's typically the artists who are
constrained by those who don't want us to see and to experience reality
in new and exciting ways that brings the world together. Kenya, a very
important part of the world where you have the founding of civilization,
these artists are phenomenal. I still see the images that you will see
long, many days after. So I want to be very quick and introduce the
artists as an award winning photographer, art director, and digital artist
from Nairobi, Kenya, Osborne Macharia's visual and narrative driven style
known as Afrofuturism has been recognized internationally as a platform
for discussing critical social issues such as inclusion,
representation, gender, and elder abuse. As a commercial photographer, Osborne
has been privileged to work with some of the top international brands including
Marvel's Black Panther. Yes, Marvel's Black Panther. Disney,
Oprah Winfrey's Network Queen Sugar, Absolut, MTV, Volkswagen, Forbes, Guinness,
and Mercedes.
In 2018 Osborne was the first Kenyan ever to be selected as a
jury member for the prestigious Cannes Lion creative awards in the ADC one
show awards. Nairobi based Blinky Bill Sellanga, collaborator of Osborne's,
is a singer, songwriter, beat maker; which you heard;
producer, TED fellow, Red Bull Music Academy alumnus, and member of the
music collective Just a Band.
On October 19th Sellanga released his debut solo album.
"Everyone's Just Winging It &
Others Fly Tales." Also here
is Kevin Abraham: Fashion stylist, prop master, set designer, and Andrew
Mageto, director of photography. Ladies and gentlemen,
please join me in welcoming
Osborne Macharia. Good evening Michigan. Afrofuturism, it's such a complex,
and such a broad subject that it's so hard to explain,
like, we've not even figured out how to explain it,
so I'm going to give you a couple of stories,
five stories in particular and hopefully at the end, you'll have an idea
of what it means. Cool? I'd like to bring on stage Kevin Abraham and
Andrew Mageto 'cause it's so funny that when these events happened, we were
the four of us in this situations. And Kevin is a stylist as
you can see.
Andrew Mageto is a DOP.
And
we found ourselves in situations where we'd always find ourselves asking
each other, "Yo, is this for real?" And I also want you to
help me saying the same words. So
whenever you hear me say, "Yo, Abrah", I want you to say,
"Is this for real?" Can we try that? "Yo, Abrah." "Is this for real?" Nah
I want that Michigan
oomph, like, "Yo, Abrah." "Is this for real?" Thank you, thank you.
So our first story begins, in one of the slums we have in
Nairobi, it's called Kariobangi, but in short, we call it Kabangu. That's
like our slang. And so I remember one day we were with Kevin,
we just finished doing a shoot for an NGO and we were packing
our gear, and as we were putting our gear into the van, there came
this old guy in a bicycle, he looked like he was about eighty years old
but he was dressed like a hip hop teenager from the '70s. And
I remember looking at Abrah and I was like, "Yo, Abrah... " "Is this for
real?" Thank you. And we had a conversation and he introduced himself and
he told us, he was part of a group called "Kabangu", and so
they used to be a group of four hip hop heads in the
'70s when they were young, but now they're old, and the thing is,
they still wear like they use to. And so what they do is
they go around the slums and they teach upcoming, the youngsters who are
getting into hip hop and they teach them on the positive values of
hip hop. And so they teach them the values such as justice,
equality, peace, and so he said... Actually he had one of the youngsters
in studio and his name was Blinky Bill. And so that's how we
met Blinky Bill. And I remember it very well, because when we walked
in studio, Blinky was playing this music.
And so they asked us if we could take a few photos of
them. And so this is what we produced.
And so, my second story goes to a place called Magadi. So Magadi is
this place in Kenya that's like
a dried lake. And within this lake there are different terrains,
so there's a salty patch, there is a dried place. The few grasslands,
and I remember we were doing a fashion shoot there one day.
And so, as we were wrapping up, I remember Kevin Kevo wanted to
go for a pee, in the forest in the bush
and all of a sudden he comes back running and I'm like,
"Abrah, what's happening?" And he's like, "Yo I've seen the most unique
elderly woman I've ever seen." And I remember this woman was approaching
us, and the first sight of her I was like, "Yo, Abrah." "Is this for real?"
Good. And so the lady introduced herself, and she told us she was
part of a group of women they called themselves Magadi. And so this
women used to be former female circumcisers, but they had abandoned their
practice and taken up an alternative lifestyle which was in fashion
and so they dress in this very classy unique outfits
and what they do now is they take up the young girls who
are escaping early marriage and they teach them on fashion on print making,
on modeling and even training them for international runways and so they
asked us if we could do a shoot with them. And so these are
the images we produced.
So, my fourth story... Third story, sorry, was one time, we were,
again we were with Kevo, we were scouting for location,
and our brief was simple: Just give us a very industrial,
rough looking textures. And so we got a tip about this from a
warehouse, and I remember we walked in, and we could hear people just
punching. We could hear like people were training for a fight.
And I remember all of a sudden we saw this person approached us.
He was
a short person, so he came to where we were.
And I remember it very well, because there was music playing in the
background, and I could recognize it was Blinky's music, and this was the
music
that was playing. So they asked us if we could have a small
photo session with them. So, just to give you some reference,
these people are what society will call dwarfs, but they hate being called
that. So back home, we call them people of short stature.
And so we found out that they were these group of people of
short stature who are actually fighters. And so they have an underground
fight club, and it's called Nairobi's Underground Fight Club. And so they
asked us if we could do a photo session with them.
And so this is what we produced.
Oh, sorry. Sorry. Thank you for correcting me. Thank you for correcting
me. So, I looked at Abraham, I was like, "Yo, Abrah!" Is this for real?
And so we had a photo session with them and these are the
images we produced.
Onto my fourth story. So, this one happens somewhere far from home,
this was in Nigeria.
And Blinky and I had been invited for a festival, it's called the
LagosPhoto festival. So, I was showing my work. Blinky had been invited
for the closing event,
it was like the closing party and we were having a good time.
And I remember it very well, because Blinky was playing this jam.
And I remember that night
we were hungry, so we came out of the club to look for
something to eat. And I remember just right in front of us,
walks this guy who's smartly dressed and walking with a hyena. And we're
like, "Yo, Abrah." Is this for real? And so there was a bit
of a language barrier, so I called an interpreter who interpreted for us.
And so the guy told us he was part of a group called
the Hyena Men of Nigeria. And so these guys
were a group of... It's quite a big group, but they had focused
themselves into a group of three gentlemen. And so what they do is
they keep animals, such as baboons, and hyenas, snakes from the time they
are young, and it's something that's a bit cultural for them.
And so they said they had classified themselves, as these guys called "No
Touch Am". And so what they do is they go into the forest,
so now both man and beast act as forest conservationists and so they
protect the flora and the fauna in the forest,
and so they asked us if we could accompany them to the forest
and take a few photos of them and so this is what we produced.
And so later on when we came back to Nairobi, we asked an
illustrator to interpret the different animals and so this is what he did.
On to my fifth story. So, this has also happened outside Nairobi. We were
in Somalia. We have been commissioned by a tobacco company to go shoot a
couple of images, and one of the images was shooting, getting an image
of the airport, and so we had set up our camera, we were waiting
for this golden hour, and I remember we had this loud plane behind
us, like... We were facing the airport, then behind us was this
big bang, it was like a very rusty kind of airplane
and I remember it landed then out of the plane comes this old dandy,
she is like a grandma and she was smartly dressed, and so I
turned to Abrah and I'm like "Yo Abrah... " Is this for real? And
so she approached us and she said she was part of a group
called Kenya's League of Extravagant Grannies,
and so what they do is... You know they used to be business
women and politicians in the '70s, but they've retired, so now they travel
the country in the retirement days just looking stylish and enjoying themselves,
and so they asked us if we could do a shoot with them
and so these are the images we produced.
So, this is the most important story.
If you've been asleep the entire time, I forgive you,
but this is the most important story. So, everything
that I've told you today, all of it is fiction.
None of it exists in reality. Welcome to
Afrofuturism. So, Afrofuturism to us means it's an artistic repurpose of
the post colonial African narrative by using
narrative fiction, fantasy and integrating history,
present culture, and future aspirations with people of color and creating
a different narrative of what Africa is known for.
So that is our definition of Afrofuturism. I'd like to show you a
couple of projects that actually got us started into this whole movement.
And one of them was called, so in my mother tongue means spectacles. And
we were colonized by the the British, and
for the longest time everything we saw about our freedom fighters
was always from the British point of view, like we never saw anything
cool, fancy, patriotic about the. In every photograph that we came across
about the was them in concentration camps, you know, them lying dead,
and so we wanted to create a different story about what happened. And
so we created these five unit of special opticians within the
and so what they did is they created spectacles that they could be
able to see the enemy at night and can you imagine how these
guys looked. This was our interpretation.
And so whenever people talk about freedom fighting, it's always from
a masculine point of view, and we know that women are also involved
in the freedom fighting process. And so, we also created a project which
was just specifically for women, and for them, it was about their hairstyles
and so we created a clique of these four,
very tough looking women, and whenever they adorned this hairstyle, only
the people in the village knew what it meant and so each character
had a different hairstyle and so we created this group of women,
and this is how they looked like.
So to your
left, was the leader and she was partly blind
and she had like this... So this is the image I'm talking about...
This one. And so, she had
a secret route mapped into the forest that only her second in command
could be able to interpret, and whenever she would lead them into the
forest, not once were they ever caught by the enemy. And the lady
on the other side used to be the one who would carry the
food into the forest. So, it's creating such kind of narratives.
She was the arms bearer, so she would hide weapons in her hair and
go into the forest, and the lady at the very end was...
She was like the chief entertainer, so she had made this special mouthpiece
that could be connected to speakers in her hair, and whenever the women
or the men were coming back from the forest, she will be the
one entertaining and leading the entertainment process. So it's creating
such kinds of narratives. And I'd like to bring Blinky Bill on stage,
just to give a bit more about what he does. Hello. How you
doing?
So, first, I'm gonna explain my name.
I'm named after a cartoon that was shown when I was a kid,
it's called Blinky Bill. It was an Australian cartoon. One of my favorite
producers is called Danger Mouse, I don't know if any of you know
him.
I was just like, "Man, I also wanna be named after a cartoon." 'Cause sometimes
African names can be very strong,
and I might change it in a couple of years. But anyway,
I was a part of a band called Just A Band,
which was an arts and electronic collective from Nairobi. We found each
other in college. I was studying sport science, I wasn't very good at
it.
Yeah,
the rest of the guys, one was studying sports and... No,
IT. Actually two of them were studying IT,
but we all loved music. So, when we didn't have class,
we'd all link up in this room and just jam, but it was
mostly a concept band. And a lot of our influences were
music that we'd grown up with, so Stevie Wonder, a lot of African
music. There's a guy from Congo called Franco, some old Kenyan musicians
as well. And we dropped our first project in 2008, it was called "Scratch
To Reveal". And then the next year, we dropped a second project,
which became really successful and it's called "82". And I'm gonna play
one of the videos, so that you understand what I'm trying to say.
Yeah.
So that song is called "Huff and Puff". And it's just guys in
Africa who have a little bit of imagination,
not really much of a budget, but just wanting to showcase our ideas,
and that's always how we've operated, it's just we want to make sure
that if I imagine that something exists, and it doesn't exist in real
life, then I'd love to see it exist one way or another.
I'm very driven as well by producers who make that kind of stuff.
So, that's a brief history of where I'm coming from,
and my new project comes out next month, it's called "Everyone's Just Winging
It & Other Fly Tales", which is,
yeah, a brief
history.
So, Blinky has forgotten to mention a video, probably he forgot.
Oh yeah, yeah, yeah. This video, we're gonna play like half of it,
but it was a fast viral video in Kenya,
which we made with a budget of
$70. Friends just coming together to help us put it together,
and it's a fun one. Enjoy.
So,
that song changed our lives a lot, and
right now in Nairobi, when I see, there's a lot more kids coming
up and making electronic music, which is just so
interesting, because when we started out, there wasn't a lot of people messing
with electronic music. And as Osborne said,
Africa is a continent that has had a lot of really great storytellers, we're
just happy to be a part of that. And it's also just shining
a light on everyone else who has gone before us, so that the
world knows that Africa is the future.
And our first collaboration with Blinky on
like multimedia platform was when we were shooting "No Touch Am", the project
with the Hyena Men. And so we did a short film,
that's where the DOP and co director, Andrew Mageto came in.
And we needed music for film, and so we decided he'd give us
the music, and in exchange the film will become his music video.
And so we produced "No Touch Am", and
enjoy.
So we've been moving into evolving our style into a more,
sort of experiential places. And so we've been trying to sort of like figure
out what would an African gallery experience look like
away from the European or western style, which is always hanging art work
on white halls. And so we decided, you know what, we are going
to create our own art experiences. And in these experiences, we fuse fashion,
we fuse music, food, art, and we actually bring our characters from the
fictional space and digital space into the real life. And so when you
come for art experiences, you actually get to meet the models and take
photos with them. So that's our idea of an art experience.
And so, one of the projects we did was called Gikosh. So,
Gikosh is short for Gikomba. Anyone who has lived in Nairobi, anyone who's
grown up in Kenya knows about this market, because it's one of the
biggest thrift stores, there's a lot of the garages, it's like one of the
biggest in East Africa. And so, we've always grown up
seeing a section of Gikosh where they make a lot of metallic stuff.
And there are always these piles of tin trunks and
things made out of metal. But we've actually never understood why that is
there. And this is actually how the place looks like. So it's either containers
or metals. And so we came up with a story whereby imagine underground there
was a group of ex aeronautical engineers. And in this underground place,
they actually build furniture. So this was a collaboration between us and
actual guys, real people, now this is for real. This is for real. So
these guys actually travel around Kenya, and they buy planes that have crashed,
and they bring them back to their workshops and they convert them into
furniture art. So this is some of the stuff that they produce.
And so we asked ourselves, "Imagine the kind of guys who make this
stuff, how will they look like?" And so we imagined that under all
those piles of metal tin trunks that camouflaged underneath is a bunker
that's a workshop, and this is where that furniture comes from. And this
is how those people look like. And so this is the carpenter, and
we also worked with someone who does motion who animated the stuff.
So we had these animations playing on the screens on the day of
the event.
And she's the sander. She's the one who's seven years old. And so
we had that animating. He is the engineer.
She is the scout.
And he's the welder.
And for this event, we actually did custom made passports. So those were
our invites for... 'Cause we never charge for experiences, we want to engage
with the public and expose the public to art in a different way,
that's sort of been segregated and excluded to anyone who wants to view
art. And so we never charge for events. But we ask guys, "If
you want to come for this event, you have to download a free boarding pass."
And so that's how the boarding pass looked like. And you'd bring it
and it will be stamped. And I remember when we put it out
on social media, we had a response of almost 4,000 people coming for
our event. The first event we ever did, I remember we did it
with Kevo, just the two of us, and we were given space at
the French Cultural Center in Nairobi. And when they invited us to do a
project, we told them, "We have quite a following, so expect a lot
of people." And they're like, "Nah, whenever we have events, we have 40
people showing up. So we'll give you two security guards, we'll have a
couple of drinks." And shock on them, 3,000 people showed up.
And so that's the kind of experiences we want to create.
And so these were the regular boarding passes.
So when you're given a passport, it had that boarding pass inside.
And so the passport was a notebook as well after the event.
And so this is how our art experience for that particular project looked
like.
So that's just a glimpse of the event. And onto the next stage
is where we've been trying to collaborate with brands. 'Cause a lot of
the campaigns we have back home are always ideas and creativity that's done
outside the continent, and brought into Africa, and expected to work for
our market, which sometimes never happens.
We were so lucky to work with Absolut Vodka on a project called
"Africa Is On Fire". And so they created these five superheroes, and I was
fortunate to be one of the five super heroes. And so our power
was our creativity and what we do for the continent in terms of
changing the narrative. So we did a trailer for a movie,
that does not exist. And just to invite guys for this festival that's
happening annually in Jo burg, South Africa. And so this is
the movie. The trailer,
sorry. And
coming into the project, I was given the creative freedom to photograph
and create the visual style of the campaign. And so
these are the images we produced.
Because of time, I'll just dive to this part.
Okay. Sorry.
So earlier this year, I was commissioned by Marvel to create artwork for
the movie Black Panther
for cinemas in London. And so we took the fact that,
theoretically Wakanda falls somewhere touching the northern part of Kenya.
And so we came up with these stories of these three
elders who were rescued by the king. And because they were exposed to
the element vibranium, they became blind, but with that came special powers.
And because of that, they were wise, they had a lot of knowledge
and insight. They were taken by the court, by the king into his
inner court, and became his most trusted advisors. And so this is how
they looked like and the leader was actually a woman. So,
these are the images. So
which is language spoken in the means leader.
means the tall one, means manly. And that's how bad ass they look
when they're together.
So this brings me to the final project. And that's the reason why
we came to Detroit, not the reason why we came. We came because
we were invited, but we were like, you know what, since we're in Detroit
let's just do a project while we're here. So we've been doing a
project called "Remember the Rude Boy"
And so this project is all about remembering the forgotten people in society
who always had an impact but has been sidelined. And so we began
in Nairobi and it was after the passing away of
we decided to do a project that honors people
who have been a significant part in the fashion industry, especially within
the thrift market, Batik making tie and dye process. And so,
we created "Remember the Rude Boy Nairobi." And so this is how
the gentleman look like.
And after that, we went to Ghana Accra and we did "Remember the
Rude Boy Accra."
And it was about remembering the guys who work in one of the
largest electronic dump sites in Ghana and these people go through a lot
and also forgotten by society. And so we decided to do "Remember the
Rude Boy
Accra." The dump site that you see is called,
which is one of the biggest dump sites within the western part of
Africa. And so this is "Remember the Rude Boy Accra."
And then we come to "Remember the Rude Boy
Detroit." And
with us some of the gentlemen who took part in this project.
Could we have the lights on please? I'd like to
shout out to the men who helped us in doing this project.
So we decided to honor African American war veterans
who have been forgotten by society. And so,
guys, may I ask you to stand up as we
honor you? So the gentleman in a hat is called Art, A R T, short for
Arthur. Thank you Arthur. And we have Bobby over there,
and I'd also like to share a special thank you to everyone for
the crew in Detroit who also came to be with us.
May you please stand up, the crew from Detroit as well.
So these guys went for, like they went above and beyond to help
us in doing this project, like from the bottom of our hearts,
we say thank you, thank you for everything.
And we have not finished. It's a process, it's a project in the
making, but this is some of the visuals that we did.
So that is Art, who was a war veteran in
the Vietnam War.
So that's Greg who was a military police in Honduras and Granada.
That's Derryl who was in the Gulf War. And that's Bobby who was
in the Korean War. And I just want to show you this image,
because this sometimes happens where you go onto location.
And we were shooting, actually shooting it yesterday, and the weather just
did not cooperate. So in such situations, I'll try bring the lights as
close as possible to the subjects, then also take another plate
of the background, and then merge them together.
And ladies and gentlemen, we want to say thank
you.
