Jamming Day 4 | Learning from Counter-Futures: Practising Afrofuturisms

Sign-up

Book a free workshop place via Eventbrite

About Jamming Days
Tuned to the collaborative, experimental and improvisational ethos of musical ‘jamming’ and energised by the unruly possibilities of knowing otherwise, Jamming Days brings artists, curators, cultural workers, educators, students, activists, policymakers, and communities together in a series of discursive and participatory events. These charged moments of reflection, exchange and experimentation activate a constellation of (un)learning spaces, equipping individuals and communities to collectively inhabit, contest and transform this dissonant present with critical hope and solidarity that draws on knowledge in all its multiplicity. 

Part of Jamming The Ignorant Art School
Exhibition: 9 October – 12 December 2026

Event Access

• Event will take place on level 2 of the gallery
• Light vegetarian and vegan food will be provided 
• non-alcoholic refreshments will be provided 

Biographies

The Otolith Group is an award-winning artist led collective founded by Anjalika Sagar and Kodwo Eshun in 2002. Their moving image, audio works, performances and installations are characterized by an engagement with the legacies and potentialities of diasporic futurisms that explore modes of temporal anomalies, anthropic inversions and synthetic alienation.

Recent solo exhibitions include: I See Infinite Distance Between Any Point and Another, greengrassi, London (2023); A Sphere of Water Orbiting a Star, Galway Arts Centre, Galway and Hangar Artistic Research Centre, Lisbon (both 2023); What the Owl Knows, Secession, Austria (2022-2023); Xenogenesis, Irish Museum of Modern Art, Dublin (2022-2023); Sharjah Art Foundation (2021-22); SAAG (2020); Buxton Art Gallery, Melbourne (2020); ICA, Virginia (2020); Van Abbe Museum, Eindhoven (2019); O Horizon, The Rubin Museum of Art, New York (2018); Reconstruction of Story 2, National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2018); The Radiant, Art Gallery Miyauch, Japan (2017); In the Year of the Quiet Sun, CASCO, Utrecht (2014); Novaya Zemlya, Museo Serralves, Porto (2014); and Medium Earth, REDCAT (Roy and Edna Disney/Cal Arts Theater), Los Angeles (2013).

Approaching curation as an artistic practice of building intergenerational and cross-cultural platforms, the collective has been influential in critically introducing particular works of artists such as Chris Marker, Harun Farocki, Anand Patwardhan, Etel Adnan, Black Audio Film Collective, Sue Clayton, Mani Kaul, Peter Watkins, and Chimurenga in the UK, US, Europe, and Lebanon.

Jj Fadaka is a writer and artist. Their spaces, on and off the page, draw on black feminist radical traditions to explore desire in a world without barriers. You can find them facilitating world-building workshops and juicy conversations. They find belonging in making learning spaces, soundscapes, visual and performance art. 

Jek McAllister is an artist, facilitator, gardener, and cook based in Dundee. Currently, she is Lead Artist for Alternative (Art) School, a project by Forgan Arts Centre supporting young people who feel excluded from mainstream education through a programme of art, craft and horticulture. Her day to day practice is and always has been concerned with with creating fun circumstances for people to come together, hang out and experience or learn something (often around food). Jek has run Wooosh Gallery since 2019, was a Hospitalfield Graduate resident in 2023–24 and in 2025 facilitated 'Dundee Dye Gardens' as a part of the V&A Dundee exhibition Garden Futures. 

Khadea Santi is an artist-curator working mainly with ceramics, writing and film, exploring interests in African cosmologies, critical autoethnography and histories, world-building collaboratively with groups and communities. Her previous writing includes a film review of What The Owl Knows by The Otolith Group on the Cooper Gallery blog. 
 
She was on the Rhubaba committee from 2020 - 2023 where she co-edited Passions, a book bringing together the contributions of nine Black artist-curators-makers based in Scotland or who have connections to Scotland, as they revisit and respond to Sulter’s seminal publication Passion; Discourses on Blackwomen’s Creativity (1990). Commissions include the 45-minute sound work Deep Lake Murmur 2022 commissioned by Radiophrenia, and a curated May You Never Grieve Alone that explores spiritualism, land and memory through film, ceramic and writing.  

Black Waters
Black Waters – Black Clyde – Blak Rivers is a collaborative, curatorial research incubator and invocation of assembly, assemblage and the ensemble of material, led by Zoë Zo, Zoë Tumika & Zoë Guthrie and Żżo / Zoë Charlery. This project explores the capacious fields of Black Geography, Black Geology, Meta-Physics, Hauntology and Phenomenology through the a(live) study and practice of Black Performance. Black Waters’ work has been supported by Jerwood Foundation and Glasgow School of Art Exhibitions, David Dale Gallery’s Studio Residency in 2023, and the exhibition, ‘aweys gaun’, was part of Glasgow International 2026.

Access Funds

A small access fund is available to support travel and access for BSL interpretation, costs for childcare, carers & support workers and other needs. The funds are distributed on a first come first served basis. Please be aware we may need to close the fund early if demand is high, so please get in touch prior to event. 

For Travel

• please emailing stating where you are travelling from within Scotland 
• Cooper Gallery will book trains in advance for attendees and email ticket collection references

For all other access requests

• please email and detail your access requirement and request
• we will respond as soon as we can and confirm access fund transfer

Contact: [email protected]
 

General Access

Location

Cooper Gallery is located to the right side of the DJCAD buildings on Perth Road
Entrance is via double doors which face onto a car park
The gallery is on two levels

Level 1

• Ramped access
• Wheelchair accessible toilet. The toilet is gender neutral
• Invigilator desk

Level 2

Lift route

• Accessible via lift, corridor and 5 steps. For wheelchair access via a stairclimber
• Please email in advance if you require lift or stairclimber access

Step route

• 24 steps. Two flights of 12 steps with handrails are separated by a landing
• No toilet on first floor

Exhibition

• Exhibition videos are subtitled and captioned in English
• Seating is provided and/or additional seating available, please ask an invigilator
• Large print versions of the exhibition information handout are available, please ask our Guides. If you require alternative formats for material in exhibitions please email or ask our Guides.

BSL & captioning

• For event requirements please email: [email protected]

Toilet

Ground floor has a wheelchair accessible toilet. The toilet is gender neutral.

All Enquiries

• Please email: [email protected]
   

Funding support

The exhibition is supported by the National Lottery through Creative Scotland and with the kind support of Duncan of Jordanstone College of Art Centenary Trust.