In 2020, Volt began working with the British artist Emma Wolukau-Wanambwa and invited her to collaborate with us on a publication. The following year, the artist and her brother, writer and photographer Stanley Wolukau-Wanambwa, met regularly over the course of a month, with the specific purpose of discussing their work. For the very first time, they shared their thoughts on the significance of contemporary engagement with representations of the past in the arts, compared strategies/creative approaches and reflected on artistic outcomes.
Originally scheduled for release in March 2023, the book – which was to be titled A Broken Record in recognition of the nature of those conversations – ceased production after the tragic death of the artist, at the age of just 46, on 3 January 2023.
A subject of particular interest to Wolukau-Wanambwa was the role played by creative practices in the popular education movements that emerged from the grassroots political struggles of the Global South during the mid-to-late 20th century. For her contribution to the Bergen Assembly in 2019, she drew on the permanent exhibition at the University of Bergen’s Museum of Cultural History, titled Impressions from the Colonies, to explore in detail not only the narratives it told but also those it omitted. As an extension of that project, she brought together a group of young people of colour from Bergen, known collectively as Oi!, to recount their own stories.
