Atmospheric Witnessing
Initiating artist Lawil Karama is joined by anthropologist, artist, and curator Edward Akintola Hubbard for a conversation around Karama’s installation Algorithm of Colour, shedding light on her long-term research into the limits of representing violence and the possibilities for staging sites of memorial.
In this first event of the context programme, the audience is invited into Karama’s ongoing process, offering a view of how the ideas behind Algorithm of Colour as a computer script emerged from years of investigation into the archive of human rights violations during the Idi Amin regime (1971-1979); and why, subsequently, the script has manifested as an immersive installation that works through the notion of ‘atmospheric witnessing’ to critically fabulate a form of commemoration not yet possible for those whose lives were—and are still—affected by the violence. With ‘atmospheric witnessing,’ Karama counters conventional notions of spectatorship tethered to photographic documentation, looking, instead, to the sky itself as an actant present to Amin’s system of executions. The concept also, as Karama and Hubbard will explore, serves as a key starting point for the broader curatorial concept behind the exhibition The Nature of Remembering.
This event will be held in English.
Ticket: €7,50
Student and solidarity ticket: €5
Buy your tickets via Eventbrite.
Lawil Karama (she/her) is a Ugandan-Dutch conceptual artist born in former West Berlin and based in Amsterdam. Her work is deeply rooted in the diasporic experience, often drawing from her family history as a starting point for challenging conventional narratives and amplifying unheard voices. Karama’s creative path began in the world of special make-up effects, which continues to influence her approach, bringing a visceral understanding of form, surface, and psychological tension into her current work.
Edward Akintola Hubbard (he/him) is a Rotterdam-based artist and educator whose practice is experimental ethnography. Combining research methods from across anthropology, art theory, cinema, media studies, gender studies, urban studies, gothic studies and African diaspora studies, his work takes form through photography, video, installation, and curation. As artistic director of the DARKMATTER Collective, Hubbard is invested in creating spaces where the invisible can be made visible.
Image: Lawil Karama, Algorithm of Colour: Reflection Series – Sky 14:00 EAT, February 10, 1973 Mbale, Uganda (2026), KunstRAI X Rietveld Alumni 2026: paralelepípedo, photography by Lucia Del Valle Ramirez.
