Sherida Kuffour
is a graphic designer, art director and writer. She has a BA in Graphic Design (Ravensbourne University London) and an MA in Design for Visual Strategies (Sandberg Institute Amsterdam), and lives and works in Zurich. She often seeks out collaborations with other creatives from the fashion, fine art, culture and media sectors. She was art director and editor of various issues of New African Woman magazine. Besides working for her design studio, she keeps busy writing about issues of race, feminism and design. Kuffour appears in the multimedia exhibit Facing Blackness of The Black Archives in Amsterdam, which deals with the underexposed history of the Dutch image formation about black people from the colonial period to contemporary society.
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Moving into Space
Despite their popularity with readers, fantasy and science fiction remain on the margins, even though these imaginative and expressive genres enrich and elevate literature. Usually, little attention is paid to speculative fiction at literary festivals. Time for change! During this Winternachten Festival (theme: Whose House is This?) we not only approached the idea of "house" in a traditional sense, but also made room for stories in which Earth no longer suffices as house or home.
In today's world, we could easily picture a house, or an inhabitant. We recognized our forms of cohabitation and communication. But how will we live together in 2060? What does a house look like in another dimension, and how would people speak to each other there? And what if Earth no longer provides a "home" - where will we find a new one? And what if someone else is already living there? For Moving into Space, we talked to authors who think outside the borders of our current ideas of what constitutes a house. We celebrated the diversity and creativity of speculative fiction. And in the process we encountered a new world where we can feel at home.
"Anthropologist of the future" Roanne van Vorst took on the house of the future, while poet and performer Robin Block, a great science-fiction fan, offered an ode to the genre. In his beautiful and poignant work, American author Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah reminds us that the future can be a whimsical place. Moving into Space showed why speculative fiction is also eminently political, and why precisely this genre is so important for the future of literature. We explored the present and the past but especially the future - we followed dimensional paths and interplanetary avenues...
The evening was concluded by the great band N3RDISTAN, known for their mythical electronic tunes, N3rdistan created a compelling poetic fusion that was serene and unsual. We danced into the future!
English spoken.
Reading tips to get in the mood (by event authors):
- Friday Black by Nana Kwame Adjei-Brenyah
- In Between, Di Antara by Robin Block
- Met zijn zessen in bed by Roanne van Voorst
Want to read more? These speculative works inspired our event programmers Fleur Jeras and Nisrine Mbarki:
- The Djinn Falls in Love & Other Stories by Amal El-Mothar et al.
- Lagoon by Nnedi Okorafor
- Who Fears Death by Nnedi Okorafor
- Black Leopard, Red Wolf by Marlon James
- Lilith's Brood by Octavia Butler
- Popisho by Leone Ross