Grassroots Upgraded Reflections on Nairobi Eastlands

The collective Slum-TV has been a longstanding project partner of Goethe-Institut Nairobi and the cultural organization Africalia. For Grassroots upgraded, 20 members of Slum-TV choose the LOMO camera as a medium of self-representation. Slum-TV is based in Mathare, in a large so called informal settlement at the heart of the city of Nairobi. Grassroot upgraded is not a development project but rather takes an ironic perspective on the development world, a position which is reflected in the title of the book and the politically incorrect name of the collective. The approach is conceptual and political, the choice of medium an aesthetic one. The LOMO camera is taken as anarchic medium, based on chance, involving imperfection and often producing a blurred aesthetic. With these images Slum-TV goes beyond the stereotypes which have been shaping our imagination of Africa. Slum-TV?s approach avoids that the photographs dull our view, as Susan Sontag puts it, as the cliché pictures of African slums often do. The exhibition, which was shown in Nairobi Gallery from 16th January to 6th May 2012, was Slum-TV?s biggest Art project so far. It presented a unique perspective of life in Nairobi?s Eastlands, challenging the common images about life in the marginal areas of town and revealing a dynamic and bustling urban life. The exhibition was curated by Sam Hopkins.--http://www.goethe.de/ins/ke/nai/kul/mag/kuf/en9256361.htm.