FESTAC 2077: Writing into the Future

FESTAC 2077 is a Lagos based platform for art publications and cultural experiences leading up to 2077. Through installations, workshops, and gatherings, FESTAC 2077 draws on the dynamic legacy of FESTAC 1977 to document new pan-African futures and experimental publishing practices. A partnership between iranti press and A Whitespace Creative Agency (AWCA), the FESTAC 2077 platform activates cultural experiences dedicated to promoting cultural production, community engagement, literacy, capacity building, and creating dynamic, accessible, and innovative art publications.

While its thematic framing is the FESTAC of 1977, the intention of FESTAC 2077 is not to replicate the original festival or its archival traces. Rather, the project references this significant period of Black diasporic history and creative ferment to develop new, expansive strategies for cultural exchange in the present day. Through writing and repetition, the programme continues to imagine, ideate, and enact the story of FESTAC 2077.

MANIFESTO ACTS!

2023-

Manifesto ACTS! is FESTAC 2077’s inaugural multi-year program, which explores alternative publishing practices. The project’s ultimate task–writing a manifesto for FESTAC 2077–initiates projects, experiences, and interactions which take up notions of the public and publicness, authorship and authority, spectacle and speculation, text and intertextuality. Read the curator’s statement here.

The ongoing project activities are detailed below.

July 2024

Publishing ACTS! Is a month-long experimental publishing workshop, which explores artistic interventions and translates them into acts of publishing, whereby publishing is expanded beyond traditional forms into alternative material, space, and publics.

The July programme proceeds from the 2023 programme MANIFESTO SEEDS, an exercise of contemplation and gathering in consideration of a potential FESTAC future, alongside increasing diminished public space in Lagos. Publishing ACTS! embarks with archival manifesto traces originating from the twentieth century pan-African festivals. How can these texts be repurposed or expanded? Manipulated? Erased? What do they provide as a sort of source material as we project our desires for our present and future? What do they reveal about the past? How do we even begin to write the world that we want to live in? The workshop considers a series of prompts and various paths to compose a collaborative manifesto for 2077 through alternative publishing practices, which consider publishing as a space for speculation, initiation, and critique.

Referenced by Yoruba Photoplays, which exist between the sonic (oral and aural), literary (written), visual (photographic), and kinetic (performative)–workshop participants employ site specificity as they perform publishing acts through a series of experiments throughout Lagos. Their collaborative attempt explores pluralistic modes of collaboration which question singularity and accord as an end goal. Why should we all simply agree on our desire and vision for the future?

This workshop was made possible by the Goethe Institut Nigeria’s Support + Connect Initiative 2024.

Writing, drawings, and creations from workshop participants during the FESTAC 2077 Publishing ACTS! Workshop (Lagos, July 2024)

May 2023

FESTAC 2077, began in 2023 with an experiential writing workshop in Lagos, with a notable challenge: How can we brainstorm collectively and approach a hypothetical event? A speculation and a seemingly tangential dream? Over the duration of two weeks, writers, artists, and cultural practitioners were invited to participate in a workshop that focused on writing in and within public space.

During Manifesto Seeds, participants navigated public writing exercises, which asked: How can we mark, preserve, and engage with a rapidly changing Lagos? How can we document and speculate on Lagos in the future? 

The workshop took place at three public locations in Lagos: National Public Library Yaba, Eko Atlantic, and the Lagoon.

Workshop participants and programme organizers (2023, 2024).