Black Pasifika: Deep Sea Protocols with Neema Githere and Conversation with Dr. Gilbert Githere

Writer, relational architect, and guerrilla theorist Neema Githere will contextualize Oceanic Refractions across Melanesia—a region whose protocols embody and insist upon repair—in this intergenerational program exploring the links between climate crisis and technology.

This event is part of a series in connection with Imagining Black Diasporas: 21st-Century Art and Poetics that presents video works, in-person discussions, and somatic participations to tap into the contemporary resonances of the Black diaspora.

From 10 am–6 pm, experience the time-based somatic works Oceanic Refractions and Cries from the Moana on monitors across LACMA’s Smidt Welcome Plaza as a precursor to the program.

Starting at 6 pm, Neema Githere will introduce the program with shorts from Melanesia.

At 6:30 pm,  Githere will be in conversation with their grandfather, Dr. Gilbert Githere, who founded the Mombasa-Honolulu Sister City society in 2000. The two will discuss deep sea protocols and the consequences of technological accelerationism on sea-stewarding peoples from the Swahili coast to Melanesia.

At 7:15 pm, Neema will introduce and screen the filmic essay AI: African Intelligence by Manthia Diawara, which explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession among traditional fishing villages of the Atlantic coast of Senegal and the emergence of new technology frontiers known as Artificial Intelligence. Considering the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara questions how we could move from disembodied machines towards a more humane and spiritual control of algorithms.

Co-presented by the William Grant Still Arts Center.

Film Program

Oceanic Refractions
Testimonies: Lydia Jacob, Unaisi Nabobo-Baba, Simione Sevudredre, Philip Tacom, Teweiariki Teaero
Visuals: Laisiasa Dave Lavaki, Tumeli Tuqota and Mere Nailatikau
Sound: KMRU and AM Kanngieser
Design, Production and Fabrication: Berlin: Smell Arts (smell), Space Forms with Frameworks. Venice: Nathan Taare (smell), Studio Folder with Elise Misao Hunchuck.
14 minutes

Oceanic Refractions is an immersive installation featuring testimonies of Fijian, i-Kiribati, and Papua New Guinean elders on kinship, self-determination, and care in the face of global ecocide. Along with reflections from these teachers, artists, fisherpeople, grandparents and chiefs, we hear field recordings of the reefs of Fiji, the oceans and mangroves of Kiribati, and the shorelines of Papua New Guinea’s Duke of York Islands. Moved by listening and silence, the work offers audiences rare insights into the environmental relations sustaining Oceania’s many worlds.

Cries from the Moana
by ‘Atu Emberson-Bain, with Siale Bain-Vete, Melino Bain-Vete, illustrated by Auntie Fonu
Animated short / Children’s book (8-12 yrs)
2024, 10 minutes  

Hakautapu Publishing presents, in partnership with Oceanic Refractions and the Pacific Network Against Globalisation (PANG), an animated short feature of the internationally acclaimed Pacific children’s book Cries from the Moana. Written and illustrated by a Pacific Island family, this visually immersive chapter book offers a glimpse of the fascinating and little-known world of the deep ocean and seabed: a pulsating source of life, beauty, energy and biodiversity crucial to human survival and well-being, yet increasingly under threat from the irreversible effects of mineral extraction on the ocean floor. A magical blend of adventure, traditional legend, and ocean education, Cries from the Moana celebrates Pacific indigenous science and navigation history, elders and ancestral relationships; family, teamwork and disability inclusion; and the special connection Pacific Islanders have with the ocean (moana).

AI: African Intelligence
by Manthia Diawara
2023, 110 minutes

Granted rare access to Ndeup, a spiritual healing ceremony practiced by Lebou peoples in Senegal, filmmaker and writer Manthia Diawara—with input from a cadre of scientists and academics—wonders what connections, if any, can be made between the possession ritual and Western logic. A.I. African Intelligence imagines generative ways of utilizing and thinking about “machine learning,” which Diawara fears might otherwise elide specific cultural practices like Ndeup.