Workshop and Screening
Admission:
General $12
Student $10
September 24, 2026, 5pm
Brooklyn NY 11205
USA
Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, September 24, 2026, for Planetary Afterimages: After The Short Century, a two-part event beginning at 5pm with a session reflecting on the zine produced for this convening. At 7pm, contextual remarks will introduce a screening of John Akomfrah’s Testament (1988), which will be followed by a conversation between Yusuf Hassan, Keli Safia Maksud, and Serubiri Moses.
An afterimage lingers—an imprint of vision that persists after the source has faded. It can be a physiological residue, or a heightened, hallucinatory palinopsia: a repetition that refuses closure. This convening takes the afterimage as its conceptual node: how do the images, films, and archival traces of The Short Century continue to circulate, resonate, and insist upon being re-seen? What specters, echoes, and reflections emerge when these works reappear across new temporalities and contexts?
Extending conversations initiated during the 2025 Short Century Intensive in Lagos, the convening situates these afterimages in New York, more than two decades after The Short Century exhibition. The convening is chaired by Serubiri Moses, curator, author, and editor of the e-flux Journal series After Okwui.
Program
5–6:30pm | Session with Yusuf Hassan (BlackMass Publishing)
A session led by Yusuf Hassan will reflect on the zine produced for the convening and BlackMass Publishing’s ongoing engagement with the afterlives of the twentieth century through experimental printmaking. This part of the event is free, and limited to 20 participants, so an RSVP is essential to secure your spot in this session. To request a place, contact Guest Artists Space at library@guestartistsspace.com.
7–9pm | Screening and Discussion
John Akomfrah, Testament (1988, 76 minutes)
In Testament, the condition of the postcolony is embodied in the figure of activist-turned-television reporter Abena who returns to contemporary Ghana for the first time since the 1966 coup that ended President Kwame Nkrumah’s experiment in African socialism. Adrift in a ‘war zone of memories,’ Abena is caught in the tension between public history and private memory. The film is characterized by a depopulated frame and a deliberately cold look that evokes an emotional landscape of postcolonial trauma.
The screening will be preceded with contextual remarks situating the After Okwui series and the exhibition The Short Century. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Yusuf Hassan and Keli Safia Maksud, chaired by Serubiri Moses.
The convening Planetary Afterimages: After The Short Century is co-hosted by Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) and Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation in partnership with e-flux Screening Room.
The AAL Lab Convenings bring together a network of libraries, publishers, archives, and wider audiences through shared inquiry and dialogue. The series forms part of Re:assemblages program, curated by Naima Hassan with support from the teams of Y.S.F. and G.A.S. Foundation, and an advisory committee comprising Serubiri Moses, Dr. Beatrix Gassman de Sousa, Natasha Ginwala, Dr. Rangoato Hlasane, and Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan. The AAL convening series is supported by the Terra Foundation for American Art.
For more information, contact program@e-flux.com.
Accessibility
– Two flights of stairs lead up to the building’s front entrance at 172 Classon Avenue.
– For elevator access, please RSVP to program@e-flux.com. The building has a freight elevator nearest to 180 Classon Ave (a garage door) leading into the e-flux office space. A ramp is available for steps within the space
– e-flux has an ADA-compliant bathroom with no steps between the event space and this bathroom.
