Radical Space - Shebang (2021)

Radical Space was the first Issue of SHEBANG. For this Issue, guest curator Richard Kofi formed a collective with local and international artists, who developed and created work in dialogue with Amsterdam Zuidoost (Amsterdam South-East) as a changing city district. With, for example, exhibitions, meetings and video art, but also performances in public space, they depicted and collected the heritage of the city district to archive it for the future.

The goal is to help the character of the neighborhood survive the changes, in dialogue with the present, past and future. Through new rituals, ceremonies and collaborations, the participants comment on the future that awaits us, placing local developments in an international context. In addition, Richard Kofi questions SHEBANG's own role as a creative development place in the changing district.

Radical Space connects the culture, imagination and activism of Southeast with developments in Brixton (London) and Harlem (New York). In this way, an international tradition of 'world making' of diaspora communities is being built, which contradict imposed cubicles in new forms of togetherness and radically rethink the function of public spaces. A hub of international networks of solidarity, knowledge and memory.

Together with dancer and choreographer Poernima Gobardhan, Djuwa contributed to this project through musical interruptions in public spaces (subways, squares and parks) in Amsterdam Zuidoost. Radical Space was the first exhibition of the new contemporary art platform Shebang, which was set up by Bijlmer Parktheater, CBK Zuidoost and Imagine IC.