Accessing the Ancestors: The Re-Mediation of José Redinha’s

Paredes Pintadas da Lunda

Delinda Collier, School of the Art Institute of Chicago

Alguém varreu o fogo “virgin discs” was saving the Chokwe culture from
a minha infância demise at the hands of the Chokwe themselves,
e na fogueira arderam todos os ancestres. who, according to him, were discarding their
heritage in favor of “newer” musical forms. They
(Some fire swept through were denying the traditions of their ancestors, an
my childhood ironic characterization of the upheavals that took
and the fire burned all of the ancestors.)1 place in the Lunda region during the rise of the
—“Terra Autobiográfica” mining industry and colonial conflict—after all,
by Francisco Fernando da Costa 80 percent of Diamang’s workforce was Chokwe,
Andrade a large portion of whom were conscripted by
the colonial government.3 Vilhena explains that
the Dundo Museum was the first line of defense
in saving tangible and intangible Chokwe culture.
Júlio Vilhena, scholar and son of the then The company’s last resort, he says, was the use
Delegate Administrator for the Companhia de of phonographic discs and other media objects
Diamantes de Angola (Diamang), wrote an article to record analogical information that could pass
for the Journal of the International Folk Music Council through and out of these tropical conditions
in 1955, in which he presented a folklore project and into the ether—the non-place safety zone
of the Dundo Museum in Lunda North, Angola. of storage media.
He comments on the logistics of recording folk Diamang built the Dundo Museum in 1940s
songs and oral culture among the ethnic Chokwe and it became the ultimate apparatus to store
residents in the region, stating, information about what they called “life” in
the Lunda provinces, and then to transmit that
In the future a tape recorder will be used information to the Chokwe and around the
for this work, which will give greater world in the form of “education.” Under the
mobility, as it will avoid the transport directorship of José Redinha, from the 1940s
of the voluminous and fragile stock of through the 1960s, the museum collected and
virgin discs in the conditions of travel exhibited thousands of objects, choreographed
prevailing in the tropics.2 cultural events, exhibited photographs of chiefs
and political leaders, and hosted scholars from
The excursions Vilhena describes included around the world, who published an impressive
tents, trucks, and generators that were all subject corpus of scholarship on the Chokwe and other
to heat, bad roads, and humidity. However, for native Angolan populations.4 Most of the research
Vilhena, this process of etching Chokwe voices into was published in Diamang’s Cultural Publications

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 Accessing the Ancestors 11

series, of which there are 89 volumes.5 This essay in the Lunda provinces—what they termed
will focus on one of those publications and its Scientific Colonialism—producing knowledge
subsequent adaptations: José Redinha’s Paredes that encompassed studies of botany, biology,
Pintadas da Lunda (Painted Walls of Lunda) (1953). zoology, and medicine, and stressing the re-
Paredes is a compilation of Chokwe hut murals education of the native population. 6 In the
that Redinha collected between the years 1939 decades following its publication, a generation
and 1943. Using photography and watercolor, he of anti-colonial artists began to look at Paredes
copied the images from huts primarily around with the intent of re-mediating its images, mostly
the Chitato district of the Lunda Sul province in paintings, to serve the growing independence
of northeastern Angola, 10 km from the city movement and to repatriate Angola’s indigenous
of Dundo. Bertrand Brothers, Inc. of Lisbon, visual heritage. In some cases, Redinha himself
specialists in typography, printed Paredes with mentored these artists.
its 102 color plates. Redinha replicated the The idea that native art operated by a
murals as closely possible, even using the same disinterested autonomy was attractive to anti-
pigments and binders as the Chokwe artists. As colonial Angolan writers and artists before and after
he did with the maps and sketches he included Angola’s independence in 1975. The most famous
in publications and company reports, Redinha poem by Angola’s first president, Agostinho Neto,
signed each watercolor as if it were an original “Havemos de Voltar (We Shall Return),” uses the
work of art. This case study attempts to unravel trope of “return” to the land, the ancestors, the
the march of mediation and its painful digestions minerals, and the culture as the ultimate act of
using three moments of Paredes: Redinha’s initial activism.7 Scholar and visual artist Manuel Vitor
intervention into the artistic practices of the Teixeira, or Viteix, researched Chokwe art as a
Chokwe, the book’s publication and circulation, similar nationalist return to primordial Angola.
and its re-mediation by two recent online heritage He was an activist-artist before independence and
projects. Within this essay, Parades acts as an object a cultural administrator for the Marxist-Leninist
of media theory and history, bridging the pre- Movimento Popular da Libertação de Angola
colonial, colonial, and post-colonial periods in (MPLA) government after independence. For
Angola. him, accessing and nationalizing the writings of
Paredes is a colonialist object par excellence. Portuguese anthropologists was a revolutionary
Its publication by Diamang occurred within a act, a return to the ancestors ghosted by the
bounded situation, as Diamang was a hermetic Portuguese. In particular, Paredes was an important
and hierarchical company, a geographically resource for artists who wanted to learn about
isolated organization, and a total project of and use Chokwe images in their easel paintings.
control. Often called a “state within a state,” By resuscitating native methods of mediation,
Diamang maintained health services, agriculture, as Viteix’s reasoning went, contemporary artists
a radio station, museum, and a hydroelectric dam, freed the colonial stranglehold on African
and by the 1950s it was returning enormous communalist art and society, concurrent with a
profits to a cadre of international investors, as Marxist restructuring of the state. In other words,
well as the Portuguese and colonial Angolan re-mediation is remediation: an improvement of
governments. In its many activities, Diamang a technological medium, as well as a societal
measured and controlled every aspect of life correction.8

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It is important, then, to be specific about how aesthetic and archival. Redinha’s signature was
Redinha disallowed for innovation within Chokwe digitally removed from the images in order to
art, and particularly his position concerning the “repair an injustice” done to the Chokwe artists,
recursive logic of many Chokwe art practices, in that they were unnamed by Redinha. For
their self-referentiality, and interactivity. For it both projects, visibility and participation were
was his appraisal of Chokwe art as static and the guiding principles. The latter part of this
obsolescent—which was demonstrably politically essay will argue that the democratic gesture of
motivated—that Angolan artists desired to removing Redinha’s signature operates on the
negate. In this essay, I will repeatedly, sometimes interface of a complex geopolitical system of
allegorically, refer to a Chokwe practice that most media objects, flows of information and capital,
clearly performs the tension between system and power plays that are obfuscated with each act
and agency: sona. Sona is a drawing performance of digital mediation.
that has a very clear and open logic, which is These projects give us pause to consider
articulated by its practitioners, but is incrementally the colonialist structure of media themselves,
complex and closed to non-practitioners. As such, particularly the myth that “native” media and
it contains within it a theory and method of their logics are unconsciously self-organizing,
pictorial representation and, in the larger scheme, analogical, and “real,” as opposed to colonialist
it mediates assertions of power and conceptualizes media, which are artificial projects of rationalistic
societal progression. For instance, sona instructs control and surveillance (digital).11 Rather, that
boys as they are initiated into the mukanda rite at which passed through the signifier and into a
puberty, where they are instructed for a period technological medium with colonization was
of time on rituals, history, and the production of not any primordial real presence of the Chokwe
objects, such as masks and figures, which mediate ancestors, but Chokwe media that likewise
communication with the ancestral spirits.9 Sona is negotiated conceptions of the ancestors and
a scalar, self-perpetuating system, like cybernetics, their protocols of access. It is clear that sona
and like cybernetics, the reception-transmission went from a land-based medium to a more
process is where meaning and its translation into mechanized medium that privileged information
material authority is negotiated. This autonomous and opticality, its materials and logics much
structure of sona, as well as its manipulation and more dispersed. However, even within Chokwe
potential for usurpation, will be an important link media practices, materials and logics are used to
to the discussion of the two recent digital projects obsolesce previous media of transmission and to
and the “recursive” logic of the Internet.10 colonize access itself.
Two online heritage projects digitized material Therefore, mediation is the constant
from Paredes: the Lunda Tchokwe project of the destruction and construction of ancestors, with
contemporary art exhibition, Trienal de Luanda ancestors being “real” or primary mediation, such
(2006), and the Cultura Lunda Tchokwe project, as the speech act. In these various interventions,
launched in 2003 by International Trading and the latest digital project included, the discourse
Mining, Ltd. (ITM). Angolan artist and Trienal de reveals a unanimous sentiment that older media
Luanda director, Fernando Alvim, authored both are closer to the real than new media—a desire
projects. Each project digitized and exhibited for a more pure connection with things like the
sections from Paredes for related purposes: ground, the spiritual realm, and the body—the

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 Accessing the Ancestors 13

Figure 1. Screen shot of one of the Trienal de Luanda Lunda Tchokwe pages showing a version of Estampa 13
from Paredes Pintadas da Lunda (2006).

analog. For mid-century Structuralists, like Victor of media from what Ong calls “primary orality”
Turner, symbolism in Africa indicated a direct to print cultures, and how empires are formed
relationship with the ancestors. When symbols by superior modes of communication.12 They
acted as consciously manipulated (changing) describe a progression of media linked with “the
media, they were seen as either an aberration order of things,” as technology builds on itself.
or proof that colonialism had permeated to the More recently, Matthew Fuller has described a
extent that ancestor worship, indeed, collectivism more internal, ecological process of media, as
itself, had died. Reading mediation against the it “eats” itself: “[e]ach body stretched around
grain of a lost tradition and a disconnection from another marks the mastery of a domain.” 13
real ancestors, I instead utilize the ancestors as Media theory’s description of ghosting (in Fuller,
a way to conceptualize mediation as a tool that a result of the violent act of mediation) links
both invests and divests communities of power. technological obsolescence to both its death and
All of the media within this essay seize control immortality: as one media envelops another, the
of the protocols of transmission as a strategic dead are kept in the present. Within European
method of securing resources and the authority colonization, one must add to this spectrality:
to enunciate a particular history. the self-imposed charge to save the primordial
Media theory often describes “ghosting” in human family, of which the father figure was
terms of its ability to mythologize and render the colonial occupier.14 Reading these together,
previous media obsolete. Harold Innis and Redinha’s book intentionally placed Chokwe
Walter Ong approach a civilizational genealogy knowledge transmission in the realm of the

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14 Collier

dead—it calcified the protocols, participation, and Sona’s multi-media performance should be
power negotiation in those societies it purported briefly described here, as it will introduce how
to save. Though media theory rarely specifically its underlying logic comes to signify primitive
addresses the history of European colonialism, collectivity, after being enveloped by “foreign”
writers such as Friedrich Kittler emphasize the and mechanized media.18 The process by which
meta aspects of media: “All the orders and lusona are drawn in the sand is formulaic, as the
judgments, announcements and prescriptions format of the resulting images appears. The akwa
(military and legal, religious and medical) kuta sona, the elder maker of the sona drawing,
that produced mountains of corpses were who is usually in his 50s or 60s, finds a patch of
communicated along the very same channel that ground and smoothes it to make a clear drawing
monopolized the descriptions of those mountains surface. He begins the drawing by impressing dots
of corpses.”15 Kittler’s “channel” emphasizes the with the tips of his fingers. The dots are carefully
specificity of the mode of transmission and the plotted equidistant from one another, measured
type of information suited to it. Colonialist media by the distance between the fingers. After the
forced the Chokwe out of the loop of history practitioner has plotted the grid specific to the
transmission and detached them from the land, sona he will draw, he begins to draw an unbroken
which, mediated by bodies and stories, was the line around the dots: in Western mathematics,
location of the ancestors. a Eulerian path. He circumnavigates each of
the dots quickly and precisely, never lifting
Sona his finger, to create a lattice pattern. In some
As Redinha recorded the murals in his 1940s instances, the conventional method of drawing
fieldwork, he encountered lusona (plural of sona), entails starting at one edge of the dot grid and
as they appeared in mural compositions, not in drawing a diagonal line down the middle until
performance, which compelled him to write about the edge is reached, making a 90 degree turn and
them as finished symbols (Figure 1). He does not returning in a diagonal line, until all of the dots
include very much about their logical structure are outlined and the line returns to its starting
in Paredes; rather, he uses sona to illustrate his point (Figure 2). Accordingly, most of the sona
processual theory of Chokwe drawing. During patterns are symmetrical.19
this time period, ethnomathematical analyses The drawing of the line is the challenge—
of lusona were basically nonexistent. Redinha the riddle—and demonstrates the akwa kuta sona’s
often references Eduardo dos Santos’s mid- memory and skill. The line, or the mufunda, is
century literature on sona, which discusses the the key element in the communicative process.
lusona as designs.16 Dos Santos analyzed lusona as It demonstrates both the figurative elements
“pictographs and ideograms,” according to their of the drawing and its anima: its play and
symbolic use value in everyday life. For Redinha, performance. It also determines the success of
as for Dos Santos, the finished lusona are at most mastering the algorithms and memorizing the
illustrative, but not logical. They are primitively corpus of representations and stories. Thereafter,
abstract, but not geometrically advanced. Redinha practitioners can scale them up or down, add
also references Hermann Baumann’s work on figurative elements to the finished figure, and
the diagrams, which claims that they have a challenge others to drawing competitions. Given
predominantly religious function.17 their performative nature, there is great pressure

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 Accessing the Ancestors 15

Figure 2. “Habitação com Pinturas.” Photographic record 18634957. Courtesy of Universidade de Coimbra
archive of the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola.

on the akwa kuta sona to execute the drawings community’s ideas about existing institutions, to
perfectly. Mistakes are often marked by laughter stimulate fantasy, abstract logical thinking and
or a quiet sarcasm. Sona is a pastime for Chokwe even meditation.”21 As such, sona can also be
men and a favorite activity of men passing understood as a liturgical practice, according to
through each other’s towns. It is a social event; a Mário Fontinha. He explains, “The sand drawings
conventional communication medium. are part of a liturgy of songs and ancient rites, a
At times, the akwa kuta sona narrates the type of mnemonic language perpetuated by oral
corresponding myth as he is drawing the figure. tradition.”22
Other times he is silent as he concentrates on Like computer science, the flexibility of the
the process and the finished results are explained. system lies in the simplicity of its binary structure:
Because the drawings are finished with the the line and dot. The space in between the two is
interweaving of one unbroken line, it is not activated during the performance of delimitation
only the finished image that must be retained in and circumscription, and the subsequent
the memory of the akwa kuta sona, but also the projection of meaning onto the code. In one
process of its revealing. Paulus Gerdes refers to sona, Kalumba, the dots are body structures and
the drawings as mnemonic devices that aid both the lines are the contours of the body, and the
the elders and their students in rehearsing social space in between in body structures.23 In another,
mores and political configurations.20 Similarly, Kambilinginja kaNthumba, the dots are villages,
Gerhard Kubik calls sona the Chokwe “library” the lines are the path of travelers and rivers,
and he notes how they “convey to the male and the space is the terrain through which they

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16 Collier

travel. Meaning occurs in the dynamic interplay recounts a visit she took to the Dundo Museum
between opposing graphemes and as actors to study Chokwe string games, similar to the
project meaning onto the drawing process and puzzle-like game of sona, but a game that José
the finished figures. This flexibility has resulted in Redinha did not know about.26 She recalls that
a large number and variety of lusona, from those Redinha found it inconceivable that he would
that approach verisimilitude to those that are not be privy to see a practice of “his people,”
predominantly conceptual. amongst whom he had been living for years. He
In sona, mathematical operations and content was disturbed to find that his own house workers
production are neither separate, nor by rule can practiced the game and had kept it secret from
meaning be fixed. Instead, as Gerhard Kubik him. As so many ethnographers have described
writes, “[o]ne of the criteria of a good kasona is in their research of societal codes, Redinha had
to show a convincing logical relation between the been denied access.27
drawing and its explanation, from the viewpoint
of the cognitive system of the culture which has Paredes Pintadas da Lunda
produced it.” He continues, “It is characteristic Partially due to the author’s exclusion from
of the tusona tradition that the logic of a thought Chokwe practices, Paredes reveals both an anxiety
may be transformed and remoulded into the over and a performance of the death of Chokwe
geometrical logic of relations between dots and culture, as does Redinha’s work with Diamang’s
lines.”24 Kubik’s interviewees understand the Dundo Museum in Lunda North. Redinha was
algorithmic operations to be a priori to meaning. a natural choice to head the Dundo project for
They described to Kubik their process of “finding” Diamang, being familiar with the Lunda area. He
patterns within resulting shapes. Innovation in served as an administrative assistant in the colonial
sona, as Kubik concludes, happens within strict post of Chitato and became deeply interested in
parameters, where knowledge of the code is so art during his tenure. After his move to Angola,
thorough that spur of the moment invention he began to amass a collection of local art and,
can go by undetected by less sophisticated by the time he was hired in 1942, he had collected
practitioners. As in cybernetic theory, sona receives around 315 objects. His collection initiated the
feedback in order to mutate the system itself; to collection of the Dundo Museum, to which he
give it new rules of operation. Gerdes gives an added thousands of objects throughout the 1950s
example of such mutation, where a bilinear lusona and 1960s. Redinha immersed himself in the art of
transforms into a monolinear lusona, which then the area and learned several of the local languages.
produces this rule of transformation: “when one The information he presented in his monthly
‘cuts’ two closed lines at their point of intersection and yearly reports to the company headquarters
and links each of the obtained extremities of the in Lisbon formed the basis of monographs
first curve with those of the second curve, then published in the Cultural Publications series.
one transforms the two initial lines into a single Diamang was at the height of its activities
closed curve.”25 when Redinha was hired, but tenuously held
Sona is a self-organizing scalar system of its territory in Lunda North. The Portuguese
drawing, as well as a gathering of bodies to learn, government of Prime Minister António Oliveira
to riff, to joke, and to scale up social status. It is Salazar and his Estado Novo (New State) (1933–
at once an open and closed code. Mary D. Leaky 1974) were under fire from the international

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 Accessing the Ancestors 17

community for their increasingly violent colonial of Chokwe wall murals:

rule and support of companies like Diamang. In
response, his government intensified its rhetoric The paintings executed on the walls of
of Portugal’s “natural” ability to integrate and the houses are a manifestation of one
civilize the natives in its colonies. 28 Upon his of the most spontaneous arts of the
receipt of Redinha’s Paredes Pintadas da Lunda indigenous of Lunda. Made by adults
in 1953, Ernesto de Vilhena, father of the Júlio and children, sometimes by women,
de Vilhena, quoted earlier, marveled: “I do not they are, that is to say, a popular art.
know of any other publication superior or equal— This no doubt confers to them a great
about Angola—presented so well. Honor to the value for understanding the soul of the
Company, honor to Angola, honor to Portugal!”29 people. Unlike other artistic activities,
Vilhena established partnerships with other as for example sculpture, there is no
institutions and individual scholars of African professionalism in wall painting: it is an
art around the world, the most notable being amateur art.32
Chokwe scholar Marie-Louise Bastin.
Diamang also established “partnerships” with From the outset, Redinha identifies his study
chiefs in the area, in some cases installing men as being unconcerned with “official” symbols of
who were only provisionally accepted by their authority, but instead with the popular use of the
subjects. Nuno Porto’s examination of how Chokwe image corpus, the almost compulsive
Diamang orchestrated the photographic object repetition of cultural symbols. As the murals
in reformulating Chokwe history points to the washed off in every rainy season, Redinha
collapsing of time in the display of current chiefs presents this as an urgent, but unique opportunity
with deceased ancestors. He writes that Redinha for researchers to understand the more subjective
knew well the effects of displaying “important aspects of Chokwe art.
members of their race after they have died.”30 Following Redinha’s short eight-page
Importantly, the Gallery of the Native Chiefs was introduction, Paredes consists of 102 color
in the museum’s History Room, which amounted plates of murals of disparate types, composed
to a full-scale usurpation of Chokwe ancestors, of pictograms, ideograms, and geometrical
coterminous with Diamang’s resource grabs. “decorative” forms. Each print is rectangular with
The Gallery of the Native Chiefs mediated and a solid background that appears on the right page
proclaimed Diamang’s restructuring of Chokwe (Figure 3). On the left page is printed the plate
authority and the supposed complicity of the number, geographical location of the edifice,
natives to its authority. Porto argues that Diamang and the name of its owner. Below that is printed
officials intentionally divested native chiefs of Redinha’s description of the mural composition.
their power and the portraits “were thus intended For many of the plates, Redinha adds a “note,”
to inculcate the native population with colonial which is usually an interpretation of the symbols
views of order.”31 and folktales to which the picture alludes, based
Redinha also attempted the obverse: to on his own knowledge of Chokwe oral and visual
reach the “everyday” members of the Chokwe culture.
population. The opening lines of Paredes describe Like most of his colleagues in Dundo and
the interest Redinha had in the quotidian aspects

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Figure 3. Three-stage photographic record of Livingi Matemba drawing the tortoise lusona. Reproduced from
Gerhard Kubik, Tusona—Luchazi Ideographs: A graphic tradition practiced by a people of West-Central Africa. Wien:
Föhrenau, 1987, 49.

abroad, Redinha argued that the scientific study In his 1942 annual company report and
and recording of Chokwe material culture helped book proposal, Redinha explains that, although
to stabilize the migratory Chokwe population the museum has thousands of examples of
and to integrate them psychologically into the the paintings archived in photos, they need a
Portuguese civilization. Thus, in addition to the comprehensive archive to understand the practice
museum’s mission to act as guardian of “pure” and history of the murals—to construct a proper
Chokwe culture, its most potent role was to “symbology.”34 Though Redinha never explicitly
provide a behavioral and conceptual constant; defines “symbology,” it is his attempt to organize
a tool of re-education. Echoing Júlio Vilhena’s a wide range of performative practices into a
sentiments regarding folktales and music, Redinha strict lexicon of pictograms, ideograms, symbols,
laments the appearance in the village of a Brazilian and icons—including lusona. Symbology is, to
dance that had been taken up by Chokwe youth, use terminology that will relate to the discussion
writing, “[i]t is as important to introduce good below, the attempt to make digital (discreet and
customs as it is to exterminate bad ones in order orderly) certain analog (physical) processes that
to guarantee the existential equilibrium of the were subject to death and erasure. Perhaps even
indigenous population.”33 The space in between more than their washing off every season, it is
convention and change was the very space that, the quickly changing semantics of the symbols,
if controlled, would be the most intimate and Redinha argues, that makes this research urgent.
potent act of the civilizing mission. In one example, the symbol for sun becomes a

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 Accessing the Ancestors 19

clock, wheel, or Portuguese coin, in what Redinha Because both perspectives exist in the murals,
calls the “decay of symbology.” Redinha considers Redinha surmises that the mural paintings are
it a serious impediment to the “existential an intermediate mode between the rock and
equilibrium” of the Chokwe. However, Redinha sand drawing of pre-sedentary life and “correct”
is hard pressed to find any kind of formula that landscape painting (European).
unites the symbols in the wall paintings, either Redinha’s interpretation becomes even more
in their semantics or their syntax. Likewise, he strained when he discusses sona, as perspectival
explains, the murals do not have any conventional crossovers are endemic to sona and a part of the
subject matter. Images can refer to quotidian dynamism of its formal logic. He begins the
life, aspects of history, descriptions of folklore, section on sona by stating that there are “perfectly
nature and human beings, animals, plants, ritual distinct” types of drawing within the murals:
personages, masqueraders, idols, ghosts, imaginary schematic figurative drawings and geometric
monsters, lands, stars, celestial spheres, and so on. “tracing around points” drawings. He is presented
The paintings have themes of the everyday, but with the problem that the more sophisticated
are also concerned with religion and folklore, and of the two types, sona, is also that which was
have roots in the past. practiced on the ground and should logically be
As he analyzes wall painting like a collective considered an earlier mode of drawing. Redinha
endeavor with certain conventions—though able explains:
to be transgressed—Redinha’s analysis negotiates
structure and agency. In one particular example, It was on the ground, no doubt, that the
Redinha discusses an image in which the artist Chokwe tribe, still nomadic, entertained
used white paint to both create luminosity and in the leisurely camps, drawing many
to suggest a third dimension. He admits that in of the outlines of what would much
the absence of the interpretation by the artist later, when they became sedentary, be
of this particular image—the absence of a raised onto the walls of the houses they
code—he is left to make interpretations of his inhabited.36
own. Noting that his interpretation might be
inadequate, Redinha concedes, “Chokwe art is, Redinha’s two-page discussion of sona places
really, profoundly subjective,” one of the rare it in the development of the Chokwe lifecycle,
moments in which he alludes to the suppleness not only that of Chokwe society as a whole, but
of the Chokwe representational logic.35 also in the individual intellectual development of
Herein lies the fundamental problem of a Chokwe child. Before puberty, Redinha explains,
Redinha’s analysis, where his dual methods of the child draws human figures with “a head, trunk,
art history and anthropology reach an impasse and members. The second […] besides the head,
between structure and agency. Given the multi- trunk, and members, they are marked with a
perspectival compositions, especially in landscape sex, hands, and feet, and the attitudes are more
scenes, he concludes that Chokwe artists, as a developed.”37 Eventually, the young boy learns the
whole, attempt an intellectual and not a visual sona drawing code: the complex ritualistic corpus
realism. For instance, because of their artistic taught by the elders. Redinha indicates that sona
immaturity, they constantly shuttle between is a specialized practice in Chokwe society, tied to
the bird’s eye view and vertical orientation. ritual initiation, but then he only briefly mentions

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the requisite “large amount of practice of such demanded that the state be a disinterested medium
exercises.”38 of various cultural expressions; he extrapolated a
Finally, Redinha betrays his inability to access political ideology from Chokwe art.42 As did his
sona with this statement: “The relation between comrades, Viteix used native symbols as formal
form and idea that [sona] border on is so abstract tools within his medium of canvas painting.
that it would be difficult to recognize them by We may briefly relate Viteix’s work to another
what they represent.”39 That is, Redinha cannot anti-colonial revolutionary, Franz Fanon, who
surmise their meaning from their finished forms, wrote of the aspects of media beyond just their
what the Chokwe informant tells us, through use to disseminate messages. In his essay “This
Kubik, is directly related to the process of their Is the Voice of Algeria,” Fanon describes a
creation. From the ground to the book, the fundamental shift in anti-colonial consciousness,
privileging of visual units of information required as the native Algerians embraced the medium
a suppression of the more complex performances of radio as a technique of war.43 Until 1954, he
of Chokwe media, what are really their functional explains, Algerians understood the radio as a tool
aspects in mediating the ancestors: the moment of the oppressor, having no use for their daily
when the insensible becomes sensible. Paredes sent lives. It was only after they discovered nationalist
the Chokwe “analog” performances through the broadcasts in Arabic from Egypt and Syria that
“bottleneck of the signifier” in Redinha’s typology Algerians began to buy radios and marshal the
of the murals. 40 The intermediate mode that medium in the anti-colonial war. Contra Adorno’s
Redinha describes in the landscape compositions declaration of the radio as a one-way form of
spells the eventual obsolescence of a participatory communication, Fanon argues that the active
medium. listening of Algerians to the meta aspects of
French communication channels, particularly their
Re-Mediation jamming of revolutionary broadcasts, revealed the
Viteix, one of the major figures of postcolonial lie behind the colonial message. Built into Viteix’s
Angolan art, discusses sona in the games section and Fanon’s activist stance is the Marxist principle
of his 1983 Theory and Practice of Angolan Plastic that systems have no inherent biases, but, as with
Art, a doctoral thesis that compiled Angolan art the machines of finance and industry, they must
from the hinterlands and urban centers. In one be intimately known and acted upon to signify
of the strongest sections of his book to address for the people.
the logic of Angolan art, he concludes that sona Post-independence Angolan administrators
and other games “[confirm] the relevance of the have operated in the tenuous space of the nation-
notion of unity in the Angolan territory. […] state as radically open or dangerously conservative
it seems significant that this game represents, and nepotistic, their power enacted in large part
without elitism, the desire for unanimity in by the deployment of symbols. The desire for the
Angola.”41 There was, he argues, no power play former can be read into Viteix’s characterization
in these types of activities; no winner. Fascistic of sona as a naturally egalitarian activity—not a
Portuguese colonialism changed Angolans’ mass static symbol—that demonstrates the unifying
consciousness and intentionally divested them logic of Angolan art. The same ethos of
of democratic participation. As a dedicated democratic participation characterized the online
Marxist, Viteix and other writers of his generation projects by ITM and the Trienal de Luanda. One

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 Accessing the Ancestors 21

of the Trienal de Luanda’s first exhibitions was a distorted.”47 They take care to bracket the entire
solo exhibition of anti-colonial “ancestors,” such discussion with the avowal that the project is not
as Viteix; they also mounted billboards around the a vehicle of self-promotion. In its web medium
city of Luanda that featured the poetry of anti- and its interactivity, that is, Cultura Lunda Tchokwe
colonial writers. Their progressive fantasizing of declares ITM’s respect for Chokwe history and
the Angolan nation indicated a sincere desire for culture. Both online projects profess an ethos
a self-perpetuating cultural production and the facilitated by—but more importantly symbolized
establishment of “habits of culture.”44 The Trienal by—digital culture.
de Luanda’s aims were nationalistic. Its director This is an important point: the online projects
and conceiver, Fernando Alvim, spoke about the address interactivity on the level of the interface,
exhibition as a way to heal from the devastating not any deep connection on the level of code
violence of both the civil war and the colonial or the material circulation of media objects and
period. In the many promotional interviews and network access. The Trienal de Luanda’s Lunda
speeches he delivered about the Trienal, Alvim Tchokwe essay, “Rescue, Absorption, Visibility,”
spoke about the emergence of Angola onto the argued that the visibility of Chokwe art on
world scene, claiming Luanda as a place where the web and their digital removal of Redinha’s
possibilities are endless and life is vibrant. Lunda signature would allow it to be aesthetically judged
Tchokwe was the one project of the Trienal that by the public.48 By removing colonial ownership,
best characterized its aims, according to Claúdia the project would “finally repair an injustice
Veiga, an artist and Trienal de Luanda organizer.45 related to the omission of the original names of
It represented Angolans’ reassertion of the nation the creators.” The web exhibition consisted of all
after colonialism and a debilitating 30-year civil 102 images from Paredes, each image occupying its
war. Both projects made explicit the structural own webpage, without meta-textual information.
connections between indigenous communalist art Some images were cropped and some rotated;
and the participatory opportunities afforded by all were suspended within the clean minimalist
the Internet. interface of the Trienal website—as close to a
The introductory essay for ITM’s Cultura virtual “white cube” as could be achieved, which
Lunda Tchokwe asks, “Why [Lunda Tchokwe was a cue that the images were to be read formally.
culture] dissemination on a website, and not Cultura Lunda Tchokwe and Lunda Tchokwe
in a book?” Its answer: “Angola is a country were both sponsored by the diamond industry,
constituted mostly of youth. As a result of current which earned the Trienal de Luanda heavy
trends in the modern world, youth in general criticism, given the industry’s history in Angola.49
read little, and are more attracted to the visual, The Trienal de Luanda came under particular
whether video or computers, internet, etc.” 46 scrutiny after it partnered with a foundation
ITM later explains that the platform will include run by Sindika Dokolo.50 Dokolo is a Congolese
a discussion forum and, given the feedback they businessman married to Isabella dos Santos,
receive, they will change the text of any of the daughter of Angola’s president, Eduardo dos
sections “if, as a result of the contributions of Santos, and together they control major shares
scholars and the general public, we conclude that of the country’s diamond, oil, and media sectors.
there is new data and facts that the information In fact, both digital projects are more structurally
from the bibliography that we used is truncated or aligned with the 1953 publication than they or any

Interventions
22 Collier

critic acknowledged, as both of their sponsors website in the same order in which they appear in
are among the corporate progeny of Diamang. the book. Some images only removed Redinha’s
Diamang was nationalized in 1977 and in 1979 signature, while some images were cropped and
Angola passed a law giving the state exclusive others cropped and rotated. The cropping and
rights to mining enterprises. Endiama was formed rotation results in the images acting as modernist
in 1981, taking control over the 77 percent of formal compositions, which are able to be rotated
Diamang owned by the government.51 ITM is one to any degree and still remain compositionally
of the many companies that must now partner stable. Thusly cropped, they created part-images
with Endiama, a company largely controlled by dependent on the paratextual elements of the
the family of Eduardo dos Santos. A careful interface, such as the hyperlink buttons and
analysis of these industries and their web of page header. The removal of Redinha’s signature
ownership opens up their complexity: a dense not only removed the Chokwe image from the
mesh of actors and intentionalities.52 Similarly, book, but it was also visually materialized within
the colonization of open systems, territories, the interface of the online project. The images’
and materials has characterized the trajectory incompleteness within the webpage was part
of art and communication media. The totalizing of a digital spatio-temporal logic in which the
effects of the digital medium obscure even the operation is never finished; the “surfing” never
starkly uneven accessibility of the information completes itself. In this digital iteration of the
economy.53 part-images, this operational logic both veiled
At the conclusion of the Lunda Tchokwe essay, and depended upon the complex relationships
the Trienal de Luanda organizers explain the at work behind it.
potential irony of its sponsorship, writing, “in light The ITM’s Cultura Lunda Tchokwe project
of the social and cultural politics of CATOCA, presents a page from Paredes of Redinha’s sketches
and being a company that operates essentially in of finished lusona he found in the wall murals. An
the Lunda region, it is to enhance the fundamental analysis of this page is helpful in understanding
conscience and participation that this project is how sona, as a practice, becomes significant in this
funded exclusively by CATOCA.”54 Thus, the web mediation. Under the subheading “drawings,”
remediation that Jay David Bolter and Richard ITM includes a pop-out window of the page from
Grusin write about is here attempted on a grand Paredes with various finished lusona (Figure 4). Two
scale, and with the aid of an aestheticized interface. other hyperlinks include his sketches of various
But, behind the glowing monitor—the interface of other pictographic drawings, 64 in all. Under these
the Chokwe images and content—pulsed a matrix links, ITM includes a portion of Gerdes’ text “On
of funding, telecommunications materials, and a Ethnomathematical Research and Symmetry,”
whole network of international finance, which, which concerns the mnemonic skills required for
like the book object, had to remain invisible to the performance and algorithmic complexity of
transmit its post-historical democratic message. lusona. When the pop-up window is activated, the
Thus, interface of both web projects was scanned image of the figures page from Paredes
the space in which to consume both the images floats above the text page and, thus, a picture of
and the significance of their re-mediation. The Redinha’s sketches can be dragged around over
Trienal de Luanda staff altered and exhibited the HTML text transcription. As in Paredes, what
each image from Paredes and put them onto the we web users interact with on the interface of

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 Accessing the Ancestors 23

Figure 4. Finished mukanda sona. Reproduced from Mario Fontinha, Desenhos na Areia dos Quiocos do Nordeste de
Angola (Lisboa: Instituto de Investigação Cientifica Tropical, 1983), 68.

the ITM website is the particular reality effects capitalism” of digital culture, where play after late
given to us by the coding of this particular digital twentieth-century cybernetics fuses the expressive
platform. That is, what we interact with is already and iterative, the poetic and protocological. 55
a translation from code to picture and HTML: Given that there are different levels and types
the endpoint of the signification process. With of interactivity that happen on the web and in
the paratextual elements of the interface, the computer science generally, we might ask how
ITM and Trienal de Luanda’s Lunda Tchokwe “play,” in these two particular projects, involves
sites keep us embedded within the interface that interacting with obsolesced media (here Paredes
refers to itself as a system, but a system of already and sona).
translated operations. If we look at that moment The ITM website is more of a content
when the akwa kuta sona makes his own logical management system, as it has transcriptions of
connection from mathematical operation to its studies by Redinha, Marie-Louise Bastin, and João
visual translation, or his process of “finding” Vicente Martins. Unlike a book, it is a web of
the image in the resulting pattern, here we must previously researched and published information,
find the system through an iconic translated which is de-historicized. Redinha’s 55-year-old
interface. Alexander Galloway calls the “ludic research is presented as if it were describing the

Interventions
24 Collier

Figure 5. Two-page spread from Mario Fontinha’s Desenhos na Areia dos Quiocos do Nordeste de Angola showing
range of representational and non-representational lusona.

contemporary condition in Lunda North, left to legacy of the nation-state’s control over the
float on the website without an explanation of the political process of signification. As part of the
context under which it was produced. There is no gesture of the project, Lunda Tchokwe adhered
“original” research here and no physical containers to the post-independence era copyright laws
of scientific knowledge; only ephemeral links that were carefully written for transparency and
and transcriptions activated with mouse clicks. the protection of national heritage, referring to
As with the Lunda Tchokwe project, each of the a mythic time during the independence period,
images from Paredes appears on Cultura Lunda when the state and the people held the same
Tchokwe. The colonial project is neatly repackaged interests. Two Angolan intellectual property laws
as a contemporary cultural initiative by ITM, a applied to the duplication and alteration of Paredes.
company declaring its humanitarian goals, as did First was a type of fair use exception. In Angola,
Diamang in the 1950s. this law, written after independence, allows for
Lunda Tchokwe addressed an important duplication in cases where the work is figured as a
aspect of control within digital mediation: the national “treasure” and transmitted within Angola

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 Accessing the Ancestors 25

Figure 6. Estamp 9A from Paredes Pintadas da Lunda. Lisboa: Companhia de Diamantes de Angola, 1953.

or to its citizens abroad.56 A second and more made claims on access itself. The artistic gesture
philosophical argument that could be applied to was the ethical claim to the transmission of the
Lunda Tchokwe comes from article 18, a moral images and not necessarily any inherent meaning
copyright law that punishes those who alter or or message within them. Indeed, copyright does
appropriate works. Under this law, the Trienal not protect content as such, but the transmission
could, and did, argue that Redinha altered and or delimitation of ideas and superficial content.
appropriated the Chokwe artists’ work without On the fantasy egalitarian architecture of the
due credit and thus had no copyright on the visual Internet, Galloway explains that, despite the open
material. In addition to the Ministry of Culture’s logic of the binary system, the various uses of it
intellectual property rights, there was a layer of in computer coding are notoriously diverse and
copyright that took the place of José Redinha’s non-standardized; open-source code constantly
signature. Fernando Alvim copyrighted the runs up against proprietary ownership. 57 In
Trienal de Luanda, including the Lunda Tchokwe fact, the historical challenge in computer
artistic gesture. Alvim’s interest in copyright programming is to make separately authored

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26 Collier

packets of code compatible with each other and Laborers on the Diamond Mines of the Companhia
the information age has been largely defined by de Diamantes de Angola (Diamang), 1917–1975.
the pursuit of technological standards. In Lunda (Ph.D. dissertation, University of Minnesota,
Tchokwe, the removal of Redinha’s signature did 2008).
4
I use the spelling of Chokwe that is common in
not erase authorship, neither Redinha’s nor its
English-language publications. Other spellings
own, but profoundly dispersed it. As Redinha’s include Tchokwe, Cokwe, Qiocos, Jokwe, Badjok,
book displayed the optical effects of Chokwe etc.
art, effectively veiling the protocols of sona 5
Some of the most important research and
production, as well as its own, so does the monitor publishing that Chokwe art expert Marie-Louise
operate by a ludic capitalism that spectrifies the Bastin completed was facilitated by the Dundo
code, bodies, and materials on the other side of Museum, which she first visited in 1956.
the glowing interface. Kubik’s description of a 6
For an excellent discussion of the Dundo Museum
successful kasona, “a convincing logical relation and Diamang policies, see Nuno Porto, “The
between the drawing and its explanation, from Spectre of Art,” Etnográfica 6:1 (2002): 113-125;
and Porto, “The Arts of the Portuguese Empire:
the viewpoint of the cognitive system of the
The Emergence of Cokwe Art in the Province of
culture which has produced it,” in this case would Angola,” in Collectors: Expressions of Self and Other,
require acknowledging the irony of the enclave ed. A. Shelton (London: The Horniman Museum
economies and often violent politics that underpin and Gardens, 2001), 225-247.
the democratic ethos of digital culture, including 7
For a more extensive examination of the trope
the extraction of minerals and the distribution of “return” in postcolonial literature, see Vera
of hardware and electricity—all increasingly Mihailovich-Dickman, Return in Post-Colonial
tenuous within what is facilely referred to as the Writing: A Cultural Labyrinth (Amsterdam: Rodopi,
digital divide. Thus, the haunting that Kittler 1994).
describes is the machinations of ideology and
8
See Jay David Bolter and Richard Grusin,
Remediation: Understanding New Media (Cambridge,
the impossibility of a non-place ether of storage
MA: MIT Press, 2000). They describe remediation
and transmission media. as having three aspects: the mediation of
mediation, the inseparability of mediation and
reality, and remediation as reform.
9
For a classic structural-functional analysis of
Notes
a neighboring mukanda practice, see Victor
1
Reprinted in Antologias de poesia da Casa dos Turner, The Forest of Symbols: Aspects of Ndembu
Estudantes do Império 1. Angola, São Tomée Príncipe Ritual (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1967).
(Lisboa: Edição ACEI, 1994). All translations Turner notes that the structurally intended space
from Portuguese and French sources are the of liminality is created to facilitate change and
author’s. transition.
2
Júlio de Vilhena, “A Note on the Dundo Museum
10
My interest in using sona as a way to think through
of the Companhia de Diamantes de Angola,” systems, agency, and meaning production in
Journal of the International Folk Music Council 7 mediation, beyond the normal art-historical
(1955): 41–43. discussions of appropriation and postcolonial
3
For a thorough discussion of Diamang’s labor discussions of identity, has been influenced by
policies and its history in the Lunda North Ron Eglash, African Fractals: Modern Computing
province, see Todd Cleveland, Rock Solid: African and Indigenous Design (London: Rutgers University

Critical Interventions 9, Spring 2012

 Accessing the Ancestors 27

Press, 1999); and Ron Eglash, “African Influences of the Kasai, Kwango, Zambezi, and Kwanza
in Cybernetics,” in The Cyborg Handbook, ed. Chris rivers in east-central Angola;” from Joseph Calder
Hables Gray (London: Routledge, 1995), 17-27. Miller, Cokwe Expansion: 1850–1900 (Madison:
11
The history of scholars’ treatment of Africa African Studies Program, The University of
as “natural,” “real,” and as being closer to the Wisconsin, 1969). From about 1850 until the
elements is voluminous, as are its critiques. For a 1920s, the Chokwe had more or less maintained
general discussion of these figurations of Africa control over the region; first, in their role in the
throughout Western history, see V. Y. Mudimbe, slave trade, which included a system of pawnship,
The Invention of Africa (Bloomington: Indiana and, after the slave trade was abolished in 1835,
University Press, 1988). For an application in the wax and ivory trade. With their economic
of these ideas to the specific terminology of success, the Chokwe amassed firepower and
cybernetics and digital culture, see Eglash, African conquered various groups, which aided their
Fractals. expansion that lasted until the beginning of the
12
Walter Ong, Orality and Literacy: The Techologizing twentieth century. For this history, see Edouard
of the Word (London: Methuen, 1982); and Harold Bustin, Lunda Under Belgian Rule: the Politics of
A. Innis, Empire and Communication (Toronto: Ethnicity (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University
University of Toronto Press, 1972). Press, 1975). Before Chokwe prominence in the
13
Matthew Fuller, Media Ecologies: Materialist Energies nineteenth century, the Lunda state was the most
in Art and Technoculture (Cambridge, MA: MIT powerful political entity in the region. However,
Press, 2005), 57. the colonization of the Chokwe by the Lunda
14
For a fascinating discussion of the interface around 1600 was primarily political and, ironically,
of media history and colonialism, see Michael Chokwe cultural practices were adopted by the
Taussig, Mimesis and Alterity: A Particular History Lunda. The Lunda political network distinguished
of the Senses (New York: Routledge, 1993). “land chiefs” from “political chiefs,” which made
15
Freidrich Kittler, Gramophone, Film, Typewriter it possible for the Lunda government to operate,
(Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999), 4–5. while still preserving Chokwe descent systems.
16
Eduardo dos Santos, “Contribuções para o estudo This system allowed the Chokwe to preserve
das pictografias e ideogrammas dos Quiocos,” their local traditions and values. Not only did the
in Estudos sobre a etnologia do ultramar Português 2 Chokwe cultural practices exist under the Lunda
(1961):17–131. empire, but the Lunda and other communities
17
Redinha also makes passing mention of adopted the language and cultural customs of their
Baumann’s theory that sona and the very similar Chokwe subjects. This cultural integration helped
Kolam drawings of south India evidence an the Chokwe to later gain dominance in the region
ancient relation between the two cultures. Redinha and spread exponentially in the mid nineteenth
does not seem to buy the idea. See Hermann century. They determined how they were to make
Baumann, Lunda. Bei Bauern und aegern Inner-Angola their own contacts with the Portuguese and did
(Berlin: Wuerfel Verlag, 1934), 223. so to the extent that it benefited them. Chokwe
18
Here I must briefly define the term “Chokwe,” as political dominance was in large part due to
it existed in the 1950s. As Joseph Miller explains, their practical adaptability in trade and territorial
“[o]nly with reservations can one speak of a single expansion.
homogenous Cokwe people in the middle of the 19
For a discussion of the types and classes of
twentieth century. However true this may be today, algorithms in lusona, in Chokwe and neighboring
a century and more ago the Cokwe people lived practices, see Paulus Gerdes, Sona Geometry:
in a compact nucleus, something more than a reflections on the tradition of sand drawings in Africa
hundred miles in diameter, astride the watershed South of the Equator (Maputo, Mozambique:

Interventions
28 Collier

Instituto Superior Pedagógico Moçambique, report and released a series of propagandistic

1994). My description of the sona process is culled publications to counter his claims. See especially,
from various descriptions by Gerdes, Kubik, and Museu do Dundo, Flagrantes da Vida da Lunda
Mario Fontinha. (Lisboa: Companhia de Diamantes de Angola,
20
Gerdes, Sona Geometry. 1958).
21
Gerhard Kubik, “African Space/Time Concepts 29
Ernesto de Vilhena, Letter of Receipt of Paredes
and the Tusona Ideographs in Luchazi Culture and Pinturas, October 7, 1953. Diamang Dundo
with a Discussion of Possible Cross-Parallels in Museum Archive, University of Coimbra,
Music,” in African Music 6:4 (1987): 58. Portugal.
22
Mario Fontinha, Desenhos na Areia dos Quiocos do 30
Redinha quoted in Nuno Porto, “Under the Gaze
Noreste de Angola (Lisboa: Instituto de Investigação of the Ancestors,” in Photographs, Objects, Histories:
Cientifica Tropical, 1983), 77. On the Materiality of Images, eds Elizabeth Edwards
23
As recorded by Gerhard Kubik, Tusona—Luchazi and Janice Hart (London: Routledge, 2004), 119.
Ideographs: A graphic tradition practised by a people of 31
Ibid., 121.
West-Central Africa (Wien: Föhrenau, 1987), 181– 32
José Redinha, Paredes Pintadas da Lunda (Lisboa:
182. Companhia de Diamantes de Angola, 1953), 9.
24
Ibid., 31. 33
Departmento de Antropologia da Universidade
25
Gerdes, Sona Geometry, 24. de Coimbra, Museu do Dundo Monthly Report
26
Mary D. Leaky, Some String Figures from North East number (April 4, 1947): 2.
Angola (Pasadena: Munger Africana Library, 1981), 34
Departmento de Antropologia da Universidade
10. de Coimbra, Museu do Dundo Annual Report,
27
For an oral history and discussion of Chokwe (1942): 8.
resistance to Diamang policies and cultural 35
Redinha, Paredes Pintadas, 40.
colonialism generally, see Cleveland, Rock Solid. 36
Ibid., 14.
28
Brazilian scholar Gilberto Freyre visited the 37
Ibid.
Dundo Museum during a grand tour in 1951, 38
Ibid., 15.
sponsored by Salazar as a publicity stunt to 39
Ibid.
drum up support for the continued control 40
Kittler, Gramophone, 4.
of the Angolan colony. He narrates his trip 41
Vitor Manuel Teixeira, Pratique et Theorie des Arts
in Aventura e Rotina (Rio de Janeiro: J. Olympio, Plastiques Angolais (Doctoral thesis, Saint Denis,
1952). Despite the Company’s (and government Université de Paris VIII, 1983), 55.
officials’) wishes for his approval, he writes that he 42
In proposals for a new museum system found
is quite ambivalent about the Diamang operation in official documents, the MPLA names the
and especially the Dundo Museum. He notes the inhabitants of the hinterlands as “the People.”
feeling of being policed at Dundo, that despite The MPLA publications attempt to circumscribe
the “festive” environment of a civilized city in them through educational programs and a pledge
the tropics, the need for security makes everyone of respect for their “cultures.” The publications
suspect no matter their race or position. Freyre in explain that in order for this to succeed, officials
essence describes an environment highly artificial in Luanda must work in concert with the various
and engineered in its racial segregation. He calls local chiefs and power structures. The MPLA’s
Diamang’s operation “anti-lusitanian” and states attempt to culturally integrate rural Angolans
that sociologically it is not a Portuguese society. He coincided with the historical struggle to gain
blames authoritarian Belgian-designed methods control over all of the sectors of Angolan
for the harsh and overtly racist environment society, including agriculture, mining, industry,
there. Company officials were furious at Freyre’s and so on. The urgent need to unify Angola in

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 Accessing the Ancestors 29

the face of serious fracture caused the MPLA to a more nuanced discussion of these issues,
shift from the revolutionary side of Marxism- see Ronald Suresh Roberts, “The Colour of
Leninism to the implementation of “scientific Money,” Mail and Guardian online (November
socialism” in the hopes of having a state system 13, 2007), http://www.thoughtleader.co.za/
that could transcend divisions of race, ethnicity, ronaldsureshroberts/2007/11/13/the-colour-
tribe, ideology, etc. See Departmento Nacional of-money, accessed July 18, 2012. He argues that,
de Museus e Monumentos, Manual de Museologia “Dokolo’s business activities certainly deserve
(Luanda: Instituto Angolano do Livro, 1979), n.p. rigorous scrutiny and criticism and ought to
43
Frantz Fanon, “This Is the Voice of Algeria,” in receive a lot more of both. But when I hear talk
A Dying Colonialism (New York: Grove Press, 1995), of diamonds and forced labour, when I hear
69–97. of the kinds of objections raised by the activist
44
Fernando Alvim and Albano Cardoso, interview NGO Global Witness in the Angola case, I also
with the author, March 12, 2006. immediately think of South Africa’s De Beers,
45
Claúdia Veiga, interview with the author, October which is a philanthropic benefactor of Michaelis,
5, 2008. of the University of Cape Town more broadly,
46
ITM Cultura Lunda Tchokwe, “Apresentação,” and of all sorts of African studies work across the
http://www.culturalunda-tchokwe.com, cultural and academic landscapes of South Africa
accessed July 18, 2012. and the world.”
47
Ibid. 51
Nancy Clark, “Diamonds,” in Angola country study
48
The website domain name, www.trienal-de-luanda. (Washington D.C., Library of Congress Federal
net, expired in 2008 and the entire project went Research Division: February 1989), available
offline. Thus, I will speak of the website in the online at http://lcweb2.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/
past tense. r?frd/cstdy:@field%28DOCID+ao0105%29.
49
See Jakkie Cilliers, “Resource wars—a new type 52
For example, movies like Edward Zwick’s 2006
of insurgency,” in Angola’s War Economy, eds Jakkie Blood Diamond helped to raise awareness about
Cilliers and Christian Deitrich (Pretoria, South the problem of diamonds in Africa, but border
Africa: Institute for Security Studies, 2000). on aestheticizing the ethical disaster of the
50
For criticism of the Trienal de Luanda, its trade, recapitulating stereotypes of Africa as the
sponsorship, and curatorial process, see Adriano Dark Continent. Todd Cleveland believes that
Mixinge, “Reflexão: As críticas e as razões do essentializing either his own or Lunda North
desconforto,” Jornal de Angola (October 12, 2005), residents’ opinions about ITM is difficult, as
http://www.jornaldeangola.com, accessed they aided him greatly in his research and they
March 13, 2007. He states, “A Trienal de Luanda are marginally better in their interactions with
yes, but not just in any manner! A Trienal de the locals than some other companies, but still
Luanda yes, but with more enlarged dialogue have documented human rights abuses and use
and with participation enriched with more the same thuggish private security companies that
diverse sensibilities!” Mixinge also criticized the other companies in the region use. See Rafael
Dokolo collection, which was exhibited in the Marques and Rui Falcão de Campos, Lundas—The
2007 Venice Biennale, for many of the same Stones of Death: Human Rights Abuses in the Lunda
reasons. See Adriano Mixinge, “Os Mercadores Provinces (Washington, D.C.: Wilson Center, 2005),
de Veneza,” in Made in Angola: Arte Contemporânea, available online at www.wilsoncenter.org/events/
Artistas, e Debates (Paris: L’Harmattan, 2009). Chika docs/ADDMarq.pdf.
Okeke also addresses the politics of the “African” 53
Such a structure, James Ferguson explains, is
pavilion in Venice in “Venice and Contemporary not “global,” as in universal, but skips over “non-
African Art,” African Arts 40:3 (2007): 1-5. For usable” areas of the world and creates enclave

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30 Collier

areas of connectivity. See James Ferguson,

Global Shadows: Africa in the Neoliberal World Order
(Durham: Duke University Press, 2008).
54
Trienal de Luanda, “O Resgate, a Absorção e
a Visibilidade,” http://www.trienal-de-luanda.
net/?page_id=101, accessed March 8, 2007. Page
no longer available.
55
Alexander Galloway, “The Unworkable Interface,”
New Literary History 39 (2009): 934.
56
INCOMPLETE or UNFORMATED
CITATION Artigo 30, “Regime de Licenças” Lei
4/90 de 10 de Março, Lei dos Direitos de Autor.
57
Alexander Galloway, Protocol: How Control Exists
After Decentralization (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
2004).

Critical Interventions 9, Spring 2012