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A review by shukri
Experiments in Imagining Otherwise by Lola Olufemi
challenging
hopeful
informative
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
4.25
“I am trying to inflate the material”
an expansive text that defies categories (prose, poetry, manifesto, fiction/non fiction), Lola Olufemi demands more from herself and us all.
I will carry the ‘otherwise’ with me. the otherwise isn’t prescriptive or final; instead a springboard, launchpad, a site of possibility that moves outwards and inwards and circularly. Lola, with the ‘otherwise’, makes legible a somatic desire/impulse, an affective politics so that is the epitome of black feminist love politics, that opens up language to the same rhythm as our imaginations.
The ‘otherwise’, and what this text does generally, is demand an imagination of us that makes us long to touch the intangible.
My favourite experiment was narrative consistency, in which she took an photo of Olive Morris and imagined what the photograph can expand to tell us about that incident. The archive isn’t rigid or homogenous; instead fragments that leave gaps of possibility. Olufemi explored this so beautifully and I was taken aback.
an expansive text that defies categories (prose, poetry, manifesto, fiction/non fiction), Lola Olufemi demands more from herself and us all.
I will carry the ‘otherwise’ with me. the otherwise isn’t prescriptive or final; instead a springboard, launchpad, a site of possibility that moves outwards and inwards and circularly. Lola, with the ‘otherwise’, makes legible a somatic desire/impulse, an affective politics so that is the epitome of black feminist love politics, that opens up language to the same rhythm as our imaginations.
The ‘otherwise’, and what this text does generally, is demand an imagination of us that makes us long to touch the intangible.
My favourite experiment was narrative consistency, in which she took an photo of Olive Morris and imagined what the photograph can expand to tell us about that incident. The archive isn’t rigid or homogenous; instead fragments that leave gaps of possibility. Olufemi explored this so beautifully and I was taken aback.