about
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness is a creative research project by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent.
An intertextual conversation between the documentary and the poetic, the video series operates as an in-house media assemblage created for the preservation of the institute’s activities and ideas.
The project aims to foreground indigenous technological knowledge and to explore how science, technology and innovation are part of a long interlinked process of accumulative knowledge production which extends long into the past.
The work builds on the field of technopolitical research to formulate a multi-scalar history and future of technological creativity. Positioning the triumphs and failures of the everyday in the future-oriented technoscientific, the work unfolds the idea of development as a historical process Africans shaped.
This project was supported by the Mozilla Foundation’s 2022 Creative Media Award
more information
lodeffilms@gmail.com
russel@substancepoint.co.za
Dzata: The Institute of Technological Consciousness is a creative research project by South African artists Russel Hlongwane, Francois Knoetze and Amy Louise Wilson. In fabricating a fictional institute and its archive, the artists explore and imagine vernacular technological practices operating across the African continent.
An intertextual conversation between the documentary and the poetic, the video series operates as an in-house media assemblage created for the preservation of the institute’s activities and ideas.
The project aims to foreground indigenous technological knowledge and to explore how science, technology and innovation are part of a long interlinked process of accumulative knowledge production which extends long into the past.
The work builds on the field of technopolitical research to formulate a multi-scalar history and future of technological creativity. Positioning the triumphs and failures of the everyday in the future-oriented technoscientific, the work unfolds the idea of development as a historical process Africans shaped.
This project was supported by the Mozilla Foundation’s 2022 Creative Media Award
more information
lodeffilms@gmail.com
russel@substancepoint.co.za
video credits
Written and Directed by:
Francois Knoetze, Russel Hlongwane + Amy Louise Wilson
A Lo-Def Film Factory & Substance Point Production
Project Advisors:
Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Oulimata Gueye
Cinematographer + Editor: Francois Knoetze
Script Development: Russel Hlongwane, Amy Louise Wilson, Francois Knoetze
Screenplay: Amy Louise Wilson
Sound Designers + Original Composition: Gugulethu Duma (Dumama)
: Caydon van Eck (b00n)
Production Design + Costume: Francois Knoetze
Drone Operator: Haroon Gunn-Salie
Collage Art: Duduetsang Lamola (blk banaana), Francois Knoetze, Amy Louise Wilson
Sound engineer and co-producer: Kerim Melik Becker (Kechou)
Percussionists : Fabiano Lima , Aduni Guedes de Oliveira
Cellist: Tsepo Pooe
Violin: Elizabeth Huehuentro
Original compositions by Dumama supported by the Gwaetler Foundation
Assistant Editor: Peacemore Patsika
Additional Graphic Design: Ilze Wessels
Featuring performances by:
Russel Hlongwane
Duduetsang Lamola
Oupa Sibeko
Nolufefe Ntshuntshe
Indalo Stofile
Thulisa Mayalo
Jacques Lukoji
Anesu Alex
Philimon Rukodzi
Ragel Mahera
Peacemore Patsika
Nicole Goto
Gomez Bakwene
Voice-Over + Translation:
Babalwa Zimbini Makwetu
Russel Hlongwane
Elinatta Hazembe (Chichewa)
Workshop Assistant:
Babalwa Zimbini Makwetu
With thanks to:
Mozilla Foundation
Project Playground, Gugulethu
Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Cape Town
Kofi Yeboah
……to those who came before us, and for those have yet to come….
Based on the following books:
Mavhunga (2018) The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. MIT Press.
What do Science, Technology and Innovation mean from Africa? (2017) Ed. Mavhunga. MIT Press.
Mavhunga (2014) Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe. MIT Press.
This project was supported by the Mozilla Foundation’s 2022 Creative Media Award
back to dzata home
back to lo-def home
Written and Directed by:
Francois Knoetze, Russel Hlongwane + Amy Louise Wilson
A Lo-Def Film Factory & Substance Point Production
Project Advisors:
Professor Clapperton Chakanetsa Mavhunga
Oulimata Gueye
Cinematographer + Editor: Francois Knoetze
Script Development: Russel Hlongwane, Amy Louise Wilson, Francois Knoetze
Screenplay: Amy Louise Wilson
Sound Designers + Original Composition: Gugulethu Duma (Dumama)
: Caydon van Eck (b00n)
Production Design + Costume: Francois Knoetze
Drone Operator: Haroon Gunn-Salie
Collage Art: Duduetsang Lamola (blk banaana), Francois Knoetze, Amy Louise Wilson
Sound engineer and co-producer: Kerim Melik Becker (Kechou)
Percussionists : Fabiano Lima , Aduni Guedes de Oliveira
Cellist: Tsepo Pooe
Violin: Elizabeth Huehuentro
Original compositions by Dumama supported by the Gwaetler Foundation
Assistant Editor: Peacemore Patsika
Additional Graphic Design: Ilze Wessels
Featuring performances by:
Russel Hlongwane
Duduetsang Lamola
Oupa Sibeko
Nolufefe Ntshuntshe
Indalo Stofile
Thulisa Mayalo
Jacques Lukoji
Anesu Alex
Philimon Rukodzi
Ragel Mahera
Peacemore Patsika
Nicole Goto
Gomez Bakwene
Voice-Over + Translation:
Babalwa Zimbini Makwetu
Russel Hlongwane
Elinatta Hazembe (Chichewa)
Workshop Assistant:
Babalwa Zimbini Makwetu
With thanks to:
Mozilla Foundation
Project Playground, Gugulethu
Theatre Arts Admin Collective, Cape Town
Kofi Yeboah
……to those who came before us, and for those have yet to come….
Based on the following books:
Mavhunga (2018) The Mobile Workshop: The Tsetse Fly and African Knowledge Production. MIT Press.
What do Science, Technology and Innovation mean from Africa? (2017) Ed. Mavhunga. MIT Press.
Mavhunga (2014) Transient Workspaces: Technologies of Everyday Innovation in Zimbabwe. MIT Press.
This project was supported by the Mozilla Foundation’s 2022 Creative Media Award
back to dzata home
back to lo-def home