Library-in-Residence
Workshop

Library Transmission: A Panafrican Take on Predynastic Egypt

Moses März with The Otolith Collective

Date and Time:: Thursday 26 Mar, 2–5pm
Saturday 28 Mar, 2–5pm
Location:: Iqra and off site

Study Sessions on the Hieroglyphic Turn of Ayi Kwei Armah and his Companions, led by Moses März.

The literary career of Ayi Kwei Armah, born in 1939 in Takoradi-Sekondi in Gold Coast now Ghana, is marked by his decision to move to Senegal in the 1980s, where he co-founded the publishing co-operative Per Ankh, and sought to continue the Egyptological line of research opened by Cheikh Anta Diop.

Although widely known for The Beautyful Ones Are Not Yet Born (1969), Armah’s fictional and essayistic work has, for more than three decades, been dedicated to reactivating and translating ancient myths and concepts conveyed in hieroglyphic scriptures produced several millennia ago in the Nile valley. This forms part of a project to reclaim this fundamental African literary and philosophical archive from prevailing Eurocentric and Orientalist readings.

His novels, essays and translations belonging to this body of work include publications such as KMT, In the House of Life (2002), The Eloquence of the Scribes (2006), Smi n skhty pn – The Peasant’s Tale (2016) and wat nt shemsw – The Way of Companions (2018).

Across two sessions, we will read key passages from Armah and his collaborators and explore his proposal that reconnecting with predynastic Egyptian thought offers a mythic and intellectual matrix for contemporary Panafrican unity.

Please note the Study Sessions include an analytical excursion to the seven so-called ‘permanent Egyptian galleries’ of the British Museum. More information on timings will be provided in advance of the sessions.

Application information:

To participate in the Study Sessions, please submit the following to otolitheventsbooking@gmail.com

Name and contact details
A short paragraph explaining your particular interest in the proposed topic and your creative discipline(s) or research background
Work Sample showing your creative work or research work as a pdf or link to a website, video, audio or other work.

Please make the subject line: [your name] A Panafrican Take on Predynastic Egypt

The deadline for applications is Saturday 14 March 2026. Successful applicants will be notified by Thursday 19 March 2026.

We invite participants who:

Have an interest in African literature, philosophy or intellectual history
Are open to close reading and collective discussion
Are committed to participating across both study sessions

No prior knowledge of Egyptology or classical languages is required.

Moses März is a researcher and mapmaker based in Berlin. His maps visualize geographies of knowledge by using a methodology based on the relational philosophy of Édouard Glissant, and the editorial practice of the Chimurenga Chronic. He currently works as principal investigator in the Research Unit Collaborations at the University of Potsdam.

The Otolith Collective is a long-standing artist led organisation supporting intergenerational and intragenerational art practices, research-led projects, writing and process-based forms of development. They create environments that nourish discourse and discussion, co-commission artists, and curate exhibitions and programmes with a wide range of collaborators, organisations and institutions here and elsewhere. Theirs is an international project based on transnational and translocal vision who are committed to maintaining and animating an experimental and worldmaking approach. Performing across disciplines such as visual art, performance, new music, film and video, new technology and critical writing, we draw a diverse range of audiences. The OC has curated seminal exhibitions and platforms on the work of figures such as Black Audio Film Collective, Mark Fisher, Harun Farocki, Bahar Noorizadeh, The Chimurenga Library, Chris Marker, to name but a few.