also look at: stuff we think about

MADEYOULOOK has been engaging with South Africa’s land questions, both historical and contemporary, through the lens of Bokoni and Boomplaats Farm. Forgotten World is a film that highlights the interdisciplinary research that tells the story of the ancient stone-walled settlements on the Mpumalanga escarpment.

MADEYOULOOK remains significantly influenced by the impulse of this text by Njabulo Ndebele, at the time that he presented it. The work of MADEYOULOOK continues to be informed first and foremost by the everyday lives of black South Africans, and this text frames the political potential of this particular within the psycho-historical context of South Africa.

This text is by Narendran Kumarakulasingam and Mvuselelo Ngcoya has deeply informed our thinking on black relationships to other-than-human life. As MADEYOULOOK, our interest centres on their deep engagement with “the social relations of a subsistence cultivator challenge the confines of colonial temporality, revealing a creative mode of dissent structured around dreams, ancestral knowledge, and the commons.”

People as Infrastructure by Abdoumaliq Simone is a vital concept that has challenged the thinking of MADEYOULOOK through considerations of the social as structural. Based on Johannesburg, but informed by Simone’s greater work across the world, this text also speaks distinctly the site of the inner city of Johannesburg and its relations that so strongly inform all of our thinking and practice.

MADEYOULOOK was nominated for the 2016-18 Vera List Centre Award for Art and Politics.

MADEYOULOOK presented a paper on refusal and ambiguity as political strategies for talking about black love. using moonlight as a (fucking awesome!) example of this. 

Zina Saro-Wiwa's "How do Africans Kiss" which we drew inspiration from while working on our project Corner loving