The Onion DJ🧅

Thank you to everyone who helped make our recent gathering with Prof. Cynthia Amaning Danquah possible. It was a moment shaped by care, collaboration, and quiet effort,the kind of energy that holds and sustains work like What Has the Onion Taught You? We’re grateful for every hand, every presence, and every unseen gesture that brought this into being. Thank you!!🧅

What Has the Onion Taught You? “Learning from an Onion: Working as a DJ” is an ongoing artistic project rooted in archival digging, embodied research, and speculative experimentation. In the Ashanti Region, the project continues through distinct but connected threads: the “Mooncritters Programme” and a new engagement with pharmacologist Prof. Cynthia Amaning Danquah @cynthiaamaningdanquah of the Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, KNUST. This encounter invites participants into Danquah’s world of scientific inquiry, where we explore the antimicrobial properties of the onion. Through lab tours, presentations, and microscopic investigations, the onion becomes more than a plant—it becomes a trigger for shared knowledge, a false anchor that unsettles disciplinary boundaries. It allows for an unfolding of thought—not to categorize knowledge, but to unsettle its borders and reclaim the authority to know, to be and to speak. The encounter with Danquah launches the series “What Has the Onion Taught You?,” a constellation of responses shaped by how different people—artists, historians, scientists, traders, cooks—relate to the onion in their own fields, and how it may have shaped their perspectives about the world. From this single encounter, new dialogues will unfold, opening space for reflection, resonance, and future collaborations. This project is under the auspices of SAVVY Contemporary: The Laboratory of Form-Ideas @savvycontemporary . It forms part of blaxTARLINES KUMASI's @blaxtarlines collaboration with SAVVY Contemporary titled “In Defense of Brokenness” (2024) in the realisation of the bigger project “Transitions: Cures, Chronic Promises” (2024) initiated and conceived by SAVVY Contemporary. Within this inquiry, “What Has the Onion Taught You?” becomes a generative series, not only of events but of epistemic openings, shaped by diverse perspectives. Poster Design: @hanyame22 Date: 25th July, 2025 Time: 12:00pm – 3:00pm Venue: Department of Pharmacology Conference Room, Faculty of Pharmacy and Pharmaceutical Sciences, KNUST

*Learning from an Onion: Working as a DJ - ‘Mooncritters Programme’*, partners with the *Tuesdays Screening Initiative* to present a three-site screening of ‘_On the Sunny Side of the Alps_’ (2008) by Slovenian director Janez Burger. This collaboration brings together two distinct approaches: the Onion DJs’ work in archival excavation and speculative futures, and the Tuesdays Screening Initiative’s use of film as a catalyst for collective reflection. Together, they create openings for dialogue — inviting new and previous publics to gather, reflect, and imagine otherwise. Burger’s short film begins with a seemingly lighthearted premise. “Two typical Slovenian families live in idyllic harmony, until one of them buys a new car…” A simple act that begins to unravel any illusions of harmony. Beneath the picturesque exterior lies a tension reflective of Slovenia’s deeper societal fractures — where xenophobia and racial bias unsettle the country’s self-image. These tensions, viewed through the lens of migration, racial bias, and social disintegration, invite audiences to reflect on the instability of seemingly cohesive societies — and the quiet architectures of exclusion that often lie just out of frame. At KNUST’s Department of Architecture, one of the screening venues, the film’s resonance is layered. In the 1960s, the department was part of a broader moment of radical internationalism — a time when Ghanaian architects and planners worked closely with peers from the Eastern Bloc to envision new urban futures. This spirit of cross-cultural exchange and shared ambition found expression in projects like the Continental Unity Building, a powerful architectural symbol of pan-African and transnational solidarity. Today, that openness casts a long, complex shadow over the exclusions and suspicions depicted in the film. There is no easy moral here, only an invitation: to remember that histories of solidarity can be both fragile and instructive — and that in revisiting them, we may yet find new provocations for the present.

A blaxTARLINES delegation comprising Prof. Edwin Bodjawah @papaedwino , Dr. George 'Buma' Ampratwum @georgebuma , Dr. Adjo Daiki Apodey Kisser @moonwalkersashanti__ , and Dr. Kwasi Ohene-Ayeh @iubizzle are on the international curators' visiting program in Copenhagen, Denmark, under the auspices of the Danish Arts Foundation's Committee for Visual Arts Project Funding. The week-long visit involves exploring the Danish art scene by way of institutional networks, studio visits, site visits, and more... #blaxtarlines #blaxtarlineskumasi #DanishArtFoundation #Copenhagen #GeorgeBumaAmpratwum #EdwinBodjawah #kwasioheneayeh