INTERMEDIAL INDIAN OCEAN - In Conversation with Mshai Mwangola
Abstract
- Abstract
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As part of the Indian Ocean events in November 2021, Dr. Mshai Mwangola, Ph.D., was a guest of the Africa Multiple Cluster of Excellence in Bayreuth. In this interview, she talks with Clarissa Vierke, Professor of Literatures in African Languages at the @unibayreuth, about her performance lecture and her kanga workshop.
Mshai holds a PhD in Performance Studies from Northwestern University (USA). Her thesis on Kenya’s “Uhuru Generation”, titled ‘Performing Our Stories, Performing OurSelves’, approaches the idea of a generational historical mission through the re-creation, invocation and facilitation of performance as a site of individual and communal reflection. Mshaï's pedagogy, research and creative work is grounded in understanding performance as both the process and product of meaning-making. In her performance lecture for the Intermedial Indian Ocean Event entitled "Hadithi Njoo: Leso as Palimpseston" she talked about the history of the evolution of leso as well as some of the social, cultural and political uses of this textile.
People & roles
Origins & context
- Title
- INTERMEDIAL INDIAN OCEAN - In Conversation with Mshai Mwangola
- Language
- English
- YouTube playlist
- Workshop Intermedial Indian Ocean - 2021
- Date
- January 23, 2023
Identifiers & sources
Full text
- Transcript
- so ushai mamora thank you for agreeing to talk to me and you for having a conversation just after the beautiful kanga workshop you gave but first of all before we talk about the kangas and the kanga workshop please introduce yourself and it was a wonderful workshop i had such a wonderful group of people so my name is michelle mongola i'm a performance scholar an oratorist a kenyan a woman who just loves cloth and performance and i think of myself as a storyteller as well yeah i think that's a beautiful kind of description and i guess you could add so to say further attributes to further attributes to it um what's the importance of kanga what about this these clothes why are they so important so for me they're important because these are the clothes literally of our lives as women from especially tanzania kenya the eastern african region but also you find you know versions of them all down the eastern coast and i think for me they're important because it literally is the cloth that you're wrapped in as a baby and for some people it's the cloth they're acting when they're going to be buried and everything else you can think about you know your weddings your um going to give a gift to a friend it's what you spread your table with it's what you work with so for me it's the importance of a club that accompanies women and men through life and and you know that in so many ways also carries our history and how are kangas then related to storytelling because you said your story is i have a version of a performance that i do that's called i have i have so many stories to tell you and each story each story is a kanga that has a story so many of the kangas are associated with people's personal stories they're associated with stories of communities they're associated with the history of this the space so i think for me what i love about kanga is you can pick up a kanga and it's got a story so it's as a storyteller it reminds you of the story to tell yeah and kanga famously of… Read the full text about 3,788 words
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