Mark Mushiba
Studio grant holder in Göteborg August – October 2021
Mark Mushiba. Born 1987 in Lubango, Angola. Lives and works in Windhoek, Namibia. Berlin, Germany.
Mark Mushiva is a multidisciplinary artist whose work generally falls under the constructed genre of Afro-anarcho crypto Marxism, the conceptual idea that African appropriation of computer technology provides a unique opportunity to disrupt state-sponsored capitalism as a status quo. Born in a soviet supported war camp in Lubango, Angola during The Namibian liberation struggle and professionally trained as a computer scientist, the artist fuses Hip Hop and technology to access accelerationist visions of what a part capitalist, part socialist world driven by technological progress and engineering speed would look and sound like. One third of the award-winning Hip Hop poetry group Black Vulcanite, Mark’s work also incorporates novel technologies to enhance the felt experiences of people in playful public contexts. During his residency, Mark plans to create several artefacts that exemplify the concept of a technological utopia shaped and informed by the African’s experience. Mark will also develop and showcase a music film and EP inspired by the same themes.
Photo: Mark Mushiba
Mark has a background in human-computer interaction and earned a PhD in Computer Science from the University of Trento, Italy. His PhD thesis was on designing prosocial games for non-familial intergenerational interaction in cities.
Education:
Trainee at School of Machines, Making & Make-Believe, Physical Computing, microelectronics, Berlin, Germany, 2019
Trainee at Trust in Play: European School of Urban Game Design, Athens, Greece (2019)
Ph.D. in Computer Science – Human Computer Interaction, Thesis: Low-threshold encounters for intergenerational games
Master of Information Technology – Namibia University of Science & Technology (NUST), Namibia + Aalto University, Finland).
Latest exhibitions:
The Hip Hop power glove