EVENTS

Manthia Diawara

AI: African Intelligence

mumok, Vienna
12.03.2026

Édouard Glissant: one world in relation

ARTIUM museoa, Vitoria-Gasteiz
14.03.2026

Presented by Manthia Diawara together with Jürgen Bock (Maumaus/Lumiar Cité) and Sabeth Buchmann (Academy of Fine Arts Vienna)

Manthia Diawara’s essay film, AI: African Intelligence, explores the contact zones between African rituals of possession practiced in traditional fishing villages along Senegal’s Atlantic coast and the emergence of new technologal frontiers known as artificial intelligence. Reflecting on the confluence of tradition and modernity, Diawara asks how we might move from disembodied machines toward a more humane and spiritually grounded engagement with algorithms. Could Africa be the context from which such improbable algorithms emerge?
(2022,110 min)

On March 13, a workshop with Manthia Diawara and Jürgen Bock will take place at mumok cinema in the context of Sabeth Buchmann’s seminar at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

www.mumok.at




In 2009, Manthia Diawara followed Édouard Glissant with his camera during a cross-Atlantic journey from South Hampton (UK) to Brooklyn (New York) on the Queen Mary II. This poetic meditation continued in Martinique, the native home of Glissant. The extraordinary voyages resulted in the production of an intellectual biography in which Glissant elaborates on his theory of relation and the concept of ‘tout-monde.’ Glissant was one of the most important contemporary thinkers. In the 1980s, his theories of creolisation, diversity and otherness, as elaborated in the book Le Discours Antillais (1981), were considered seminal texts for the emerging studies of multiculturalism, identity politics, minority literature and Black Atlanticism. In the 1990s and 2000, he developed a theory he called ‘poetique de la relation,’ and ‘tout-monde’, where the concept of ‘relation’ is perceived as an autonomous entity, moving between objects and providing them with energy, poesis and difference. In his book Philosophie de la relation (2009), Glissant used the concept to meditate on the new meanings of globalisation, chaos, violence, equality and justice.
(2010, 50 min)

www.artium.eus



Manthia Diawara was born in Mali, West Africa. He is a distinguished Professor of Comparative Literature and Film at New York University. Selected films include: Angela Davis: A World of Greater Freedom (2023), A Letter from Yene (2022), An Opera of the World (2017), Negritude: A Dialogue between Soyinka and Senghor (2015), Édouard Glissant, One World in Relation (2010), Maison Tropicale (2008) and Rouch in Reverse (1995). His films have been presented at festivals, biennials and a wide range of exhibition venues, including the Berlin International Film Festival, Bienal de São Paulo, Biennale de Dakar, Biennale de Lubumbashi, Centre Pompidou, documenta, Institute of Contemporary Arts (ICA), Lumiar Cité, Museu de Serralves, HKW-Haus der Kulturen der Welt, Manifesta, Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Pan-African Film & TV Festival of Ouagadougou (FESPACO), Serpentine Galleries and Sharjah Biennial.