Photo by Peter Tolkin
Listening There: Scenes from Ghana
Peter Tolkin and Mabel O. Wilson
Studio-X New York, 2010
Photographs and videos of modernist buildings and contemporary urban life in Ghana, by SideProjects, a collaboration of Peter Tolkin and Mabel Wilson.
“Listening There: Scenes from Ghana cuts a spatial and temporal section through the west African nation’s architecture, cities, peoples, and social spaces. Wilson and Tolkin's multi-media project explores the genesis and impact of modernity, from the hulking masses of coastal slave forts to the modernist architecture that signaled the nation-building agendas of Ghana's post-colonial regimes.
“As architects increasingly operate within an interconnected world, Listening There considers the difficulty of navigating across cultural difference. The photographs and videos tune into to the contemporary cultural resonances emanating from the cell-phone kiosks, teeming markets, and crowded thoroughfares of Accra, Kumasi, and Cape Coast.”