What is called the imagination (from image, magi, magic, magician, etc.) is a practical vector from the soul. It stores all data, and can be called on to solve all our “problems.” The imagination is the projection of ourselves past our sense of ourselves as “things.” Imagination (image) is all possibility, because from the image, the initial circumscribed energy, any use (idea) is possible. And so begins that image’s use in the world. Possibility is what moves us.
—Amiri Baraka, “The Revolutionary Theatre”, Liberator, July 1965
Nana Adusei-Poku
Nana Adusei-Poku, Ph.D., is Senior Academic Advisor and Luma Fellow at the Center for Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Art at Bard College. She was previously Visiting Professor in Art History of the African Diaspora at The Cooper Union in New York City. She held the position Research Professor for Visual Cultures (2013-2017) at the Willem de Kooning Academy and was Guest Lecturer at the University of the Arts, Zurich from 2012-2018. Her articles have been published in Nka- Journal of Contemporary African Art, eflux, Kunstforum International, Flashart!, L’Internationale, and Darkmatter a.o. She curated a.o. the event Performances of No-thingness at the Academy of Arts Berlin in 2018 and the program: Longing on a Large Scale in conjunction with Todd Gray’s Exhibition Eucledian Gris Gris at Pomona College Museum of Art 2019-2020.
Senior Academic Advisor, Luma Fellow, Center for Curatorial Studies and Contemporary Art, Bard College