05/21/2026
Last week L’École du Soir hosted briefhistories.mp3 where we gathered for a group listening session of Christian Nyampeta’s The Africans, A Radio Play in Three Acts. Nyampeta performed a remix version of the radio play’s first act.
The Africans, A Radio Play in Three Acts, is what Nyampeta calls a “multiform audio-social structure.” Originally composed in 2021, the radio play is an adaptation of writer Ali A. Mazrui’s 1971 novel The Trial of Christopher Okigbo, in which the late Nigerian poet Christopher Okigbo is put on trial upon his arrival in After-Africa, following his death on the battlefield of the Biafran war. Was the poet entitled to place his individual civic engagement above his universal duty as an artist? In this audio reimaging, Nyampeta builds a sound world for Mazrui’s concept of “After-Africa,” an imagined pan-African realm where people go when they die. The story that unfolds examines the role of the individual artist in collective struggle. Thank you for bringing us into your deeply moving work 🫀
This event is part of the briefhistories.mp3 radio program, which gathers interviews with artists from and in orbit of the Brief Histories network, whose practices consider transmission, translation, and coalition-building across time and space. The episodes air monthly on the Bethlehem-based radio station Radio Alhara between April and July.
A massive thank you to our amazing collaborators Alma Chaouachi, Mike Curran, Devon Ma, and Truth Murray-Cole who organized the program, and thank you to Nadya Marin-Luna for the amazing graphic design work ❤️🔥
This project is developed through a graduate course at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, led by Fawz Kabra, visiting faculty at CCS Bard. It culminates a year-long reflection on radio as an alternative space and medium for artistic and cultural experimentation.
.r.curran
