PODCASTS · S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Voices
As part of S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence, CHRONIQUES curates “S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence Voices”, a 4-chapter podcast series designed as a space for meta reflection. Every episode invites African artists and researchers to reflect on how artificial intelligence could intersect better with African cultures, memory, identity, and creative practices. Throughout the 10 sessions, we’ll question the technological biases shaping our digital present. These conversations unfold as an open format, allowing ideas, experiences, and imaginaries to go beyond technical or solution-driven discussions.
Echoing the artistic residencies supported by the programme, the series nurtures ethical and situated understandings of technological futures.
CHAPTER ONE · VOICES & NARRATIVES
01 · Rewriting the Code: Decolonizing Narratives
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the practices of multi-disciplinary artist Tewa Barnosa and narrative expert, professor and researcher Lusike Mukhongo, the conversation reveals how digital infrastructures, media platforms, and emerging AI systems often inherit older mechanisms of domination: deciding whose stories are told, whose conflicts are amplified, and whose realities are erased or simplified. Echoing Evans Akanyijuka‘s residency project’s LORAs as an Archive, A Living Archive, which explores LoRAs and generative AI as tools for building living archives rooted in local narratives and community memories, the episode reflects on the political power of storytelling in the age of artificial intelligence.
02 · Time Travellers: Memory, Futures, and the loop of AI
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the voices of antidisciplinary artist and creative researcher Ethel Tawe and digital artist and creative (afro)technologist Uzoma Orji, the conversation moves between past and future, archives and speculation, asking how African cosmologies and ancestral knowledge systems can reshape the way we think about technology. Echoing Mahoutondji Kinmagbo‘s residency project The Memory Performer, which reimagines the Luba Lukasa memory board through digital technologies and AI, the episode invites us to follow the philosophy of the Sankofa bird: looking back in order to move forward, and revisiting ancestral knowledge as a resource for imagining alternative technological futures.
03 · Should we still talk about Afrofuturism?
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the perspectives of lawyer and policy researcher Adwoa Ankoma and cultural operator Patrick Mudekereza, the conversation explores the shift from westernized perspectives toward African Speculative Futures—a lens that centers local realities, pluralistic stories, and the useful dreams of a continent in flux. Echoing Pierre-Christophe Gam‘s residency project, which imagines future African habitats through speculative design and collective world-building, the episode reflects on the role of imagination and storytelling.
CHAPTER TWO · DATA OBJECTS & MEMORY
04 · Données tissées.
Aux racines du code.
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
À travers les regards de l’artiste transmédia Diane Cescutti et de l’artiste numérique Cécile Babiole, la conversation explore les liens souvent invisibilisés entre traditions textiles, computation et technologies contemporaines. En écho à la résidence Territoires Tissés de Melisa Kayowa, l’épisode interroge les récits dominants de l’innovation en mettant en lumière des savoir-faire, des contributions féminines et des connaissances non occidentales longtemps laissés à la marge de l’histoire officielle des technologies.
05 · Stolen Artifacts:
Physical & Virtual Restitutions
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli and Nora Pessarossi.
Through the perspectives of curator, researcher, and artist Cheria Essieke-Bayer and Ben Myres (CEO Nyamakop), the conversation explores the political, symbolic, and technological dimensions of restitution. Echoing Khanya Mthethwa’s residency project Adorned Memory, the episode moves beyond the return of looted artefacts to examine questions of memory, ownership, cultural continuity, and repair, while reflecting on how artists are imagining new forms of physical and virtual reclamation.
CHAPTER THREE · CATHARTIC AI
06 · Embodied Ancestral Knowledge: The Body as a Sensitive Data
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the perspectives of resident artists Emmanuel Ndefo and Dan Xu, alongside dancers and choreographers encountered during the Biennale de la Danse en Afrique at the École des Sables in Senegal, the conversation explores embodied knowledge as a living archive. Echoing the residency project Decoding Egwu, the episode reflects on memory, rhythm, intuition, improvisation, and the forms of intelligence that emerge through lived experience beyond what can be measured, stored, or translated into data.
07 · Healing Interfaces: Ritual, Spiritual Technologies & Algorithmic Care
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the perspectives of artist and Scholar of Zambezian Earth Banji Chona and traditional healer Koketso Masuluke (Founder of ABAfrica), the conversation explores healing as a process of restoring relationships between people, places, memories, and communities. Echoing Chipo Mapondera‘s residency project Cry to the Water, the episode reflects on ancestral knowledge systems, spiritual technologies, ecological memory, and contemporary digital tools, asking how technologies might support new forms of listening, care, reconnection, and collective healing.
CHAPTER FOUR · REPROGRAMMING FUTURES
08 · Playing Reality: Reinventing Worlds Through Digital Playgrounds
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the perspectives of transmedia artist Natalie Paneng and multidisciplinary artist Mehdi Ouahmane, the conversation explores how play, speculative worlds, and video game logics can become powerful tools for questioning inherited realities and imagining alternative futures. Echoing Peace Olatunji‘s residency project Untangler: Worlds Reimagined, the episode reflects on worldbuilding as a creative and political practice, asking how artists can move us from passive participants—or NPCs following inherited scripts—to active players capable of reimagining and reshaping the worlds we inhabit.
09 · Reprogramming the City: Urban Hacking & Decolonial Futures
Moderated and curated by:
Céline Delatte – CHRONIQUES
With the precious support of Ilaria Bondavalli.
Through the perspectives of artist and designer Linda Dounia and anti-disciplinary artist and creative technologist Noah Okwudini, the conversation explores how artists can challenge inherited representations of African cities through speculative cartographies, sound, and collective worldbuilding. Echoing Tamer Elshabrawy‘s residency project Peripheral Mode, the episode reflects on cities as living ecosystems and asks how technology might help us listen more carefully, reveal overlooked realities, and imagine more collective urban futures.
