Common Destiny: A Review of Mascon
Common Destiny: A Review of Mascon
Newcity Art calls Mascon "a moving tribute to African film and culture."
Exhibitions
The Otolith Group | Mascon: A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy
09.27.2024 – 01.10.2025
The Otolith Group, Mascon: A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy, 2024. © The Otolith Group. Courtesy the artists, greengrassi and Project88.
Exhibition Summary
A new moving-image work by the Otolith Group, conceived as a complement to a new mural commissioned for the Art Institute of Chicago’s Griffin Court, was presented at the Neubauer Collegium as part of a series of exhibitions and events linked to Panafrica: Histories, Aesthetics, Politics, a multi-year research project that explored the links between Pan-African politics and culture. Together the mural and film essay served as a prelude to Project a Black Planet: The Art and Culture of Panafrica, a major exhibition at the Art Institute that was informed by the Collegium research project and curated by members of the research team.
The artists described Mascon as an “audiovisual investigation into the gestures, geometries, grammars, and geographies that compose the forms and forces of the films of Ousmane Sembène and Djibril Diop Mambéty.” Mascon consists of a mosaic of images extracted from the works of these two Senegalese directors, prominent figures among a generation of African auteurs whose films explored the emancipatory movements that swept across the continent in the late 1950s and early ’60s. According to the Otolith Group, their homage to these filmmakers “summons the borderless imagination of the cine-Sahel,” amplifying and distilling Sembène’s and Mambéty’s favored motifs in order to elicit what American literary scholar Stephen Henderson termed “mascon” (shorthand for “a massive concentration of black experiential energy”).
Curated by Dieter Roelstraete.
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Exhibition Narrative
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Otolith Group: Opening Reception
Exhibition Opening
Otolith Group: Opening Reception
The London-based collective presented Mascon, a mosaic of images and sounds inspired by African cinema.
Otolith Group Exhibition Explores Legacy of Pan-African Cinema
Otolith Group Exhibition Explores Legacy of Pan-African Cinema
In the fall of 2024, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society will present a new moving-image work by the Otolith Group titled Mascon: A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy. The ...
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Common Destiny: A Review of Mascon
Common Destiny: A Review of Mascon
Newcity Art calls Mascon "a moving tribute to African film and culture."
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Otolith Group: Opening Reception
Exhibition Opening
Otolith Group: Opening Reception
The London-based collective presented Mascon, a mosaic of images and sounds inspired by African cinema.
Carousel with 3 slides shown at a time. Use the Previous and Next buttons to navigate, or the slide dot buttons at the end to jump to slides.
Otolith Group Exhibition Explores Legacy of Pan-African Cinema
Otolith Group Exhibition Explores Legacy of Pan-African Cinema
In the fall of 2024, the Neubauer Collegium for Culture and Society will present a new moving-image work by the Otolith Group titled Mascon: A Massive Concentration of Black Experiential Energy. The ...
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