I am Nashilongweshipwe Mushaandja, a performer, writer and educator from Katutura, Namibia.
My praxis is interested in the process of movement (resistance) formation by using wide ranges of archives (body, place and objects). My previous projects have been performed in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique looking at shamanic, queer, Africanist embodiments through auto-ethnographic and interdisciplinary approaches.
Photograph: (c) Valide Hidinua & Mathews Abraham
I am a graduate of the University of Namibia (MA, Performing Arts) and the University of Witswatersrand (MA, Applied Theatre). I am currently a PhD (Performance Studies) scholar at the University of Cape Town where my performance research is centered in how to use art-activist archives to create and teach resistance culture in Katutura, Windhoek, Namibia.
My previous projects have been performed in Namibia, Botswana, South Africa, Zimbabwe and Mozambique looking at shamanic, queer, Africanist embodiments through auto-ethnographic and interdisciplinary approaches.
I am here in Hamburg upon invitation by Prof. Dr. Jürgen Zimmerer and the Gerda Henkel Foundation, to work within the German-Namibia colonial genocide photo project „Visual History of the Colonial Genocide“. During my residency I am interested in performing critical pedagogical strategies of protesting, queering and border-crossing the conventional archive because of its (potential) violent representations that generate feelings of trauma.
My plan is to create an interdisciplinary (song, video, play, texts & objects) body of work that suggests activist ways in which to engage colonial archives & the making of future African archives.
Links to recent works:
Odalate Naiteke (2018) https://youtu.be/eKhBFi2OkA0
SIES/CIS Dolly Potgieter and Other National Trashisms (2017) https://vimeo.com/241830520
Meguru (Prayer for land & love, 2017)
https://soundcloud.com/tschuku-tschuku/meguru-prayer-for-land-love
Indepen(dance) Avenue (2017)
https://soundcloud.com/tschuku-tschuku/indipendance-avenue-ft-kgafela-le-marebele
Letters to Ndevasia (2017) https://www.namibian.com.na/172039/archive-read/Remembering-Muafangejo–Letters-for-Ndevasia