Visual & Digital Arts – Shared Futures is a multimedia poetry experience that addresses the colonial past between Ghana and The Netherlands. It consists of a mixed media art installation and an AR experience in which poetry, co-created with the local community in Elmina (Ghana), is layered on the walls of Elmina Castle, the oldest colonial building in Sub-Saharan Africa that was occupied by the Dutch in the seventeenth and eighteenth century.
Shared Futures seeks to reclaim spaces connected to the colonial past between Ghana and The Netherlands through community-led XR interventions to empower local communities in Elmina, Ghana, and Amsterdam, The Netherlands.
The installation was part of the Founding Lab exhibition by Ars Electronica and the Interdisciplinary Transformation University (ITU) in Linz in January 2024.
More information:
- Shared Futures website
- Shared Futures on the website of the Founding Lab
- Bart and Paul talk about the project on the Founding Lab forum
Shared Futures is a project of Bart Kuipers and Paul Akrofie.
The video Elmina with Emma Ofosua Donkor reading “Thinking About Elmina”:
Bart Kuipers and Paul Akrofie talk about Shared Futures at the Ars Electronica and ITU Founding Lab presentation: