Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee Radio for the Arts

A 3 part sound collage & audio-visual broadcast for Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee
Duration: 25 minutes
Production by Thabiso Keaikitse
This broadcast marks the end of the residency of artist Kim Karabo Makin, who lives in Botswana and is one of four artists selected for a Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee radio residency during 2022.
Artist statement by Kim Karabo Makin:
An intertextual audio essay which endeavours to explore the transnational space that Medu Art Ensemble has occupied historically ‘in another South Africa’, with a focus on the route that connects Gaborone, Botswana and Amsterdam, the Netherlands (via Chicago). Satellite Activism notably traces the life and legacy of Medu Art Ensemble in contemporaneity, with a particular look at themes that connect the Culture and Resistance Festival and Symposium, 5 – 7 July 1982 in Gaborone, to the Culture in Another South Africa Conference, December 1987 in Amsterdam. Additionally, with particular reference to the Art Institute of Chicago publication The People Shall Govern! Medu Art Ensemble and the Anti-Apartheid Poster 1979-1985, the project extends off of my exploration of ‘the living archive’ – a live sounding of the archive as expressed through lived experiences and shared storytelling, where my practice considers the DJ as an archivist.
*Use headphones for optimum listening experience.
I do not, nor do I claim to own some of the selected clips, sound/video archives. These are all available online by their respective owners for free and fair use. This collage is for research and educational purposes only. Please contact for full reference list.
Part 1: out of site, out of mind
2022
duration: 6 mins
The voice of former poet laureate of South Africa (2018) and founding member of Medu Art Ensemble, Mongane Wally Serote opens with an analogy that explains how committed cultural workers collectively formed Medu’s ethos around 1978. Picture Hugh Masekela and Jonas Gwangwa playing their trumpet and trombone respectively ‘underground’ – what might it sound like as you walked underground towards the jazz hall, and eventually ‘opened the doors of culture’. What does art in the underground look and sound like? And in what ways might this have left an imprint on the site associated with Medu’s powerful red, black and off-white poster, Unity is Power. 2935, Pudulogo Crescent, Gaborone – across from the University of Botswana (established in 1982 as the first institution of higher education in Botswana), and adjacent to the Alliance Française (a cultural centre and hub for language, arts and culture locally, notably also engaging in cinema festivals and symposiums that include both European and local film). I am interested in unpacking and sounding this specific site as holding a particular cultural significance internationally, for it’s ties to Medu, despite not having been monumentalised in our local memory. In addition, out of site, out of mind is particularly concerned with exploring methods of recording the spatial and temporal dimensions of this site, with respect to my positionality in engaging this history, as well as themes surrounding exile.
Part 2: open culture
2022
duration: 13 mins
Open culture closely documents and contrasts the Culture and Resistance Festival and Symposium, 5 – 7 July 1982, in Gaborone, with the Culture in Another South Africa Conference, December 1987, in Amsterdam. In fact, my research highlighted that there was another conference that took place in Amsterdam from 13 – 18 D

‘’ is an extended conversation hosted by Kim Karabo Makin along with artist friends and colleagues – Ann Gollifer and Thero Makepe, at the home of the Art Residency Centre in Gaborone, Botswana.
The conversation unpacks Makin’s final outcome of her radio residency with Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, a sound piece entitled Satellite Activism. In so doing, Makin engages a conversation with Gollifer in considering her practice as an archivist, as well as in unpacking the potential for an exploration of the archive as ‘living’, with specific regard to the strong presence of oral traditions in the context of Botswana. In addition, Makin engages Makepe in reflecting on the role of the DJ as an archivist of sorts, in curating the living archive. Furthermore, with a look at the cultural significance of radio in the local soundscape, the three collectively present the sort of intergenerational passing on of knowledge that Satellite Activism embraces.
In considering the life and legacy of Medu Art Ensemble in and out of Botswana, the conversation also reflects on particular moments included in Satellite Activism. Through shared storytelling, Makin, Gollifer and Makepe also unpack themes surrounding dislocation, exile, community-building, and the potential for Makin’s radio art practice going forward.
This broadcast, alongside "Satellite Activism", streamed last November 13th, marks the end of the residency of artist Kim Karabo Makin, who lives in Botswana and is one of four artists selected for a Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee radio residency during 2022.

Barrel of the soul’s many inhabitants slurp alongside the stillness which slithers past the cries, and deep beyond the breath is that sensorial forgetfulness held by these walls.
Recommended listening method: headphones, and a comfortable seat. Mikatsiu’s research during the Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee residency focused on remote sensing, consideration of the different communication abilities of dancing spiders, questioning what is needed to sense the detached regions of one’s own body, and tuning enunciation towards melodies as they unravel stories into perceivable frequencies.

In the audio essay 'Iconographies of Belonging' artist Endi Tupja maps out several coordinates and journeys that others misread, questioned or were simply not interested in. Albania, the country where Tupja was born and grew up, is described as a place of belonging and longing that is constantly questioned: ‘where are you from? Go back to your East’. New fractured identities are born as a result. Tupja crafts a rhythm of urgency, yet within a steady pace of clear forwardness and determination. Her voice will not stop until the threads have been revealed in all their entanglements.The artist navigates between factual descriptions and a guttural flow, where anger is allowed to flourish in new forms of tenderness. Anger about the impossibility to carve a space of discernment from outside projections, about white feminism that doesn’t live up to its good intentions, and anger about the tragic life of activist Adelina Sejdini, who was kidnapped from Albania and forced into prostitution in Italy. This audio piece contains moments of violence (rape, suicide) that can be triggering, while it simultaneously provides a space for liberation, transformation and endearment.
'Iconographies of Belonging' is commissioned by Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, as part of our series 'Near Histories', curated by Radna Rumping. For 'Near Histories' artists are invited to develop an audio piece related to a history that is 'near', whether it’s in literal close proximity, or rather a history that is still unfolding. Here the essayistic format offers a (partly) subjective take on an event or situation that isn't fully historicized.
A transcript of the audio essay with footnotes can be downloaded here.
Credits: Concept, text and voice: Endi Tupja Sound scape: Dirar Kalash
Soundtrack: Featuring track by composer and musician Dirar Kalash Popular women's Dance from Martanesh at the Folklore Concert of Popular Albanian Music 1988, Gjirokastër, performers: T. Koxheri and L. Gjoni Song: “Me Lot Bukën Tuj Gatue” (Making Bread in Tears) performed by Drita Suҫi at the Folklore Concert of Popular Albanian Music 1988, Gjirokastër Recording of a Call to Prayer in a mosque, soundsnap.com

“A collision with the past” is a year-long attempt at approaching the history of the Kalenderpanden, a former squat located in the East of Amsterdam. The squat was in operation between 1996 and 2000, and, after its eviction, it was turned into luxury lofts. The piece uses archive material that the squatters from that time made available: a documented timeline of both the squatting and the eviction. It also tries to touch upon how the practice of squatting changed in the past decades, since the 2010 squatting ban, and weaves in and out of how one can still get access to the Kalenderpanden building, two decades after. While putting together the piece, between November 2020 and November 2021, there has been a resurgence of squatting as a housing practice in Amsterdam, as well as nationwide. So with this in mind, the piece links the Kalenderpanden to the newly squatted Hotel Mokum as well as a building on Spuistraat 59 and one on Ringdijk 8, both squatted by the Anarcha Feminist Group Amsterdam. As if to say, “Wet of geen wet, kraken gaat door” (“Law or no law, squatting continues.”)

This audio essay is commissioned by Ja Ja Ja Nee Nee Nee, as part of our series 'Near Histories', curated by Radna Rumping. For 'Near Histories' artists are invited to develop an audio piece related to a history that is 'near', whether it's in literal close proximity, or rather a history that is still unfolding. Here the essayistic format offers a (partly) subjective take on an event or situation that isn't fully historicized.
A .pdf script of the piece is available here.
Colophon: Inspired by Rachel Sellem and Elki Boerdam, creators of the "InputParty". Additional Voices: Ana-Maria Guşu, Jörn Nettingsmeier, Jelle Baars. Recording and Sound design: Jörn Nettingsmeier. Music by: De 4 Touze Matroze; DJ Lulu; Kuijs Reinder Kakes Makelaardij Hypotheken Verzekeringen and Euronext Amsterdam, formerly The Amsterdam Stock Exchange. With material from: entrepotdok.squat.net; funda.nl/koop/amsterdam; Youtube user "vriijepiijptv"; a recent housing survey of the Onderzoek, Informatie en Statistiek department of the City of Amsterdam; and news outlets: itsgoingdown.org; Vice.com/NL; and Trouw.

The literary figure of the ekphrasis is a verbal description of a visual work of art. It has been part of literature and art discourse for centuries, and it has been crucial to the exhibition I saw it by ear, initiated by Muro Sur in Rozenstraat in Amsterdam.
Discussions of ekphrasis always seem to produce fertile associations and repercussions when thinking about the crossed boundaries between art and literature, imagination, representation and the unfolding and reproducibility of certain knowledge.
With Ilse van Rijn, Martín La Roche and Arif Kornweitz, this episode explores the history of the figure of ekphrasis, the traditional difference between poetry and painting (tradition of paragone), and how more recent poets and writers approach this categorical separation, to shed light on the exhibition I saw it by ear.
Find a list of references mentioned in the show, and for further reading on our website www.jajajaneeneenee.com
Also, this episodes contains two pieces of the vinyl record Écfrasis. These pieces stem from 2018, when Muro Sur invited 29 Chilean artists to contribute a rhetorical description of piece of art they would like to exhibit in a show in Amsterdam. The resulting descriptions are collected on a double vinyl, created with Martín La Roche and Giancarlo Pazzanese.