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GSA & COVID-19: REMOTE UPDATE SERIES Retrospect: GSA Unit 15x Dar Es Salaam 2020 Unit 15x students and staff visited Tanzania, including Dar Es Salaam, Pugu Hills, Masingini forest and Jozani mangroves and forest area. #STAYCONNECTED on our social media platforms for daily updates on current digital classes, reviews and work in progress of the GSA students and staff—working hard and keeping spirits high as we collectively navigate the COVID-19 outbreak, while classes remain suspended. Remember to keep your hands washed; avoid touching your face and close-contact with others, and public transport or crowded places if you are able to. Visit www.nicd.ac.za for more information. Stay healthy out there! #iamstayinghomeGSA #unitsystemafrica #happeningatthegsa #gsaunit15x

"There is a profound realisation when we recognize an extreme shift in the normal, happening right before us. Beyond simply figuring out how to continue, we must search for means and methods to position ourselves within change, not just in reaction with it. The challenge we are facing, in sharing ideas, meeting up and discussing the world, presents an opportunity to find new ways to capture, communicate and dialogue." In light of the COVID-19 pandemic creating a shift in the daily norm, GSA Unit 13 embraced the extreme change and searched & investigated means & methods, beyond reaction. With that, Slow Simulcast was launched, an exhibition that culminates in an online dialogue. GSA & COVID-19: REMOTE UPDATE SERIES Retrospect: GSA Unit 13 Clips from U13 Quarter 1 Review - 2020/03/23 Instagram: @gsa_unit_13

TRANSLATIONAL IMAGINARIES AND PLANETARY MEMORIES Presented by Dr Fazil Moradi "In our world of technological change and translational practices, we are observing multiple and widespread access to the violence of “the past”. Translation, I argue, entangles hospitality, opens up the past, and put us in touch with the untranslatable death that gives way to an undeterminable future. Against this backdrop, I assess how science and technology, politics and law, photographs, people, language, modernity’s infrastructure of annihilation, and evidentiary institutions institute and conserve tele-evidence that becomes central to political, national and planetary memories of political violence."

HOW SHOULD WE BE RESEARCHING AFRICAN ARCHITECTURAL PRODUCTION, URBANISM AND URBANISATION? Presented by Prof. Nnamdi Elleh Curated by Prof. Antonio Tomas Erick Gbolia’s Skyscrapers and Basilicas Grow on Cocoa Trees is a curious object that on the surface looks like a mere cartoon, but which, when explored in depth, tells and interrogates how political and business leaders, architects, planners and scholars, and the general audience, view and imagine the production of modern and contemporary buildings in different parts of the continent. While the historicisation of new architectural objects is acknowledged in different registers, the workers and the real sources of the wealth for building Africa’s contemporary spatial experiences are not acknowledged. How might we commiserate the role of labour and Africa’s natural resources in the construction of the contemporary city and its objects? This question forms the objective of the workshop.

Please join us at our very first International Lecture Series event for 2020. This year we will be exploring the intersection of architecture with a wide range of disciplines. ‘Museum Doctor’ Ngaire Blankenberg is internationally recognised for her work fixing museums, planning cultural destinations and revitalising urban spaces through culture. She is co-editor of Museums, Cities and Soft Power and the Manual of Digital Museum Planning. Ngaire’s work is guided by the belief that museums are too important to remain colonial, elitist and irrelevant. Yet here we are. Through her work advising over 50 museums and cultural projects in 35 cities on 5 continents, she is on a mission to diagnose what exactly is wrong with museums and how to put them right.

In the making of form with clay, as handled, moulded and shaped, the sculpted and drawn object is a design and archive of its production and place. On the 24th February we invite you to join us for a masterclass with Mexican artist Paloma Torres, whose work is located in the territory between architecture and sculpture. The masterclass consists of a morning roundtable and evening artist talk. We understand this event as a platform for facilitating a dialogue on questions of local histories and epistemologies in relation to land, earth, architecture and the city across the global south, where the south is understood as a position, location and place.