Contributors

Learn more about and connect with the participants and team-members for 2020 and beyond.

Focus Area

Roles

Adrien Larouzée

Adrien Larouzée

France

Speaker African Digital Art

Larouzée Adrien is a Video Games Production & Publishing Manager @ ARTE France, since 2015. ARTE is a public service European culture channel and digital network which focuses on creation and innovation. In the last decade, ARTE has co-produced a number of major interactive works, including the games Type: Rider, Homo Machina, Vectronom, The Wanderer: Franekenstein's Creature and Bury me, my Love.

Programme

IMPACT & OPPORTUNITIES OF COVID-19 ON DIGITAL CREATION, IN AFRICA AND WORLDWIDE

Akotchaye Okio

Akotchaye Okio

France

Speaker Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

Akotchayé Okio has been involved in the music industry for 20 years. Starting out as an artist and musician himself, he later went on to work as an entrepreneur within the cultural space in Africa, making his own contribution to the structural development of the sector within the region.

He has notably worked as a festival and TV talent show promoter, as well as editor of a cultural magazine. In addition, he was previously a member of the Board of Directors of the National Artistic Ensemble of Benin; and he served as Channel Manager Africa at Believe Digital.

He has been based in France for several years and he continues to work closely with Africa.

Today, Akotchayé Okio is International Development Officer for Africa at SACEM, where he works to help improve authors’ rights protection and development on the African continent.

Programme

Allan Cudicio

Allan Cudicio

Germany

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

After working for Candy Crush developer King and narrative games studio Wooga, Italian-Ghanaian Game Designer Allan founded his own company, Twin Drums. He is currently working on the PC game "The Wagadu Chronicles' ', the first online Afrofantasy rpg.
Allan's big passions are Dungeons & Dragons, dogs, cycling and justice.

Programme

PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers

Aubrey Mphatsoe

Aubrey Mphatsoe

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

I am a visual designer that specialises in mostly 3D visualisation but not limited to that. I also do websites and graphic design. An all round jolly creative is how I see myself. I have been in the design industry since 2006 and have loved every moment, with its ups and down and relentless late nights, it has been worth it.

Programme

Spatial Fabrications: An Uninhabitable World

Bantu Spaceships

Bantu Spaceships

Zimbabwe

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Bantu Spaceships is an electronic music and video art duo from Zimbabwe that consists of Ulenni Okandlovu aka Brotha Matabele (Vocalist/Emcee/Journalist) from Bulawayo and Joshua Madalitso Chiundiza (Producer/DJ/Video Artist) from Harare.

Programme

Misava

Barry Christianson

Barry Christianson

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

I am a documentary photographer and photojournalist based in Cape Town, South Africa. I contribute to Everyday Africa and am a member of Diversify Photo, and the African Photojournalism Database. When I was 16, on a trip to visit my late father who was working in Turkey, I fell in love with photography. I ended up studying computer science at university and worked as a web developer for years before making the jump into photography. Growing up in both working class and middle class homes as a “coloured” South African has left me with a unique relationship to Cape Town, giving me a nuanced understanding of the social issues facing communities I photograph while being able to celebrate their resilience. In addition to photojournalism and documentary photography I have participated in two art residencies: Virtual Winds by the Africa Nosy Art Institute, curated by Megan Judge as "breezy": instagram.com/virtual_winds, Is'art Gallery's Festival d'Art Urbain 2020 in Madagascar where I produced this video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HHhRz7xONRw

Programme

Bethlehem Anteneh

Bethlehem Anteneh

Ethiopia

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Bethlehem Anteneh is a Designer of Alternate Reality Games (ARG) that explores alternative use of games to rethink imaginaries and futures. She is also an experimental architect and a game-thinking expert focusing on spatial and environmental transformation; on how we can use and understand it. She specializes in the possibilities arising from analogue-digital/real-virtual spaces and their game-thinking overlap to design frameworks that elevates human experience, belongingness and problem-solving-instinct. By using games as tools, she designs to rethink cities as a collaborative play space, activate users to build alternative solutions/opportunities and design safe rooms-for-failure for innovation to thrive for its use in reality. She believes her job as a designer is to ‘Reframe our Questions and Challenges’, ‘Empower Participatory Solutions’, and ‘Access Fantasies’.

In this field, she has worked by conducting workshops, presenting talks, and designing platforms with partners and organizations internationally in more than 25 countries around Africa and Europe. She is currently the Game-Thinking Lead on project ‘EnterAfrica-Gamify Your City Future!’ for Goethe Institute. She also has co-founded an international Gamification network called ‘Chewata-Awaqi’ and is the founding member of the Ethiopian Games Association.

Programme

GENDER INCLUSION & DIVERSITY IN GAMES: AFRICA FOCUS

Bokang Koatja

Bokang Koatja

South Africa

Creative / Artist Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

I am an animator and development artist. I started out like many artists drawing way more than anything else at school. My interest for storytelling came across early as I very quickly, at the age of 8, started drawing comic strips and eventually comic books. Fast forwards 20 years, I now have a Bachelor of Fine Arts honours degree and a Post-Graduate Diploma in Digital Animation both from Wits University. I’ve worked with some of South Africa’s leading animation studios including Bugbox Animation, Luma Animation and Mind’s Eye Creative as a character animator. I have recently been involved in a visual development internship programme at the Tshimologong Precinct as an assistant art director.

Programme

Brooklyn Pakathi

Brooklyn Pakathi

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Brooklyn J. Pakathi’s art-making, through and with the use of new media and extended reality applications, manifest from internal meditations on the ephemera of intimacy and the resulting outcomes as expressed in large part due to the internet. The works reveal themselves to the artist as he wanders through a space of dissociation online. In searching for the connectors of cause, meaning and sense of resolve, Pakathi’s practice fundamentally speaks to the tragic vulnerability of romance.

There are ideas and spaces and technologies that charge his work: engaging with the relationships we manifest with digital technologies, his practice explores the formations of, enactments with and responses to digital intimacy. Pakathi plays with the aesthetic language of the internet whilst in dialogue with questions of navigating the intermediary space of transference between body and virtual anxieties of being – his work speaks to an energy consciousness reconciling the external reflections of our internal vulnerabilities.

Balanced within Pakathi’s practice is the relationship between internal and external worlds, where the artist’s own experience of digital anxiety are made visible through his exploration of techno-intimacy, but never becoming the subject or the context rather speculating possible futures and outcomes. Interested in the syn-aesthetic experiences of art-production, he explores these themes through mixed and extended realities, video vignettes, digital observations, and photographic interrogations employing text, methods of self-love and meditative healing practices.

Programme

Misava

Canda Kincses

Canda Kincses

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Canda Kincses is a freelance animation and VFX producer and one of the original members of AnimationSA, chairing for eight years. Over her career she has produced ad campaigns, websites, animated features and commercials, mobile apps, interactive installations, games and visual effects for Hollywood blockbusters.

Inspired by a vision of a vibrant and inclusive creative sector, she has spoken extensively about the development of the South African animation industry at both local and international events.

She is a fan of all things art and technology and loves researching the future.

Programme

DIGITISING IMMERSIVE AFRICAN STORIES

Chao Tayiana Maina

Kenya

Speaker African Digital Art Heritage & Technology

Chao Tayiana Maina is a Kenyan digital heritage specialist and digital humanities scholar. With a background in Computer Science and a life-long passion for history, her work primarily focuses on the application of technology in the preservation, engagement and dissemination of African heritage and culture.

She is the founder of African Digital Heritage, a non-profit organization that seeks to encourage a more critical and holistic approach to the design and implementation of digital solutions within African cultural heritage. She is also a co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism where she leads digital engagement and a co-founder of the Open Restitution Africa project.

She holds an MSc International Heritage Visualization (distinction) from the University of Glasgow/Glasgow School of Art. Her research work explored the possibilities of embedding intangible histories in 3D digital environments.

As co-founder of the Museum of British Colonialism, her work to digitally document and visualize detention camps in colonial Kenya has been featured in the New York Times, Reuters, BBC news, BBC Arts, Nation and 3Sat.

She is a recipient of the Google Anita Borg scholarship for women in technology and a founding member of the Digital Humanities network in Africa.

Programme

DIGITISING AFRICA: SUSTAINING ACCESS & EMPOWERMENT IN DIGITISING AFRICAN ARCHIVES

Chrischene Julius

Chrischene Julius

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Chrischené Julius is currently Acting Director of the District Six Museum, and heads the Collections, Research and Documentation department. She has been involved in a number of exhibition and research projects, with a particular focus on oral history research and the way this methodology has evolved as part of the ethos of a community museum. She manages and conducts interviews for oral history projects alongside museum staff. Her general focus has been on the use of oral histories as a tool for community histories, but also critiquing the ways in which oral history has at times been used to exclude voices and build meta-narratives of apartheid experiences. She is a history and museum studies graduate of the University of the Western Cape and the University of Cape Town.

Programme

THE NEW MEDIA BUSINESS OF HERITAGE STORIES: HACK-YOUR-CULTURE PANEL DISCUSSION

Christa Dee

Christa Dee

South Africa

Fak'ugesi Team African Digital Art

Christa Dee is a freelance content manager, writer, researcher and emerging curator based in Johannesburg. Her focus is on arts practitioners and spaces in South Africa and is currently working towards expanding her network more intimately across the globe. With an Honours degree with distinction in Social Anthropology, her previous research revolved around Instagram and its uses for re-thinking urban imaginaries and mapping practices within Johannesburg. She is currently working towards her MA in Contemporary Curatorial Practice at the University of the Witwatersrand. Expanding on her interest in how city-ness is constructed, her MA research seeks to explore the curatorial practices of small arts organisations in Johannesburg to unpack their value and role in city-making. As a writer, Christa focuses on art, design, digital cultures, speculative futures, identity politics, urbanism, and the relationship between these categories. Christa has also been working as the Content Manager for the Fak'ugesi Festival since 2019.

Clive Kellner

Clive Kellner

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Clive Kellner is the Executive Director of the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation. Previously, he was the Head and Chief Curator of the Johannesburg Art Gallery, co-founder and Director of Camouflage Art Centre and Coordinator of the 2nd Johannesburg Biennale. He has curated several exhibitions including Contemporary Female identities in the Global South, 2020 (JCAF) Kendell Geers, 2013 (Haus der Kunst) Thami Mnyele Retrospective, 2008 (JAG) Yinka Shonibare, 2001 (Camouflage) and Mostra Africana De Arte Contemporea, 2000 (Videobrasil), amongst others.

Daliso Ngoma

Daliso Ngoma

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art Heritage & Technology

Daliso Ngoma is the founder and Managing Director of African Technopreneurs which is focused on providing the best AR/VR/360 camera hardware into South Africa. His background extends to having graduated with BSc in Software Engineering from Asia Pacific University in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia and also being the monthly host and co-organiser of the WeAReVR Jozi meet up that aims to get like-minded and new people into the XR space.

Programme

Dawit Abrahim

Dawit Abrahim

Ethiopia

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Dawit is an award-winning game developer and the co-founder and CEO of Ethiopian based gaming studio, Qene Games. In 2018, Dawit and his team launched Kukulu, a Pan-African 3D runner mobile game, which won the 2018 AppsAfrica Award for Best Entertainment App. Qene Games is now working on its second title Gebeta, an online multiplayer puzzle game.

Dawit has also previously collaborated on international Artificial Intelligence projects such as the OpenCog AGI framework (www.opencog.org) that provides the natural language processing back-end for the famous Sophia Robot.

When Dawit is not working, he enjoys creative writing, sitcoms, fiction, history, musical instruments and learning new languages.

Programme

Delphine Wibaux

Delphine Wibaux

France

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Delphine Wibaux is deputy Head of International Affairs at the French National Audiovisual Institute (INA). She is in charge of designing and implementing INA international development strategy in connection with the priorities of the French Ministry of Culture, responsible for INA supervision.

She also plays an active role within the International Federation of Television Archives (FIATIFTA) as the current Membership Secretary and Member of the FIATIFTA Executive Council, and is also part of the Consultative Committee of the Arab States Broadcasting Union (ASBU) academy.

Prior to this (2011-2017), she participated in the creation and development of INA consulting department, in charge of providing foreign governments and institutions with assistance for the digitization, management and promotion of their audiovisual Heritage. Previously to her activities at INA, she worked as an International project manager within La Fémis (2010), and France Médias Monde (2008 – 2009). She is graduated in Contemporary History and in European Studies & International Affairs.

Programme

DIGITISING AFRICA: SUSTAINING ACCESS & EMPOWERMENT IN DIGITISING AFRICAN ARCHIVES

Double K

Double K

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Double K is a South African sound duo – through our practise we aim to evoke healing & expression through sound & art. We aim to protect the black narrative in culture by appointing ourselves as the sonic medium of the African narrative. This duo comprised of interdisciplinary artists, Ketu Meso and Kopano “KiLL SmiTH” Lichaba, who merge their artistic expertise solely to provide positive emotional rewards to the oppressive black experience.

Programme

Misava

Douglas Ogeto

Douglas Ogeto

Kenya

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Douglas Ogeto is an entrepreneur with 9+ years of experience working in the field of Technology, Branding and Entrepreneurship with key specialties in Business Development, Community Building, Partnerships & Project Management. He has lived and worked in 2 countries: Kenya & Rwanda. He has previously co-founded 4 startups in Game Development, Education, Advisory & Branding. He has also built the largest community of video game developers in Africa. He has consulted for, set up, and run entrepreneurship programs in East and West Africa for Global Companies including: Slush GIA, Ambitious Africa, Liquid Telecom among others. He is an alumnus of Edith Cowan University.

Programme

AFRICAN GAMES PUBLISHERS & MOBILIZING AFRICAN GAMES

Dr. Geraldine Frieslaar

Dr. Geraldine Frieslaar

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Geraldine holds a PhD in History, M.A degree in Public and Visual History, Postgraduate Diploma in Museum and Heritage Studies from the University of the Western Cape, (UWC), and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in International Relations from the University of Stellenbosch. Geraldine started work as a teacher in Japan, before moving to the Holocaust Centre in Cape Town as an education assistant, then to the District Six Museum as a researcher and subsequently to the UWC-Robben Island Museum Mayibuye Archives, where she worked as an archivist and completed her doctoral dissertation on the International Defence and Aid Fund archival collection housed at the Mayibuye Archives. Currently, she is the director of the South African History Archive in Johannesburg where her research and professional interests are the cultivation of critical citizenship and advocacy for social justice through archival activism.

Programme

THE NEW MEDIA BUSINESS OF HERITAGE STORIES: HACK-YOUR-CULTURE PANEL DISCUSSION

Dr. S. Njoki W. Ngumi

Kenya

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Njoki Ngumi is a Kenyan non-clinical general practitioner, currently a writer, feminist thinker, artist and cultural worker. She is a founding member of the Nairobi-based Nest Collective, and works on programs, strategy, learning and development at HEVA Fund.

Programme

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Dr. Tegan Bristow

Dr. Tegan Bristow

South Africa

Fak'ugesi Team Speaker African Digital Art

Dr. Tegan Bristow is a South African artist and developer of interactive digital installations; Senior Lecturer at the School of Arts at the University of the Witwatersrand and Director of the Fak’ugesi African Digital Innovation Festival since 2016.

In 2017 Bristow completed PhD on Decoloniality and Actional Methodologies in Art and Cultural Practices in African Cultures of Technology, which she wrote with the Planetary Collegium at the Centre for Interdisciplinary Arts at Plymouth University in the U.K. Outside of Bristow’s curatorial practice in the Fak’ugesi Festival, large curatorial projects have been included in 2018 Digital Imaginaries: Premonition with Afro Pixel (Senegal), Wits Art Museum and the ZKM (Germany)and 2015 Post African Futures exhibition with the Goodman Gallery in Johannesburg. Outside of her curatorial and development practices with art, culture and technology in Africa, Bristow has exhibited her own practice widely. Bristow has published her research in various journal and book chapters, most recently in Critical African Studies.

Programme

FAK'UGESI FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT! MEET THE #POWERTOTHEPIXEL CURATORS

Elisabeth Efua Sutherland

Elisabeth Efua Sutherland

Ghana

Curator Fak'ugesi Curator African Digital Art

Elisabeth Efua Sutherland works from a mixed background in cultural event programming, arts education, theatre & performance, as well as from a habit of experimentation in new media, visual arts, and digital technology. She is increasingly concerned with interactivity, video, sculpture and texture in making performance/performative objects. She is interested in the way culture can shape identity and development, and in the impact that active cultural curation can potentially have on individual and national attitudes.

Her current research interests around identity, and hyper-locality as a means of broad connection fuel her approach to creation and curation in the African physical and digital/virtual landscape. Efua is the founder of artist-led space Terra Alta, as well as the co-director and co-founder of the Accra Theatre Workshop.

Programme

Estelle Mmathapelo Makhoba

Estelle Mmathapelo Makhoba

South Africa

Creative / Artist Fak'ugesi Arcade

I am an Indie game developer based out of Pretoria South Africa. I love games systems design and AI.

Programme

Eyram Tawia

Eyram Tawia

Ghana

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Eyram Tawia is CEO and Cofounder of Leti Arts, an interactive digital studio that creates Afrocentric mobile games and comics. His love for comics and computer games helped to spur his interest to learn to program while in junior high school as he wanted to make the comics he drew as a youngster come to life on the computer screen. He is convinced that Africa will make a salient contribution to the world of game development and believes that this will create new job opportunities that will boost Africa's GDP.

Eyram is a frequent speaker at tech conferences and has had stints at the Game Developers Conference and the US-Africa Business Leaders Summit. He has won several awards for his contribution to the industry including the British Council Young Creative Entrepreneurs Media Awards (2012), Vodafone Ghana and Global Appstar 2014 competition and the Africa Entrepreneurship Award. In his bid to promote African success, he published his ‘unfolding’ biography Uncompromising Passion: The Humble Beginnings of an African Video Games Industry documenting his journey while aiming to inspire young Africans to tell our stories.

He studied at Kwame Nkrumah University of Science & Technology in Kumasi, Ghana and at the Meltwater Foundation, where he was a Software Teaching Fellow, inspiring others while also working on his own projects. He is also a Mandela Washington Fellow and a member of the Harambe Alliance.

Programme

Faye Kabali-Kagwa

Faye Kabali-Kagwa

South Africa

Curator Fak'ugesi Curator African Digital Art

Faye Kabali-Kagwa describes herself as an arts coordinator and culture writer with a growing interest in curation. She is an interdisciplinary practitioner with a strong focus on identity, migration, accessibility, and public engagement.

In 2020 she began exploring WhatsApp as a medium for storytelling and debuted her first WhatsApp production, The Shopping Dead, at the virtual National Arts Festival 2020. In 2019 Faye was recognized as a Young Cultural Innovator by the Salzburg Global Seminar.

Programme

Francina Mmopa Ntsimane

Francina Mmopa Ntsimane

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

My name is Francina Ntsimane. I am an Economist and a Sector Specialist currently based at the Gauteng Department of Economic Development. I am responsible for the Creative Industries in Gauteng. My responsibility is to develop industry development plans for animation, gaming, AR, VR, film, music, and craft and to facilitate the implementation of the programs within the development plans.

Programme

DIGITISING IMMERSIVE AFRICAN STORIES

Hugo Obi

Hugo Obi

Nigeria

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Hugo Obi is the founder of Maliyo Games – the first indigenous gaming company in Nigeria and one of the early pioneers of mobile gaming in Sub-Saharan Africa.

Hugo is a visionary entrepreneur with interests in the development of mobile content for Africa’s growing mobile consumers.

His vision is that through Maliyo Games, first time users of smart
phone devices can discover locally relevant content in education, culture and entertainment. His games have been featured on Google Play & the App Store.

Hugo spoke at the 2016 edition of PlayTime London, a conference for top Google Play Partners on building mobile application for the next billion mobile users.

Hugo is a graduate of Finance and Economics at the University of Manchester, and Strategy at Nanyang Business School, Singapore.

Programme

PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers

Jake Manion

Jake Manion

Kenya

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

I am a BAFTA-nominated creative director for games and interactive based in Nairobi, Kenya with a focus on meaningful and impact-driven initiatives. He is Head of Product at Internet of Elephants; a games studio in Kenya which leverages the power of games to benefit wildlife and nature. Using real scientific data at the core of our products, we build partnerships with established brands such as National Geographic and Adidas to reach new audiences. Our latest title ‘Wildeverse’ is a mobile AR game that puts players in the shoes of wildlife scientists, and beams them to some of the wildest places on Earth. Prior to IoE, I consulted on many games initiatives across Africa, and was also a creative director at the UK's Academy award-winning Aardman Animations in their games division.

Programme

PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers

Jason Stapleton

Jason Stapleton

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art Fak'ugesi Arcade

Jason Stapleton works across several fields including 3D animation, 360 video, architectural visualisation, AR, VR, Game dev, lidar scanning and photogrammetry. Currently he works as a virtual world builder in VRChat and Altspace. He is passionate about all things XR and seeks to create beguiling photorealistic environments via this medium with to investigate the boundaries of our so called consensual reality.

Programme

The WeAReVR Virtual Meetup

Jeani Varty

Jeani Varty

South Africa

Creative / Artist Speaker African Digital Art

I was born in a tiny town in the Vaal called Henley on Klip; a small tucked away place buzzing with artists. Growing up and being surrounded by such amazing talents, I took to art with feverish enthusiasm. Over the years I developed a deep love and appreciation for animation, and decided to pursue it after high school. I graduated from AFDA with a Bachelors in Motion Picture, majoring in Animation and Screenwriting. I dove headfirst into the industry as a freelance storyboard artist for four years and this afforded me the chance to work with a variety of studios, both nationally and internationally. This journey led me to joining the Tshimologong team, where I now train young artists how to upskill in the animation industry, I plan one day to open a development studio for those who have the talent but not the financial means to get into animation.

Programme

Jody Stillwater

Jody Stillwater

United States

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Jody Stillwater 周青海 is a writer, director and creative technologist from the San Francisco Bay Area. His film and interdisciplinary project themes are based in dream logic and tactile reality, with a modern/transforming approach to visual semiotics & archetype, grounded in Eastern rhizomatic systems and Western classical narrative. His cultural background as a Chinese/Norwegian/Cherokee-American amidst colliding waves of post-temporal diaspora and rhythmic, intertidal class structures has influenced a value of justice, representation and the ethereal, and allowed him to express these values in experimental film, immersive installation and cinema.

He has screened his films at the De Young Museum, YBCA, Mutek, ISEA 2019 South Korea, Marfa Film Festival, Choreoscope Int’l Dance Film Festival in Barcelona, Rockefeller’s Imagine Science Film Festival, Denver Film Festival, Bucharest Int’l Dance Film Festival, Copenhagen Fashion Film Festival, directed films for Google, Knotel, Bentley Mills, performed & installed multiple new media projects at Gray Area Foundation for the Arts, Tribeca Film Festival Hacks Lab (incorporating film + technology), the San Francisco Dance Film Festival Co-Lab (built around choreography + film). He appeared as a featured guest on Asian Pacific America with Robert Handa on NBC and was selected as the featured film artist at APAture 2018. He has received grants from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, Zellerbach Family Foundation and Fleischhacker Foundations

Programme

Expanding the Veil, Atemporal Spaces + Dream Architectures

Joey Ekunwe

Joey Ekunwe

Nigeria

Creative / Artist Speaker Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

Joey Ekunwe is an artiste who creates music, videos and immersive media pieces and is also the lead 360° video creative at Imisi 3D. Joe is a graduate from the University of Lagos, Nigeria with a Bachelor of Science degree in Estate Management. He has over 5 years of video editing experience and has worked with a number of recording artists, directors and businesses to bring their visual ideas to life.

With a dream to one day found a company that will change the face of advertising in Africa, Joe ventured into immersive filmmaking in 2018. In that space, he has created a few immersive experiences including the Imisi3D and IAF Basel partnered experience, “Reality Check” which aimed to connect the two cities of Basel, Switzerland and Yaba in Lagos, Nigeria through Virtual Reality. He is also worked with renowned artist, Jumoke Sanwo, and South African company, Electric South, to create a brand new experience about the different transitioning phases of Lagos as a city. By combining the freedom that extended reality brings with his years of video editing and compositing experience, he intends to change how the world views filmmaking and advertising.

Programme

Johana Riquier

Johana Riquier

United Kingdom

Speaker African Digital Art

Johana leads strategic business development for Emerging Markets at Unity Technologies. Her strategic insight has allowed her to forge ahead with necessary changes in the gaming industry. She is a prominent advocate for the widespread use of Unity Technologies as the innovative creation tool which is an indispensable part of the technological revolution.

Programme

The WeAReVR Virtual Meetup

Joy Ajayi

Joy Ajayi

Nigeria

Creative / Artist Fak'ugesi Arcade

Joy Ajayi is a gameplay programmer with experience in game engines such as Unity and Unreal engine 4. She is currently pursuing her B.Eng. in Computer Engineering at Covenant University in Nigeria. She is also a Women in Games Ambassador and advocates for women in the gaming scene in Nigeria and Africa. She also volunteers at game industry events, and helped in the organizing of the recently concluded Africacomicade Gamathon. In her spare time, she joins game jams with weird themes and explores various ideas and possibilities via personal projects.

Programme

PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers

Joy Mawela

Joy Mawela

South Africa

Fak'ugesi Team African Digital Art

Joy Mawela recently join the Fak'ugesi team in her role with Tshimologong Innovation Precinct's Digital Content Hub. Having worked for many years in supporting the developing and funding of the South African film industry, this is her first entry in the Digital Creative sector. Joy is responsible for business development at Tshimologong Digital Innovation Precinct.

Judith Okonkwo

Judith Okonkwo

Nigeria

Speaker African Digital Art

Judith Okonkwo FRSA is a Technology Evangelist, Business Psychologist and Organisation Development Consultant with experience working in Africa, Asia and Europe. She sits on the Board of the European Organisation Design Forum, advises organisations on emerging technologies, and is a guest lecturer at the Lagos Business School and University of Westminster. She is also the creator of the Oriki Coaching Model™ and a co-founder of 'We Will Lead Africa'. Judith is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and an Associate Fellow of the British Psychological Society.

In 2016 Judith set up Imisi 3D, a creation lab in Lagos focused on building the ecosystem for extended reality technologies (AR/VR/MR), and connecting XR communities across the African continent. The lab provides learning opportunities and access to XR resources for creators and enthusiasts, while supporting engagement and adoption by the wider community, and consulting and creating content for clients. In 2018 she set up AR/VR Africa which held the largest XR event on the continent, an AR/VR hackathon across 7 African countries simultaneously. Judith is especially passionate about the adaptation of immersive technologies to create solutions on the continent, particularly low/mid cost virtual reality, for education and storytelling. Imisi 3D’s VR film co-productions Daughters of Chibok and Lagos At Large made the Forbes list of the Top 50 XR Experiences of 2019.

In 2019, Judith was selected for Echoing Green’s Social Impact Talent Report highlighting 67 leaders trying to solve some of the most difficult and pressing issues of our time. She is also a current member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Future Council for Augmented and Virtual Reality.

Programme

IMPACT & OPPORTUNITIES OF COVID-19 ON DIGITAL CREATION, IN AFRICA AND WORLDWIDE

Julien Herbin

Julien Herbin

Senegal

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Julien is a veteran from the Video Game industry and has worked as a programmer for Ubisoft all around the world for more than a decade. He has worked on games of all genres, production team sizes and platforms. Julien is co-founder and CEO of Kayfo Games, a studio founded in June 2019 and based in Dakar (Senegal). Kayfo is focusing on delivering innovative and non-violent African themed games, primarily designed for mobile devices. Kayfo Games has released 3 games so far, and planning on releasing two new titles by the end of 2020.

Programme

Juliette Auverny-Bennetot

Juliette Auverny-Bennetot

Sweden

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Juliette Auverny-Bennetot is an entertainment lawyer working for Raw Fury AB in Sweden. She has been working in the game industry for nearly 10 years. She specializes in intellectual property rights protection and contract negotiations.

Programme

Games Skills Exchange, Juliette Auverny-Bennetot: Practical legal advice for indie game developers & new studios

Kamogelo Tselane

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

I am a 22 year old digital artist and game designer, currently completing the fourth and final year of my honours degree at Wits University. I produce much of my artistic work under the alias Nume Aluta – a name that has over the years become an extension of me. Having been born and raised in Johannesburg, much of my work has been influenced by the abundance of contrast that is found in Joburg and the tension that arises when these opposing elements interact, as they often do in the buzzing city. This leads to a lot of my work dealing with the idea of difference, and my attempts at re-imagining certain extremes.

My knowledge gained during my degree and additional creative endeavours have allowed me to create interactive and moving pieces of art that relay ideas that I feel passionately about, as well as explore issues that I believe are not being explored enough digitally. In addition to touching on socio-political ideas, I also use my work to explore more introspective and intimate topics that a wider range of people can relate to by virtue of us living in a time with such a large digital presence.

Programme

Keorapetse Tyrone Distele

Keorapetse Tyrone Distele

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Keorapetse Tyrone Distele is runner up of the Fak'ugesi 2020 #PowerToThePixel Poster Illustration Competition.
A graphic designer born and raised in Rustenburg with the knack for creating graphics that are unusual to the human mind. Vision capturer. All about Afro futurism and culture. I love the digital art world. Visual creator.

Programme

#POWERTOTHEPIXEL: Fak'ugesi Festival Annual Poster Competition Exhibition

Kgololo Lekoma

Kgololo Lekoma

South Africa

Speaker Partner Heritage & Technology

Kgololo Lekoma is the co-founder and product manager at Credipple.com where he leads the product and sales team. Being part of a mission driven start-up means he is passionate about solving the challenge of education to employment in creative and cultural industries.

Credipple is a founding partner of Hack Ur Culture where we led the research and development of an intercontinental hackathon to bring cultural heritage into a virtual future. Hack Ur Culture was developed as a response to Covid-19 to support GLAM institutions by creating a platform of experimentation to explore the possibilities when cultural heritage meets technology

Kgololo is a creative writer who is interested in experiential entertainment and games.

Programme

GLAM #HackUrCulture CLOSING CEREMONY & PRIZE GIVING

Kgomotso Zebediala

Kgomotso Zebediala

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art

Project Manager in the industry support and development unit, Acting Marketing Manager for the Gauteng Film Commission.

Programme

YOUNG DIRECTORS: DISCOVERING THE AFRICAN AESTHETIC THROUGH ANIMATION

Kgositsile Poonyane

Kgositsile Poonyane

South Africa

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Kgositsile Poonyane is the Head of Gaming at MTN Group with over 17 years experience in digital content, telecoms, financial services, media broadcast and advertising. He is a digital and gaming enthusiast with a passion for stimulating the growth of the game development ecosystem in Africa.

He began his career in advertising at Draft FCB contributing to the growth of digital and VAS content for telecommunication clients. His passion for all things digital continued when he joined MultiChoice
to launch DStv Mobile in Sub-Saharan Africa. Prior to joining MTN Group, he was Head of Consumer Marketing at PCCW Global, and General Manager for Marketing at Ster-Kinekor, facilitating gaming tournaments at cinemas across South Africa.

His role at MTN has been marked by achievements such as leading the development and launch of MTN’s mobile gaming offering, MTN Arcade and MTN Gameworld, in South Africa and Nigeria

Programme

AFRICAN GAMES PUBLISHERS & MOBILIZING AFRICAN GAMES

Komborerai Chapfika

Komborerai Chapfika

Zimbabwe

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Komborerai Chapfika is a Zimbabwean multi-disciplinary visual artist, who studied in Atlanta, GA. USA (BA. Economics 2006). Following graduation, he worked in advertising, broadcast, animation, and web development including time at LBi Interactive, Web.com, and Cartoon Network. His artwork features contemporary African and Western pop iconography, bright patterns, and often surreal figurative elements. He draws, paints, designs, animates, and creates installations. A mostly self-taught artist, he believes art transcends any singular medium and that each discipline informs the other. His hybrid aesthetic echoes his personal journey as a contemporary African artist commentating on the ongoing cultural remixing brought on by globalization, the people, and situations he encounters. Chapfika is currently developing a “Retro-Futurist-Afro-Kitsch” aesthetic. A hyperbolic, but recognizable visual style that expresses the immense potential and current dire straits of Zimbabwe, and Africa at large. Winner of the Digital Lab Africa #3 VR category.

Programme

Virtual Black Out: Experiments in the Future of Form

Lara Sousa

Lara Sousa

Mozambique

Creative / Artist Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

Lara Sousa from Mozambique studied Documentary at the EICTV in Cuba. Her short films have an essayist and self-referential aesthetic. She combines her political vision with a poetic language, searching for a “nonplace” between Mozambique and other realities. She directed the short films, “The Farm of Fear” in 2016, “End” in 2018 (Best Movie @ Mohamed Bamba Film Festival, Best Foreigner Short @ Festival 3 Passos Brazil, Best Short Movie @ Plateau Film Festival in Cape Verd), and “Kalunga” in 2018 (Prize of Best Latin American Short @ KINOFORUM). Lara was selected to Berlinale Talents 2020 and to participate in the program IN @ DAKAR Biennale 2020. She was part of ColabNowNow 2019 with the installation “Dare It!”. She is currently developing a VR project and two immersive installations related to African Mythology Heritage and New Digital Arts.

Programme

Lesego Voster

Lesego Voster

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art

Lesego Vorster is the Art Director for the Tshimologong Development Studio's internship programme. The programme was designed to take recent graduates and some self-taught artists to a higher level of animated film-making and understanding by de-mystifying the medium’s most guarded techniques.

He’s a graduate of Gobelins lecole de l’image and maintains close ties with the European industry through collaborations, partnerships and service-work.

His passions lie heavily in the development of authentic African Aesthetics which form a major part of the ethos of his film-making in his own studio, The Hidden Hand Studios and multiple training programmes.

Programme

Lesley Donna Williams

Lesley Donna Williams

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art

Lesley is the CEO of Wits University’s Tshimologong Precinct that aims to take African digital innovation to global markets through entrepreneurship and skills development. She further serves on Gauteng Premier David Makhura’s 4IR and Digital Transformation Advisory Panel. She founded Impact Hub Johannesburg in 2010 to advance social entrepreneurship in Africa.

Lesley has 20 years international experience in curating innovation ecosystems and networks with a primary focus on social and digital innovation. She facilitates dialogue and change processes, creating common ground between diverse public and private stakeholders. A career highlight was moderating a dialogue on Nelson Mandela’s legacy and the Future of Africa between President Barack Obama and Graça Machel at the African American Museum in Washington DC.

Programme

FAK'UGESI FESTIVAL OPENING NIGHT! MEET THE #POWERTOTHEPIXEL CURATORS

Limpho Moeti

Limpho Moeti

South Africa

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Limpho Moeti previously worked at Free Lives (Broforce, Gorn) and was deputy festival director of South Africa's playful media festival, Playtopia. She currently works as a producer/biz dev at Nyamakop, developing African-inspired video games.

She is one half of the Bad Form Podcast. In her spare time she thinks of ways to smash patriarchy, topple capitalism and who was the best Batman. She is definitely not a robot sent from the future to destroy humans but her boss did call her the nuclear bomb of biz dev.

Programme

Lindiwe Matshikiza

Lindiwe Matshikiza

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Lindiwe Matshikiza is a multidirectional artist working with writing, directing, dramaturgy, music and performance in a variety of media and modes. She uses her background and training in theatre-making as a base from which to approach other kinds of work, often collaborative, exploratory projects that take on more than one form over time. Lindiwe’s work is characterised by a strong emphasis on the holistic process, with the awareness that each process comes with its own set of challenges, circumstances, environments, people, community needs.

She has worked with a variety of creative partners using this experimental approach, including children and youth participating in the Hillbrow Theatre Project, Market Theatre Laboratory and with Market Photo Workshop students and groups consisting of both professional theatre-makers and untrained members of the public. Furthermore she has collaborated with temporary interdisciplinary collectives of artists - such as JHB Massive and mmm collective - developing a shared practice as they go. In each instance the processes have led to unique outcomes ranging from site-specific performances and partly-improvised street performance within local communities, to interactive installations and playful events in multi-use spaces.

Lindiwe has been an artist-in-residence at Many Studios (Glasgow), Ithuba Gallery (Johannesburg), Is’Art Galerie (Antananarivo) and Vila Sul (Salvador, Bahia). She has been a fellow of The Camargo Foundation (Cassis) and Institute for Creative Arts (Cape Town). Having spent the last year travelling, her interest has turned to correspondence art, particularly in the form of creative writing – practicing slow, long-term, call-and-response and collaborative writing processes with partners all over the world.

Programme

Lisistrata Lusandiana

Lisistrata Lusandiana

Indonesia

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Lisistrata Lusandiana has been the Executive Director of IVAA (Indonesian Visual Arts Archive) since 2018. She was the Head of the IVAA Program in 2016 and the Director of the Archives Festival in 2017. She was involved as a researcher and assistant curator in the 2015 Biennale Jogja “Hacking Conflict” and was the coordinator of the Biennale Forum, Biennale Jogja “Age of Hope” in 2017. In addition, she writes for cultural arts magazines, is the editor of Mata Jendela magazine, and is involved in several exhibitions as well as art and research projects. She graduated with a Masters in Religious and Cultural Sciences from Sanata Dharma University Yogyakarta with a thesis on Backpacker Ethnography, a critical study of community mobility and cosmopolitanism. She is currently developing programs related to decolonization and a culture of documentation.

Programme

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Louise Coetzer

Louise Coetzer

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

LOUISE COETZER is a multidisciplinary dance artist working within the genres of site-specific performance creation, choreography for the stage, and dance film. Her works are experiential, experimental and innovative, and often have interdisciplinary collaboration and new technologies at their core. She is currently living and working in Cape Town. Louise is founder and artistic director of Darkroom Contemporary, a project-based dance theatre company formed as a vehicle to reimagine dance through its innovative approach to staging and presenting performance works.

Louise has choreographed an impressive collection of original works with a strong focus on the complexities inherent in human interaction and the exploration of alternative approaches. Her work has been showcased at the the Baxter Dance Festival, Zeits MOCAA, Centre For The Less Good Idea, Dance Umbrella, the National Arts Festival, Video Art Miden (Greece), 40 North Festival (Calif. USA), Foreign Exchange (Paris, France), Ubumuntu Arts Festival (Rwanda), Agite Y Sirva (Mexico), and Global Art & Moving Images (Pinsio, Finland). Her works featured in group exhibitions for Gallery MOMO and Puncture Points, and recent projects include developing full dome video content for the CCA & Iziko Planetarium Digital Dome, producing an interactive online dance film experience for the virtual National Arts Festival, and conceptualizing a new interactive multiplayer game for Darkroom Contemporary’s Ten Year Anniversary season.

Louise is guest lecturer at the University Of Cape Town Centre for Theatre Dance and Performance Studies and teaches as part of the contemporary dance faculty at the Cape Academy of Performing Arts.

Programme

deus::ex::machina human geography in a virtual world

Magolide Collective

Magolide Collective

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

MAGOLIDE Collective, is a collective formed in 2019 by Mzoxolo ‘X’ Mayongo & Adilson De Oliveira. The duo views themselves as alchemists, who in turn are concerned with the transmutation of matter, in particular with their attempts to convert academic writings, history of art, as well as contemporary issues of identity, race, and sexuality into a consolidated body of work.

The collective works in mixed multi-media, in which the concept dictates the medium: photography, performance, video, silkscreen, painting and VR/Augmented reality are mediums in which the collective have explored. The collective looks at their work in relation to Western Art History, and aims to overturn the narratives and histories in which white heteronormative males were pushed to the foreground of such philosophical and conceptual movements, while people of colour and those who embraced queer sexualities were disregarded, pushed to the background and written out of the history books.

The duo is influenced by Griselda Pollock’s theory of the avant-garde as a determination of reference, deference, and difference. Fundamentally, the collective works to question the place of the scholastic institution in art, and whether these institutions define an artist. Politics of the ‘self’ is evident in their work, and so is the insertion of omitted positions of African identities and narratives. The work is located in the utilization of performance, as the body is their primary tool to invocate conversation around different concepts of human identity.

Programme

Misava

Mandlakayise Dube

Mandlakayise Dube

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Mandlakayise is a Filmaker from Mabopane and studied at the AFI. His recent works are JiVa, Mapungubwe Echoes in the Valley, KALUSHI, Rivonia Trial and is preparing to film Silverton Siege with Netflix in 2021. He is also a father and farmer with a great passion for technology and heritage.

Programme

THE NEW MEDIA BUSINESS OF HERITAGE STORIES: HACK-YOUR-CULTURE PANEL DISCUSSION

Mbali Dhlamini

Mbali Dhlamini

South Africa

Curator Creative / Artist Fak'ugesi Curator African Digital Art

Mbali Dhlamini (b. Johannesburg, South Africa, 1990; MA University of the Witwatersrand, 2015) is a multidisciplinary artist and visual researcher. Dhlamini performs visual, tactile and discursive investigations into current indigenous cultural practices. With a view towards decolonized practices in contemporary culture, her work is in constant conversation with her past and present visual landscapes. Working to maintain a state of unlearning and relearning, Dhlamini’s process recognises language as a medium of understanding and as a repository of knowledge.

Programme

Medhavi Gandi

Medhavi Gandi

India

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Medhavi is the founder of The Heritage Lab and has been working at the intersection of public engagement with cultural heritage, social development, and education since 2009. She has worked with a wide range of Indian organizations as well as those in Australia, the US and Europe. She is a strong advocate of open-access to digital cultural heritage, has been part of steering global campaigns in India such as MuseumWeek, and she serves as the ambassador for Art+Feminism in South Asia.

Programme

DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Meghan Judge

Meghan Judge

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Meghan Judge makes research and experimentally driven pieces that allow for encounters between the animations, installations and sound. Her works generally experiment with time. They often condense into moods and atmospheres that allow for the thickening of the present moment in ways that question hegemonic knowing. Currently, Meghan is working with the ocean as a theme for exploring beyond the limits of human power.

Collaboratively, Meghan has taken part in and organized many artistic exchange experiments, both as participating artist and as curator/organizer. These include ongoing activity in the Africa|Nosy Art Echange that finds connectivity (despite border constraints) and generates activity amongst artists in Southern/Eastern Africa and the Indian Ocean.

She is a PhD Fellow in the Oceanic Humanities for the Global South project at WiSER, Wits University.

Programme

Virtual Black Out: Experiments in the Future of Form

Mekdes Tamrat

Mekdes Tamrat

Ethiopia

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

My name is Mekdes Tamrat. I am 23. I have accounting background and currently learning masters of business administration. I work at PVH as merchandiser. PVH is apparel company who owns CK,Tommy,VH and other brands. I love exploring things and optimistic as well. I am sport fanatic and very interested in gaming.

Programme

GENDER INCLUSION & DIVERSITY IN GAMES: AFRICA FOCUS

Melisa Achoko Allela

Kenya

Creative / Artist Speaker Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

Melisa Achoko Allela is an interactive media lecturer, illustrator, independent animator, doctoral student and e-Learning specialist based in Nairobi, Kenya.

She is the co-founder of LESO Stories, an interactive media start-up that seeks to interrogate how new and emerging technologies can be used to digitize works of African Orature and contribute to the safeguarding of intangible cultural heritage. LESO Stories is currently working on the immersive storytelling VR project Sigana: Tales of Lawino.

She is the winner of the Digital Lab Africa 2020 (Immersive Realities category); recipient of the 2019 HEVA Cultural heritage seed fund and a 2018 Mawazo PhD Scholar. She looks forward to the tipping point moment for women in tech and their increased participation in the fields of Animation and Interactive Media production.

Programme

Mélissandre Monatus

Mélissandre Monatus

France

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Mélissandre is experienced in marketing, communication, media and esport / event management at an international level. She spent 8 years in London working for major names such as Activision Europe, Activision Blizzard and Capcom Europe and then continued her career at Wargaming Europe. She then worked for independent studios such as Lightbulb Crew, Wako Factory, and more.

Since 2018 and as a Marketing Consultant, she has promoted African video games and African studios under the Africa Corner brand owned by Paradise Game, the main player in the video game in West Africa, on top of the biggest West African video game and esports event (the FEJA). Since 2019, she has been working as an intervener at specialized business and gaming schools.

Programme

Michel Nkuindja

Michel Nkuindja

Cameroon

Creative / Artist Fak'ugesi Arcade

I am Michel Nkuindja, creative director and founder of Noohkema Interactive, a company based in Cameroon that specialises in digital and artistic creation.

Passionate about graphic art since childhood, Michel oriented himself towards artistic professions very early. His dream through his company is to enhance the beauties and cultural heritage of Africa through interactive media.

Programme

PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers

Mmakhotso Lamola

Mmakhotso Lamola

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Mmakhotso Lamola is a South African artist and spatial practitioner based in Cape Town. She has an architectural undergraduate degree from the University of Cape Town; and a Bachelor of Architecture with Honours postgraduate degree from the University of Witwatersrand. She has been an artist in residence at The Centre for the Less Good Idea; Grigri Pixel Residency hosted by MediaLab Prado; Residency 11:11 online residency; and has participated in the Live Art Workshops, hosted by the Institute of Creative Arts. Her work has been featured in the group exhibition, A Conversation, curated by Luvuyo Nwayose.

Her poetry has been featured in New Landscapes Anthology, published by Lungs Project. Her writing has also been included in the Summer Flowers Pumflet, published by Wolff Architects. She is a collaborative partner in the project Limbic Resonance alongside Kopano Maroga, which attempts to unearth the city’s untold story through personal narrative. She is currently a fellow at the Institute of Creative Arts for the year 2020. Her practice can be described as existing at the node of various intersections and is constantly unfolding. Her work focuses on investigations in the in-between spaces of disciplines - where it should exist - and on notions of emotional landscapes of urban realities, which she integrates with my current practice and knowledge.

Programme

Molemo Moiloa

Molemo Moiloa

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Molemo Moiloa lives and works in Johannesburg, and has worked in various capacities at the intersection of creative practice and community organizing. Molemo’s academic work has focused on the political subjectivities of South African youth. She is one half of the artist collaborative MADEYOULOOK, who explore everyday popular imaginaries and their modalities for knowledge production. She also currently leads research at Andani.Africa, with a focus on open restitution debates.

She also works with the Joburg Contemporary Art Foundation, the School of Arts and Social Anthropology department at the University of the Witwatersrand, among others. Molemo has both a BA Fine Arts (cum laude) and MA Social Anthropology (cum laude) degree from WITS. MADEYOULOOK was nominated for the Vera List Center Prize for Art and Politics 2016/17 at the New School, New York. Molemo was also a Chevening Clore Fellow 2016/17, and winner of a Vita Basadi Award for 2017.

Programme

DIGITISING AFRICA: SUSTAINING ACCESS & EMPOWERMENT IN DIGITISING AFRICAN ARCHIVES

Mounia Aram

Mounia Aram

France

Speaker African Digital Art

Mounia Aram is a professional of the animation industry with more than 17 years’ experience.

She was born in Casablanca, Morocco and she grew-up in France. As a kid, Mounia had a passion for animation, video games... and African cultures and languages. After oriental languages studies in Paris INALCO, she had the opportunity to join ShoPro Entertainment in 2003, a company specialized in Japanese animation based in San Francisco.

During her career, she has been confronted to many aspects of this business worldwide, from Europe to Asia, America and Africa. If some cultures are well-represented throughout the world – like Japanese Anime – and some countries renown for the quality of their work – like France, Canada or USA – she noticed that Africa was almost not represented at all. She thus decided to tackle this problem by founding Mounia Aram Company in 2019, a company specialized in African animation, African culture, Africa in general.
She launched her own company not only as business leader but moreover to defend her belief: Africa is a continent that should matter.

She is part of a new animation channel in Africa: African Animation Network - for which she handles the acquistion of content and the distribution of the channel worldwide.
She has been elected in September 2020 as a member of the International Academy of Television Arts and Sciences.

Programme

IMPACT & OPPORTUNITIES OF COVID-19 ON DIGITAL CREATION, IN AFRICA AND WORLDWIDE

Muraya Ogutu

Muraya Ogutu

Kenya

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Ogutu Muraya is a writer and theatre-maker whose work is embedded in the practice of orature. In his work, he searches for new forms of storytelling where socio-political aspects merge with the belief that art is an important catalyst for questioning certainties. He studied International Relations at USIU-Africa and graduated in 2016 with a Master in Arts at the Amsterdam University of the Arts - DAS Theatre.

He has been published in the Kwani Journal, Chimurenga Chronic, Rekto: Verso, Etcetera Magazine, NT Gent’s 4 edition of The Golden Book series, among others. His performative works, storytelling & collaborations have featured in several theatres and festivals including- La Mama (NYC), The Hay Festival (Wales), HIFA (Harare), NuVo Arts Festival (Kampala), Spoken Worlds (Berlin), Globe to Globe Festival (London), Ranga Shankara (Bangalore), Afrovibes Festival (Amsterdam), Spielart (Munich), Theatre is Must Forum (Alexandria), Theatre Commons (Tokyo) & within East Africa.

In 2019 Ogutu was nominated and won in the category of ‘best production on spoken word’ as part of the Sanaa Theatre Awards in Nairobi for his solo performance ‘Because I Always Feel like Running’. Ogutu is also a recipient of The Eric Brassem Exchange Certificate. He was recognized as a talent in the 2017- 2018 Amsterdams Fonds voor de Kunst - 3 Package Deal. Ogutu is based in Nairobi where he continues his artistic practice and also teaches part time at the department of film and performing arts at KCA University.

Programme

Time, the Earth, and Death are Living Things, as Stories are

N’Goné Fall

N’Goné Fall

Senegal

Speaker African Digital Art

N’Goné Fall is an independent curator, writer and a consultant in cultural policies. A graduate from the École Spéciale d'Architecture in Paris, she has been the editorial director of the Paris-based contemporary African art magazine Revue Noire from 1994 to 2001. She edited books on African art and curated exhibitions in Africa, Europe and the USA. She is currently the General commissioner of the Africa2020 Season in France.

Programme

IMPACT & OPPORTUNITIES OF COVID-19 ON DIGITAL CREATION, IN AFRICA AND WORLDWIDE

Naledi Chai

Naledi Chai

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Naledi Chai is a trans disciplinary artist exploring various disciplines. She is a trained and experienced filmmaker, currently exploring short form storytelling through sound and picture. She is one half of 'The Fly Machine Sessions', a music collective that explores South African music from the 50’s tracking it’s progress sonically and within the advancement of technology, trying to find ways to merge the two ideas in preservative ways.

Programme

Nana Asaase

Nana Asaase

Ghana

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Nana Asaase is a Ghanaian spoken word artist, writer, trainer in creative writing, and master of ceremonies. His works are mostly rendered in both English and Twi (one of the dominant Ghanaian languages). He also employs other languages when necessary. He has performed for Presidents, diplomats, business executives, traditional rulers, and even the ordinary cab driver in Ghana. Despite being young, Nana’s deep appreciation of ‘Akan oratory’ embodied in appellations directed at the high and mighty, and of Ghanaian folklore, has earned him a seat around the table of the country’s literary giants. He is a former student of the University of Ghana, Legon and was under the tutelage of Prof Kofi Anyidoho, a giant in Ghanaian and African literature. He has been interviewed on both local and international radio and television networks, including the BBC and CNN’s “African Voices” program. He is a member of Ghana’s National Folklore Board.

Programme

Time, the Earth, and Death are Living Things, as Stories are

Natalie Paneng

Natalie Paneng

South Africa

Creative / Artist Fak'ugesi Team African Digital Art

She is awkward, complex, and has a quirk to her expression.
Residing in Johannesburg and in the cyber village called the
Internet.

Natalie Paneng is a digital artist who completed a BADA(Hons)
from the University of Witwatersrand in 2018. Majoring in
Production Design (Set and Costume design) as well as Art
Management. Natalie makes use of both her self taught digital
skills and theatre background to create multi-disciplinary work.

Her work has been exhibited at Hazard Gallery through the
Bubblegumclub Future 76 Residency in 2018. In 2019 she was
part of Design Indaba's Class of 2019 Emerging Creatives and
was also a finalist for Bokeh Film Festivals Emerging Talent
Category.In 2019 Natalie participated in two residencies, Floating
Reverie's online residency as well as Faku'Gesi's Digital
Innovation Residency. She later exhibited at BKHz through her
work from the Faku'gesi residency. In 2020 Natalie has exhibited
with TMRW Gallery, The National Arts Festival, Blank Projects and
Michaelis School of Fine Art.

In her work she explores what it means to have an online
presence, the persona’s we develop online and how the internet
and its algorithms control and influence us. Her videos and art
become a way for her to interrogate as well as share how she
manifests and navigates the world she lives in and creates for
herself. The internet is MTV and she welcomes you to her crib.

Programme

Natasha Nayo

Natasha Nayo

Ghana

Creative / Artist Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

Natasha Nayo is a freelance animator and Illustrator from Accra, Ghana. She graduated at Maryland Institute College of Art with a BFA Animation and Illustration. Currently looking for hire!

She loves to practice character design, visual development and 2D animations. Her videos were displayed in various festivals such as Encounters Film Festival, Discop Johannesburg and Annecy Film Festival. Her recent TV pitch, Message Beats was one of the MIFA Pitches Finalist in 2019 and one of the Winning Pitch chosen by Digital Lab Africa (2020)

She loves making her audience smile and laugh with her animations and is quite determined to be represented in the animation industry.

Programme

Nicola Pilkington

Nicola Pilkington

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

NICOLA PILKINGTON is a theatre-maker, filmmaker and educator with an interest in conscious collaborations.

Nicola’s current vocation is to forge ways to hybridize her skills for storytelling on stage and screen simultaneously. This has manifested in projects like ‘Babylon Beyond Borders’, a simultaneous live performance over four stages around the world using telematic and projection technology; a series of performance lectures with Mwenya Kabwe exploring the possibilities of performing African Futurism; and ‘my many mouths’, a collaborative, immersive, multidisciplinary work by four women artist, resulting in a VR experiment combining physical performance, textural installation, theatrical costume, digital art, 360-degree filmmaking and sound.

Programme

Nicolas Doyard

Nicolas Doyard

South Africa

Partner African Digital Art Digital Lab Africa

Accomplished media, arts and culture professional, Nicolas Doyard started his career in the TV industry in France, where he spent 6 years, first as a video and sound technician, and then as production manager for documentaries. After graduating from Sciences Po Paris with an MBA, he then joined the French cultural network in Africa, first as an international expert seconded to the public national broadcaster in Namibia, and then as regional audiovisual attaché for Southern Africa, based in Johannesburg.

Back to France six years later, he coordinated the South African Season in France on behalf of the South African government, and then joined the Seasons department at Institut Francais two years later, where he was responsible for performing arts and music projects for the France-Korea Year, the France-Colombia Year, the French Season in Croatia and the Singapore Festival in France. After 2 years at Institut Francais, he was appointed director of the Franco-Guinean Cultural Centre, in Conakry, for 3 years. He is now back again in Paris, and currently the Manager of Digital Lab Africa.

Programme

Nkhensani Mkhari

Nkhensani Mkhari

South Africa

Curator Fak'ugesi Curator African Digital Art

Nkhensani Mkhari is a Johannesburg based multidisciplinary artist and curator at BKhz gallery. Their broad praxis spans from visual arts, performance art, installation, publishing, sound design and new media. Their artworks function as multimodal material-semiotic metaphors.

Their keen interest in the intersections between art and technology led them to their first residency with Fak’ugesi digital innovation festival for their 2018 group exhibition curated by Dr. Tegan Bristow, with Brian House and Marc Lee as their mentors. The residency culminated in an installation exploring themes of their ongoing body of work titled image of transgression exploring human spatial evolution and the cultural repercussions of that change. In 2019 their VR work titled ‘Coronation of a Holographic Rainbow’ was shortlisted for the ZKM and Solitude web residency Call no.6 curated by Mary Maggic. The project explored how ritual ceremonies may be archived using Virtual Reality and Augmented reality. In January 2020 they had their first pop up exhibition ‘Uhm Yeah’ in Paris with Le Ge’enie d’Alex. They continue to expand in their praxis, synthesizing mediums to evoke new passages of materiality to expand public consciousness.

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Noluthando Lobese

Noluthando Lobese

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Armed with a fashion design background and mentored into maturity by set designer Nadya Cohen, Noluthando Lobese Moropa has been nominated for several awards and has travelled the world with her designs for theatre under a range of directors, including Lesedi Job, James Ngcobo, Vanessa Cooke and others. She’s had the opportunity of studying under Sweden’s theatre maestro Charlie Koroly and she’s enabled her theatre design background to digress into the visual arts. She was one of the artists on JHB Massive a project showcased at the street festival in Accra, Ghana 2015.

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Phumulani Ntuli

Phumulani Ntuli

South Africa

Curator Fak'ugesi Curator African Digital Art

Phumulani Ntuli holds a Masters in the Fine Arts- Arts Public Sphere from (ECAV) Ecole Cantonale D’Art du Valais in Sierre-Switzerland and was awarded Prix-excellence for his ongoing research project “Permutations of an event” centered around notions of archives and surveillance. Ntuli’s opus merges the ambit of artistic research, sculpture, video installations and performative practices.
As an artist/practitioner, Ntuli has presented and/or contributed work within the context of the Live Works V6 curated by Simone Frangi and Daniel Blanga Gubbay, 2016 Kampala Biennale in Uganda curated by Elise Atangana, the 2016 Bone Performance Festival in Bern Switzerland, curated by Valerian Maly and also performed in the 2016 Act Festival in Geneva, Basel, Sierre and Zurich. During the aforementioned year, Ntuli participated in residencies/workshops at the Fondazione Pistoletto in Biella, Italy and the Alps Art Academy in Chur, Switzerland.

Programme

Pussy Party

Pussy Party

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Pussy Party is an incubator and collective affirming queer and women DJs and club culture in Johannesburg, South Africa. Originally founded by Phatstoki and Rosie Parade in 2016 as a monthly club night and series of DJ workshops, Pussy Party has since grown to encompass a sustaining community of artists and ‘party girls’ of all genders. We are a body-positive, pro-pleasure movement prioritising radical self-love and freedom of movement, centred around nightlife and club culture.

Pussy Party approaches revolution on the level of the body. We focus on lived experience, and bodily autonomy for women and queer people in recreational spaces. We believe in empowering the individual through not just skills share, but consistent and on-going dedicated support on a broad spectrum. We address both club culture creatives and patrons in our efforts to support safer and more empowering party practices for all.

We offer consultation services and production support to aligned events, including Vogue Nights Jozi, Same Sex Saturday / Other Village People and Le Grand Ball, as well as curatorial support to more mainstream events like Feel Good Series by MamakaShaka. We have consulted on queer and women’s safety needs for festivals like Afropunk JHB and Zakifo.

Pussy Party has hosted club and workshop tours across South Africa with the likes of Ikonika, Shy One and BBZ (all UK). We have curated stages at festivals including Afropunk, Zakifo and most recently Nyege Nyege (UG). Our DJs have toured globally including performances in New York, Berlin, London and Lusaka.

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Quentine Nyoni

Quentine Nyoni

Zimbabwe

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

I am a creative entrepreneur and director, born in a small town called Gwanda, Zimbabwe. I started off as a graphic designer doing all my work from home without formal tertiary education. I created my portfolio by participating in design competitions all over Africa and managed to win a few.
Currently, I do creative work that includes graphic designing and video directing as a freelancer. My vision is to start my own creative agency that gives affordable creative consultancy for small businesses in the peripherals and create creative jobs for fellow designers without formal education like myself.

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#POWERTOTHEPIXEL: Fak'ugesi Festival Annual Poster Competition Exhibition

Rick Treweek

Rick Treweek

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Rick is a creative technologist with a huge passion for disruptive technologies and has been called “one of the smartest minds in XR”. He is the CTO of Eden, a company he co-founded that makes virtual reality easy to use in business, mainstream and art applications.

With over 20 years of professional experience in the digital space, he has built a unique skill set across emerging technologies that makes him a leading expert in the field. Rick started his career creating one of the earliest platforms for online gaming, before smartphones and App Stores even launched. Built for Nokia phones, the platform reached an international audience and amassed millions of app downloads. After this success, he extended his skill set into emerging technologies like 3D printing, robotics, mechatronics, volumetric video, as well as augmented and virtual reality – which is now his focus.

Rick regularly shares his passion for disruptive technologies in talks with international audiences and enjoys mentoring young people and tech newcomers, helping them on their journey in XR. He is also a true believer in the metaverse and is part of an ever growing community of creators that are building these virtual worlds of the future.

Robert Mensah

Robert Mensah

Nigeria

Creative / Artist Speaker Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

I am a self taught, game developer and full stack developer. A creative at heart, I keep getting lost in my own head. Building games help me channel my thoughts and turn them to virtual worlds where stories can be told and shared with the world.

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Roei Amit

Roei Amit

France

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Roei Amit is the Head of Digital, Reunion de Musées Nationaux – Grand Palais. He is in charge of the digital strategy and transformation. He was the former head of multimedia at INA and MK2. He holds a PhD in social science.

Sean Gotkin

Sean Gotkin

South Africa

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Sean Gotkin is the Chief of Staff & Partnerships Lead at Carry1st, where he heads up publishing, partnerships and business development. Sean has spent the past decade as an entrepreneur, with experience in investing and consulting. He has also done over 400 events across the private and public sector.

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AFRICAN GAMES PUBLISHERS & MOBILIZING AFRICAN GAMES

Sebastian Galasso

Sebastian Galasso

United States

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Born in Detroit and raised in Detroit as well as San Francisco, Sebastian Galasso is an actor, writer, filmmaker, art collector and co-founder of Lenape Creative Group.

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Expanding the Veil, Atemporal Spaces + Dream Architectures

Shannon Bennetts

Shannon Bennetts

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art Fak'ugesi Arcade

Shannon Bennetts is a visual/digital artist and animator based in KwaZulu-Natal, as well as one quarter of Falling Up Studios; a ragtag group of friends trying to make a game together. She was invited to Fak'ugezi last year to speak about Precious Cargo; their concept for a game featuring a pangolin protagonist making his way home after escaping poachers. It was with this idea that they won the Digital Lab Africa #3 Pitching Competition, which among it's various prizes included the chance to attend and speak at Fak'ugezi last year! Shannon also spoke about her own short game and artwork, which she created in her Honours year at the University of KwaZulu-Natal (PMB). This game was used to explore and visualise the symptoms of Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, with which she suffers from, and featured many elements of her Fine Art work that she had also been creating during and prior to the game's completion. She is currently working full time as a junior animator at Katanimate Studios in Durban.

Sithe Ncube

Sithe Ncube

South Africa

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Sithe has been an active member of the African game development community since 2013, beginning with organizing community events in her hometown Lusaka, Zambia. She is currently directing a project called 'Prosearium.net', with the goal of documenting 1000 African women's contributions to games.

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Sizo Hlophe

Sizo Hlophe

Eswatini

Speaker African Digital Art Digital Lab Africa

Professionally trained as a software engineer, Sizo co-founded 'Antidote Music' in 2012, making it the first music establishment to put out music on the internet in Eswatini. Though started as a hobby, 'Antidote Music' was formally consolidated in 2019 and was incubated at the Royal Science and Technology Park in Eswatini. In the same year the company’s artists went on to win awards at the local SWAMA Awards and South African Dance Music Awards.

Sizo has also been involved in the production of the inaugural Poetas D’alma International Festival. This comes during a year of working with CCMA (Mozambican-German Cultural Center, Goethe-Zentrum Maputo) creating artistic movement between Eswatini and Mozambique. Sizo has also worked with BBC Africa developing stories from Eswatini, showcasing some of the young bright talents in the kingdom. Other than music and being a cultural practitioner, Sizo writes poems and is also a graphic designer.

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Stefanie Kastner

Stefanie Kastner

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Stefanie Kastner studied librarianship and graduated with a Master of Media Research at HDM Stuttgart in Germany. She was Director of the Public Library of Stadtlohn for 5 years. She worked for the Goethe-Institut as Head of the Information Department in the Netherlands, in Algeria, in Ivory Coast and in Brazil. Stefanie has been with the Goethe-Institut Johannesburg since May 2017 and is responsible for the information work in Sub-Saharan Africa.

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DIGITAL TRANSFORMATION & CULTURAL HERITAGE IN THE GLOBAL SOUTH

Tabita Rezarie

Tabita Rezarie

Cayene

French Guyana

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Tabita Rezaire is infinity incarnated into an agent of healing, who uses art as a means to unfold the soul.

Her cross-dimensional practices envision network sciences - organic, electronic and spiritual - as healing technologies to serve the shift towards heart consciousness.

Navigating digital, corporeal and ancestral memory as sites of struggles, she digs into scientific imaginaries to tackle the pervasive matrix of coloniality and the protocols of energetic misalignments that affect the songs of our body-mind-spirits. Inspired by quantum and cosmic mechanics, Tabita’s work is rooted in time-spaces where technology and spirituality intersect as fertile ground to nourish visions of connection and emancipation.

Through screen interfaces and collective offerings, her digital healing and energy streams remind us to access our own inner data center, to bypass western authority and download directly from source.

Tabita is based in Cayenne, French Guyana. She has a Bachelor in Economics (Fr) and a Master of Research in Artist Moving Image from Central Saint Martins (UK). Tabita is a founding member of the artist group NTU, half of the duo Malaxa, and the mother of the energy house SENEB.

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Teddy Kossoko

Teddy Kossoko

France

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Born in Central Africa Teddy Kossoko is a space computer engineer. He is also an entrepreneur in the field of video games and technology. He created Masseka Game Studio, the first game studio in Europe creating content exclusively on African myths and legends. He is now working on a cultural and creative content store dedicated to the African continent.

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Thabo Seshoka

Thabo Seshoka

South Africa

Speaker Heritage & Technology

Thabo Seshoka is the Head of Heritage and Research at Robben Island Museum (RIM). In this role he oversees the Museum’s Creative, Exhibitions, Natural Environment, Research, Archives and Collections. He is further tasked with leading the development and implementation of the Museum’s Digitization and Digitalization Strategy.

Prior to joining RIM, Seshoka served as the youngest Specialist: Art Curator at the Absa Gallery. At the age of 24, he was responsible for the day-to-day operations of the gallery and curated one of the largest Corporate Art Collections globally. Seshoka is also the former acting Chief Curator and Head of Museum Africa, a role he was appointed to at the age of 23.

Thabo holds a Bachelor of Social Science degree, and a Bachelor of Social Science (Honours) degree from Rhodes University. He earned a Master of Arts (Research) degree from the Nelson Mandela University, and Postgraduate Diploma in Management Practice from the Henley Business School – Africa. He is currently reading towards a Master of Business Administration Degree.

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DIGITISING AFRICA: SUSTAINING ACCESS & EMPOWERMENT IN DIGITISING AFRICAN ARCHIVES

Themba Benedict Khumalo

Themba Benedict Khumalo

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Themba Benedict Khumalo was born on the 16 February 1987 in Soweto, Johannesburg, South Africa.
Khumalo graduated from Artist Proof Studio in printmaking, where he obtained a Design Foundation Certificate. He went on to do a professional printmaking development course under the sponsorship of Pinpoint One, at Artist Proof Studio in 2009 where he was an intern in the silkscreen unit and special project team. Khumalo is interested in exploring different mediums, such as charcoal drawings and painting.
He has been involved in a number of group exhibitions, commissions and special projects, such as painting murals in the Eastern Cape and being invited to exhibit in a group show at Isolate del Cinema festival in Rome, Italy.

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Spatial Fabrications: An Uninhabitable World

Tiare N Ribeaux

Tiare N Ribeaux

United States

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Tiare Ribeaux is an interdisciplinary Hawaiian-American artist, filmmaker, writer and artistic director based in the Bay Area. She founded B4BEL4B in 2014 as a platform and community space to prioritize critically underrepresented artists in technology and media arts. She co-founded REFRESH Art, Science, and Technology in 2016 as a collaborative and politically engaged platform. As an artist, her work explores the interfacing of technology with our human bodies and the environment, and employs storytelling to make visible social and ecological imbalances while imagining more regenerative futures.

She is interested in re-centring indigenous technology, and stories that include indigenous futures and the modern indigenous experience. Her recent work at the intersection of art and biology aims to redefine and subvert the binaries of the natural versus the unnatural, and technology versus nature. She has won numerous grants and awards for her artistic leadership, including 2 New and Experimental Works Grants from the Kenneth Rainin Foundation, the Citizen Diplomacy Action Fund, and grants from the SFAC, the Zellerbach Family Foundation, and the Center for Cultural Innovation, among others.

She has shown work both nationally and internationally, and has given artist guest lectures at conferences and universities including ISEA, Stanford, UC Berkeley, SFAI, SJSU, and the school of ATEC at UC Dallas. She was awarded a web residency with Akademie Schloss Solitude + ZKM in 2019 and selected for the American Arts Incubator in 2017-18 with ZERO1. She curated the Soundwave Biennial in San Francisco in 2015-2016 and the CODAME Festival in 2015.

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Tinashe Mushakavanhu

Tinashe Mushakavanhu

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art Heritage & Technology

Tinashe Mushakavanhu is a writer, editor and scholar from Zimbabwe working at the intersection of art, design and technology with a vested interest in archives. He holds a PhD in English from the University of Kent. He has co-edited three books: Some Writers Can Give You Two Heartbeats(2019); Visa Stories: Experiences Between Law and Migration (2013) and State of the Nation: Contemporary Zimbabwean Poetry(2013). He is co-creator and lead researcher on readingzimbabwe.com a digital archive collecting, cataloguing, digitizing and making available information on books about Zimbabwe from the 1950s to the present. He is also co-founder of a fugitive creative agency, Black Chalk & Co, which brings together writers, artists, designers, academics, and technologists and engenders a new culture and new forms of publishing and creative production.

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Misava

Tolo LikaKheswa

Tolo LikaKheswa

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Tolo LikaKheswa is the 2020 Fak'ugesi Festival #PowerToThePixel poster competition winner!
Born, raised and currently reside in Dimbaza, King Williams Town. I am a visual artist who makes use of traditional and digital methods of producing work in the field of illustration ans design. I have also been doing public art since 2013 and have since been involved in projects that promote mural art in the community and public art festivals. My passion for the work has kept my ambition a flame and even through the sum all the experience gained, I always aspire to improve and develop through collaborations and skills exchange which ultimately contributes to individual and collective growth. I am a strong believer in peace in the community and see Art as an effective vehicle to drive change socially in efforts to curb the implications of poverty and crime.

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#POWERTOTHEPIXEL: Fak'ugesi Festival Annual Poster Competition Exhibition

Tristan Mocke

Tristan Mocke

South Africa

Creative / Artist Speaker Digital Lab Africa African Digital Art

President of Studio Starburst, a South African Worker Cooperative focused on game production.

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Tutaleni Ilonga

Tutaleni Ilonga

Namibia

Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Tutaleni Ilonga is a Game Developer, VFX artist, Writer, Filmmaker, Upcoming Comic Book Writer and the founder of TL Studios Entertainment. He is also the founder of Game Jam Africa, a platform designed to help foster game development in Africa. Tutaleni organizes events that promote filming & game development competitions. He is the first Namibian game developer to ever host a Global Game Jam and Game Jam Plus event in Namibia. Tutaleni is among a few Namibians to have a game featured on the Game Africa Industry website.

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Vanessa Lorenzo Toquero

Vanessa Lorenzo Toquero

Switzerland

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

As an artist Vanessa creates hybrid media ecologies embedding nature and the technologies that intertwine them. Trained as an industrial design engineer, she critically engages with technology to enable odd sympathies among species and foster post-anthropocentric futures. Vanessa has exhibited internationally, participating in symposiums, conferences and developing workshops that focus on the radical poetry of the more-than-human. She nourishes (from) and believes (in) communities of hackers/artists working in alternative spaces to have the power to subvert the dominating role of traditional science and technology.

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Vic Bassey

Vic Bassey

Sweden

Curator Speaker Fak'ugesi Arcade

Vic Bassey is the curator and content lead of 'PEOPLE OF PLAY: African Game Developers' for Fak'ugesi Arcade 2020 Online.

Bassey is a regular fixture of the European and African games industries and currently works as Business Development strategist at global publisher - Raw Fury. Vic is a mentor to a number of indie studios and has previously covered the games industry in Sweden as a contributor for Game Reactor, Pocket Gamer, MCV Nordic as well as video reviews for Press 2 Play. He is a contributor at Games Industry.biz and currently the founder and editor of Games Industry Africa.

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Vincent Moloi

Vincent Moloi

South Africa

Speaker African Digital Art Heritage & Technology

VINCENT MOLOI is a multi-award winning independent filmmaker known for his much-admired documentaries. He graduated with a certificate in Media Studies in 1998. His credits are across genres like news, drama, entertainment and documentaries dealing with lifestyle, politics, human interest and historical topics. So far he has directed over 20 documentaries, 14 dramas, 3 short films, and others. His latest Namibian documentary Skulls Of My People won the Best Documentary Award at Afrika Film Festival Kolne’ in Germany. The documentary went on to win Best Documentary, Best Director in Documentary, and Best Cinematography in Documentary at the South African Film & Television Awards (SAFTA). At the same SAFTA ceremony Moloi’s audience record-breaking TV drama series, Tjovitjo, went on to win 7 South African Film & Television Awards.

Vincent started his film career in 1999 as an intern at the South African Broadcasting Corporation’s promo department. He later left the national broadcaster to join an independent Italian filmmaker on a series of 8 documentaries named Magic and Traditional Healing in Africa. Moloi's entrance into fiction was as a trainee director under the mentorship of Terry George on an award winning feature film Hotel Rwanda that was nominated for the Golden Globe Awards. But where Moloi cut his teeth was in the community media sector as a young hopeful film director. This is where his social voice was shaped.

He understands that films are not just for entertainment purposes but a tool to shift perspective and shape common goals that can empower society. He was later elected Head of Production of Open Window Network – a mother body for all South African community television initiatives.

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THE NEW MEDIA BUSINESS OF HERITAGE STORIES: HACK-YOUR-CULTURE PANEL DISCUSSION

vonMash

vonMash

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

vonMash is a young South African artist, utilizing new media (mixed media) to express himself. His work is heavily influenced by African mysticism as well as his childhood experiences of lucid dreaming. He draws a lot of inspiration from his personal view of life, African aesthetics, religion, social and political issues and the cosmic universe. The work is a blend of collaged images, textures and distorted colours and shapes; breathing life to a hyper digital collaging style he coined as “AFRIDELIC” art.

What vonMash wants his work to bring to the world, is the upliftment and eye opening perspective of who we are as Africans as well as shining a light upon our spiritual connection to the universe. We are kings and queens.

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The AFRIDELIC trip: Faces of mixed realities

Wakiuru Njuguna

Wakiuru Njuguna

Kenya

Speaker African Digital Art

Wakiuru is a Partner and head of investments at HEVA Fund, a creative and cultural economy catalyst fund in East Africa. In her
role, she is instrumental to the development of innovative hybrid financial models that combine the best elements of venture capital
and impact investment, with a keen application of a gender lens to increase access to early and growth stage business capital for
youth and women. With a unique perspective of the creative economy, Wakiuru has continuously offered advisory services to
businesses in the creative sector looking to define their strategies and scale.

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IMPACT & OPPORTUNITIES OF COVID-19 ON DIGITAL CREATION, IN AFRICA AND WORLDWIDE

Walid Sultan Midani

Walid Sultan Midani

Tunisia

Speaker Creative / Artist Fak'ugesi Arcade

A video game enthusiast and pioneer in Africa, Walid Sultan Midani is the founder and CEO of DigitalMania Studio, the first video game development studio in Tunisia that currently specializes in VR and AR games for team buildings. Walid is also the founder of YouRun, a video game studio and publisher based In Malta which focuses 100% on casual competitive games with the game: Warshmallows. Walid also mentors other entrepreneurs who are working to establish their startups and raise funds. Outside of business, Walid collaborates with NGOs advocating freedom of speech and minorities empowerment. Walid graduated in 2008 from ESPRIT-Tunisia with a degree in IT engineering.

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Wendi Ndaki Mutisya

Wendi Ndaki Mutisya

Kenya

Speaker African Digital Art

I am a Visual Artist and a Writer. I am passionate about the fusion of art and technology and as a result I like to refer to myself as @wendiartit. I am a part of Enter Africa (a Pan-African community of Game Developers), a contributing writer for LudiqueWorks (a Game Publishing Company in Kenya) and part of the organizing team of the Africacomicade Gamathon (a Pan-African event that encourages collaboration among African Creatives).

I am currently working on the script of the award-winning Game from Rwanda called Keza 3D Game. I just got accepted to the Moran StoryLab by BlackRhino VR. Moran StoryLab is a Virtual Reality Training Centre focusing on equipping young tech enthusiasts with skills in immersive journalism, allowing storytellers to take their audience on a more exciting, emotive journey.

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GENDER INCLUSION & DIVERSITY IN GAMES: AFRICA FOCUS

Xopher Wallace

Xopher Wallace

South Africa

Curator Fak'ugesi Curator African Digital Art

Xopher Wallace is a South African visual creative who expresses this creativity through fine art photography and augmented reality. With mixed reality as a key interest, he strives to link the real world and his imagination.
Xopher’s introduction to visual art came via his mom buying him and his brother a camera while they were still in high school and they used it to recreate their favourite music videos. Xopher did this with his brother and ended up taking the lead in video editing and later decided to study photography and film at Boston College. Xopher got into conceptual photography a few years after graduating and created this character that he goes by now, Xopher Wallace, who takes a surreal approach to his work. He plays around with anonymity as a means of putting the art first and also preserving his authentic character. He found that there are some images that you can’t create with just a camera but can virtual create which got him into filters. His filters also play around with anonymity which tie in well with the Xopher Wallace persona.
His past work experiences include cinematography, street, event and conceptual photography, film and most recent creating Augmented Reality. During lockdown he created a first of its kind AR Filter Exhibition called Inside/Outside Gallery featuring local artists. He is currently the curator for the Faku’gesi Digital Innovation Festival creating filters based on vonMash’s work with reference to African masks and also setting up the AR gallery to showcase von Mash’s work.

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Yogin Sullaphen

Yogin Sullaphen

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Yogin Sullaphen is a musician in South Africa. He has experience in teaching, performance, composition and production of music. Yogin studied music at The University of Witwatersrand which established his versatility within the field. He composes for theatre and performance art, and is part of bands and other music projects in and around the city of Johannesburg, as well as abroad. Recently Yogin was nominated for a Naledi theatre award in the category "best original score" for Jungfrau directed by Jade Bowers. Currently he is experimenting with live looping within the context of theatre and performance art as well as in a musical duo with Annalyzer. He is a multi-instrumentalist with emphasis on the guitar though he feels his strength lies in his understanding of harmony, texture and diversity in musical style. Yogin Sullaphen is active on YouTube, Instagram and Soundcloud.

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Spatial Fabrications: An Uninhabitable World

Youssef El Idrissi

Youssef El Idrissi

Morocco

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Youssef El Idrissi is a 27 years old from Casablanca, Morocco. He is a creative practitioner - artist and cultural operator - who believes firmly that art can not be dissociated from social and spatial matters. Access to arts & culture is a necessity for a fairer and more eco-friendly society. Through his different projects, he aims to connect the aesthetic and the politic by deconstructing the norms, the social barriers and old methods using alternative pedagogies, formats and interdisciplinary practice.

Youssef co-founded a cultural platform named 'Kounaktif', which aims to democratize access to arts and culture by developing creative abilities of those marginalised from policies of the city - creating a creative lab each year, making art tutorials, organizing round tables, music concerts and festivals.

He has a sound project named "Rhizome" that focuses on mixing and producing sounds through field recordings and adding samples of a speech or a social uprising. Aesthetically, he explores from IDM to Psycore, passing by Breakcore or Downtempo. Very eclectic.

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Time, the Earth, and Death are Living Things, as Stories are

Zara Julius

Zara Julius

South Africa

Creative / Artist African Digital Art

Zara Julius is a multidisciplinary social practice artist, social researcher, and vinyl selector based in Johannesburg, South Africa. With a background in anthropology, religious studies and photography, her work is concerned with the relationship between aesthetics and culture, African futures, and the interplay of identity, faith, religion, urbanity, migration, race, and desire throughout Africa and its diaspora. Working with sound, video, performance and objects, Zara Julius’ practice involves the collection, selection and creation of archives through extensive research projects. Concerned with the ethics of representation, Zara’s use of co-productive methodologies help ensure her subject areas are triangulated. The bulk of Zara’s projects have focused on mapping the sonic and spiritual mobilities of religious rapture and rupture with congregants of syncretic religions, and on (post)apartheid narratives around race and place as they pertain to intimate archiving practices.
As a vinyl selector, Zara's sets reflect her desire to travel land, seas and time. Her collection explores organic percussion and bass heavy sounds across genres from Africa and the African Diaspora. She is especially interested in the evolution of spiritual music forms and how they find themselves in contemporary "global bass" music. Zara selects vinyl regularly in Southern Africa, most notably at MTN Bushfire, Rocking the Daisies, Red Bull Music Festival Johannesburg and AfroPunk. In 2017, Zara toured London, being hosted by Touching Bass, Balamii radio, Hoxton FM, and Total Refreshment Centre. She has played alongside artists such as Nubya Garcia, Madala Kunene, Shabaka Hutchings, BLK JKS, Andrew Ashong & DJ Spinna. Zara has also gigged in Cuba and Colombia and is passionate about creating and imagining conceptual, visual, sonic, interpersonal and political links throughout the Global South.

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Contact Fak'ugesi

Tshimologong Precinct

Address : 41 Juta St, Johannesburg, South Africa

Call : 010 822 3530

Website : tshimologong.joburg

Organisational Partners

AnimationSA

Cav’ Platform Goethe-Institut

Credipple

Digital Lab Africa

Games Industry Africa

Goethe Institut South Africa

Institut National de l’Audiovisuel – INA

PATAP by Vrystaat Arts Festival

POPArt

SACEM

Tshimologong Development Studio

Tshimologong Innovation Precinct

WeAreVR_Jozi TeamEpic

Wits Digital Arts Dept.

Wits School of Arts – University of the Witwatersrand

Partners & Funders

Agence Française de Développement (AFD)

Arts Research Africa

Creativate Digital Arts Festival

Gauteng Film Commission

National Arts Council

Pro Helvetia & ANT