Future Pasts
Sustainabilities and Cultural Landscapes in West Namibia
Other outputs
Over recent decades a select group of scholars, notably Sigrid Schmidt, Megan Biesele and Mathias Guenther, have brought attention to the rich and extensive nature of KhoeSan folklore. A key part of their respective studies has involved drawing out how similar themes are worked with across quite different KhoeSan groups and individuals in distinctive yet, nonetheless, similar ways. Knowledge that comes out of the tight binding of landscape to culture and lifestyle, is passed on and reconfigured with every telling of a story. Work with the Future Pasts project has picked up one of the primary themes of this folklore and explored it in conjunction with new media opportunities.
The theme of this media rich website by Chris Low is Haiseb. Haiseb is a Trickster like figure found among Nama, Damara and Hai||om, and intimately related to Trickster figures found across KhoeSan peoples. The emphasis of this website is to explore how knowledge of Haiseb relates to landscape, song and movement. The website is a prelude to a more academic discussion of what embodied knowledge actually means, including how memory of Haiseb’s movement and sound haunts river beds, mountains and plains. Scholars of KhoeSan folklore all emphasise that the stories are performances. This website indicates what sort of performances underpin current knowledge of Haiseb and begs the question, just how long have these movements and sounds of Haiseb populated southern Africa ‘empty’ spaces?
30/01/2018
Mike Hannis and Sian Sullivan find extractive routes from the colonial era still active in southern Africa. Article in The Land magazine online here.
​
Also see research blog Extraction old and new.
BBC radio producer Robin Denselow's article on the Damara King's Festival in Songlines magazine
19/03/2017
In November 2016 BBC radio producer Robin Denselow accompanied Future Pasts ethnomusicologist Angela Impey to the Damara King's Festival in Okombahe, west Namibia. This article for Songlines magazine is based on his journey and observations.
09/12/2019
At the beginning of November 2016, Angela Impey travelled to Namibia with BBC journalist, Robin Denselow, to make a radio documentary about the Damara King’s festival, which took place in Okombahe (Erongo Region), the capital of the ǂNūkhoen (Damara) people. The documentary was broadcast as part of BBC Radio 3's World on Three series, on 9th December 2016. For more information, see our blog.
22/09/2015
Rick Rohde contributed several repeat photographic images for the National Conference on Bush Encroachment and Value Addition in Namibia, 23-24 September, Windhoek. This poster uses images of Otjisewa taken by Commissioner Palgrave in September 1876 and by Rick in December 2006, to illustrate the significant growth in woody species over this 130 year period.
