Make way for Africa

WORDS Claire Jowell and Johan van Zyl PHOTOS Provided by Afrofuture organisers

Forget what you think you know about African design, architecture, technology, art, music, culture and politics – the Afrofuture collaboration at the Milan Furniture Fair is about to shatter all assumptions about the continent’s new wave of creativity.

Robotic mash-ups. A live newsroom reporting on China’s growing influence on Africa. Bespoke Ghanaian fantasy coffins. African sci-fi. Quirky bio-design. Congolese music performed on mobile phones… The weird and wonderful of futuristic African creativity will take centre stage at Italian department store La Rinascente’s flagship retail space in the Milan CBD where the continent’s most daring technologists, design studios, writers, illustrators, musicians and photographers will relay the African experience from their point of view.

According to curator Beatrice Galilee “Afrofuture is an idea-fuelled showcase of exhibitions, workshops, talks and debates to explore the past, present and future of design on the world’s second-largest continent”.

“As the design world expands far beyond aesthetics to also incorporate networks, strategies and unexpected tactics, Africa becomes an urgent critical voice in the global conversation. In Afrofuture we imagine the African Union as the world’s most powerful economic zone, we imagine DIY space travel, we imagine biomorphic militarised KwaZulu vervet monkeys. We present Chinafrica state TV, futuristic instruments and contemporary African pulp fiction,” she explains.

The programme presented from 9 to 12 April will feature different daily events such as a workshop to design and build a model for a bridge between Europe and Africa, while the shop windows will act as multi-dimensional story portals illustrated with six different stories from African pulp-fiction masters, including South Africa’s very own Jungle Jim. 

VISI’s omnipresent design detective Annemarie Meintjes will be there to experience Afrofuturism in action. We can’t wait for her report back!

Find out more at www.afrofuture.it.