Visiting Professors: Bayo Akomolafe – The crack is not a door: on disarchitecture, aqueous sites, and the afrocene
Posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher Bayo Akomolafe will visit the Academy of Fine Arts and Puistokatu 4 in August and September.
Cracks are not openings we can choose; they are not entrances we step through with intention. Cracks are para-ontological, ecological and retrospective – speculatively composed only after the fact, in the slow material churning of what I have come to call the paraterranean. This lecture wonders what it might mean to think site differently: as aqueous, as paraterranean, as the granular groan of sedimentation working itself out. Across the Afrocene, disarchitecture, and the speculative geologies of the crack, I will sit with the question: what does it mean to make art at sites that refuse to be sites? And what becomes of the ’responsive’ in site-responsive practice when the site itself is leaking, listening, churning, and unfinished?
Words from the inviting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Daniel Peltz:
”I was inspired to invite Bayo Akomolafe based on a desire to develop the field of Time and Space Arts and specifically in my area of responsibility, site and situation specific art practice. I believe Bayo’s thinking around aqueous sites and psycho-social ‘cracks’ can have a profound and critical impact on site-responsive art practice.
My hope is that our students will gain new perspectives on activism, through exposure to Bayo’s conceptualization of ‘post-activism’. I also hope the students will gain tools for thinking site-responsive art practice with increased nuance and dexterity. Bayo’s thinking has broad applications, the open lecture would be of interest to those working with site-responsive/place-based methods from a range of fields, artistic and otherwise.”
About Bayo Akomolafe
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to EJ, son and brother. He is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, self-styled ‘trans-public’ intellectual, essayist, and currently the Hubert Humphrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies in Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA (August 2025).
Bayo is the host teacher at Dancing with Mountains, an educational consultation and the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene.
Accompanying lecture 27 August at Puistokatu 4
Before the lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Akomolafe will also be speaking at Puistokatu 4 on 27 August about hope.
Visiting professors lecture series
Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts regularly invites distinguished international artists and art experts to teach for a fixed period. The visit also includes a public lecture that is open to all. uniarts.fi/visiting-professors.
Cracks are not openings we can choose; they are not entrances we step through with intention. Cracks are para-ontological, ecological and retrospective – speculatively composed only after the fact, in the slow material churning of what I have come to call the paraterranean. This lecture wonders what it might mean to think site differently: as aqueous, as paraterranean, as the granular groan of sedimentation working itself out. Across the Afrocene, disarchitecture, and the speculative geologies of the crack, I will sit with the question: what does it mean to make art at sites that refuse to be sites? And what becomes of the ’responsive’ in site-responsive practice when the site itself is leaking, listening, churning, and unfinished?
Words from the inviting professor at the Academy of Fine Arts, Daniel Peltz:
”I was inspired to invite Bayo Akomolafe based on a desire to develop the field of Time and Space Arts and specifically in my area of responsibility, site and situation specific art practice. I believe Bayo’s thinking around aqueous sites and psycho-social ‘cracks’ can have a profound and critical impact on site-responsive art practice.
My hope is that our students will gain new perspectives on activism, through exposure to Bayo’s conceptualization of ‘post-activism’. I also hope the students will gain tools for thinking site-responsive art practice with increased nuance and dexterity. Bayo’s thinking has broad applications, the open lecture would be of interest to those working with site-responsive/place-based methods from a range of fields, artistic and otherwise.”
About Bayo Akomolafe
Bayo Akomolafe (Ph.D.), rooted with the Yoruba people in a more-than-human world, is the father to Alethea and Kyah, the grateful life-partner to EJ, son and brother. He is a widely celebrated international speaker, posthumanist thinker, poet, teacher, self-styled ‘trans-public’ intellectual, essayist, and currently the Hubert Humphrey Distinguished Professor of American Studies in Macalester College, Saint Paul, Minnesota, USA (August 2025).
Bayo is the host teacher at Dancing with Mountains, an educational consultation and the visionary founder of The Emergence Network, a planet-wide networking project and inquiry at the edges of the Anthropocene.
Accompanying lecture 27 August at Puistokatu 4
Before the lecture at the Academy of Fine Arts, Akomolafe will also be speaking at Puistokatu 4 on 27 August about hope.
Visiting professors lecture series
Uniarts Helsinki’s Academy of Fine Arts regularly invites distinguished international artists and art experts to teach for a fixed period. The visit also includes a public lecture that is open to all. uniarts.fi/visiting-professors.