Transformative Ecosystems in Practice, developed in collaboration with Kamene and NCAI, takes the shape of an experimental research forum, organized around several interrelated themes: Practices of Freedom and Refusal; The Earth as a Wayfinder; Exploring the Sonic Archive, and Restitution as a Practice of Care. This program also highlights the concept of reparative futures and (im)material culture in relation to artistic and design strategies, methodologies and practices.  The multidisciplinary approach foregrounds the importance of artistic and design practices in relation to reimagining restitution — and aims to stretch the notion of what restitution is or can be (beyond the objects).

Here, the primary focus will be on the concept of sustainable ecosystems and environmental justice.  Decades and centuries of (neo)colonial policies and extractive capitalism have erased ancestral practices, knowledge, and technologies. Legacies, afterlives, and experiences of continued exploitation impact everyday life in Africa. For example, drought and land extraction demand different emergent strategies, approaches, and cultural/political systems, and it is here where artists, designers, activists, and makers can bring forward imaginative approaches and artistic visions to ‘sustain the otherwise’.

The African colonies were used by European colonizers as laboratories where modernist principles of zoning and land dispossession were tested at full force. Cities such as Nairobi are shaped by their afterlife as apartheid cities, as postcolonial Kenyan land has never been redistributed equally. So, how do spaces bear the colonial wounds? How do communities mourn the practices of land dispossession that shape their everyday lives? And in what ways are artists, designers, and architects grappling with these contested histories and emotions? How does the land remember?

This gathering is conceived as a research and dialogic space where we will explore memory work in relation to land (dis)possession, spatial justice and interdisciplinary practices. Highlighting the importance of radical, welcoming and decolonial spaces and practices, the program  offers  a fertile ground for conversations that bring forward the historical, present and speculative strategies that attempt/aim to combat environmental injustice, land dispossession towards restitution and reparation. 


June 5-6, 2025  
Kamene Cultural Center & Research Space and NCAI, Nairobi