Hosted at e-flux Screening Room
Join us at e-flux Screening Room on Thursday, September 24, 2026, for Planetary Afterimages: After The Short Century, a two-part event beginning at 5pm with a session reflecting on the zine produced for the convening. At 7pm, contextual remarks will introduce a screening of John Akomfrah’s Testament (1988), that will be followed by a conversation between Yusuf Hassan, Keli Safia Maksud, and Serubiri Moses.
An afterimage lingers—an imprint of vision that persists after the source has faded. It can be a physiological residue, or a heightened, hallucinatory palinopsia: a repetition that refuses closure. This convening takes the afterimage as its conceptual node: how do the images, films, and archival traces of The Short Century continue to circulate, resonate, and insist upon being re-seen? What specters, echoes, and reflections emerge when these works reappear across new temporalities and contexts?
Extending conversations initiated during the 2025 Short Century Intensive in Lagos, the convening situates these afterimages in New York, more than two decades after The Short Century exhibition. The convening is chaired by Serubiri Moses, curator, author, editor of the e-flux series After Okwui Enwezor, and advisor to Re:assemblages 2025–26.
Event Details
This event is segmented into two sessions, with each session requiring a separate RSVP. Session One is free but limited to 20 participants. Session Two is ticketed at $12 for general attendees and $10 for students.
Date: 24th September 2026
Session One: 5:00pm - 6:00pm
Session Two: 7:00pm - 9:00pm
Location: 172 Classon Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11205, USA.
Programme Schedule
5.00-6.30pm | Drop-in Session with Yusuf Hassan (BlackMass Publishing)
A session led by Yusuf Hassan will reflect on the zine produced for the convening and BlackMass Publishing’s ongoing engagement with the afterlives of the twentieth century through experimental printmaking. This part of the event is free, and limited to 20 participants, so an RSVP is essential to secure your spot in this session.
To request a place, contact us at library@guestartistsspace.com.
7.00-9.00pm | Screening and Discussion — John Akomfrah, Testament (1988, 76 minutes)
In Testament, the condition of the postcolony is embodied in the figure of activist turned television reporter Abena who returns to contemporary Ghana, for the first time since the 1966 coup that ended President Kwame Nkrumah’s experiment in African socialism. Adrift in a ‘war zone of memories’ Abena is caught in the tension between public history and private memory. The film is characterized by a depopulated frame and a deliberately cold look that evokes an emotional landscape of postcolonial trauma. The screening will be preceded with contextual remarks situating the After Okwui series and the exhibition The Short Century. The screening will be followed by a conversation with Yusuf Hassan and Keli Safia Maksud, chaired by Serubiri Moses
Admission: $12 general | $10 students
Faces of Africa, 2018, inkjet print. Images courtesy of Keli Safia Maksud.
About the Contributors
Keli Safia Maksud
Keli Safia Maksud (e-flux producer and visual artist) is an interdisciplinary artist and writer working in sound, sculpture, installation, text, and printmaking. Drawing on histories of colonial encounters and their enduring effects on memory, Maksud's practice is drawn to the liminal — the uncertain, generative space in-between — as a site from which to destabilize interrogate the systems that construct the world around us and unmask the fictions of the state. Currently, she is a resident at the International Studio and Curatorial Program and a Jerome Fellow at the Queens Museum in New York.
Headshot of Keli Safia Maksud. Photo: Kevin Claiborne.
Serubiri Moses
Serubiri Moses is a Ugandan author, editor, and curator. He is known for his focus on global art history, and the author of several book chapters, including “Can Planting Trees Tell an Alternative Art History?” (2021) and “Death and the Stone Age: Ugandan Art Institutions, 1941-1967” (2017). He is the editor or co-editor of Forces of Art: Perspectives from a Changing World (Valiz, 2021) and Reza Aramesh: Action By Number (SKIRA, 2024), and the After Okwui series at e-flux journal. He has taught most recently in the Art History department at Hunter College, CUNY, and at the Center for Curatorial Studies, Bard College, and is currently a PhD Candidate in the Center for Research and Education in Art and Media at the University of Westminster, London. He previously held teaching positions at New York University, and the online post-graduate programs New Centre for Research and Practice [DE], Dark Study, and Digital Earth Fellowship [NL]. As a curator, he has organized exhibitions at museums including MoMA PS1, Long Island City; Kunst-Werke Institute for Contemporary Art, Berlin; National Museum of African Art, D.C.; and the Hessel Museum, Bard College, NY. As a lecturer, he has given talks at University of the Arts, Helsinki; Amos Rex; bak - basis voor aktuelle kunst; 6th Kochi Biennale; 6th Singapore Biennale, among others. Previously, he served as Contributing Editor at e-flux journal, and is the author of Judith Namala: A Novella published by Center for Art, Research and Alliances.
Headshot of Serubiri Moses. Photo: Alex Lyons, 2014.
Yusuf Hassan
Yusuf Hassan (BlackMass Publishing) (b.1987, New York) is the founder of BlackMass Publishing. Hassan’s work explores the idea of the book; his reductive technique and meditative approach challenge the physical and poetic boundaries of his materials, canceling the idea of restrictions within his work allows him to analyze it with no limitations. Using printed matter as a physical way of expression Much of Hassan’s success is attributed to his unique ability to express dramatic and emotional content through publications and printmaking. Hassan holds publications in the permanent collection of The Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture, The Langston Hughes Library, The Center for Book Arts , New York Public Library, Thomas J. Watson Library at the Metropolitan Museum, Queens College (New York) The Houghton Library, The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) Library Tate Modern (UK), Oxford University, Museum Folkwang (Germany), Wellcome Collection (London) ,The Whitney Museum Library, Fisher Fine Arts Library (PA) The Morgan Library (New York).
Headshot of Yusuf Hassan. Photo: Ari Marcopoulos.
About the Programme
The AAL Lab Convenings bring together a network of libraries, publishers, archives, and wider audiences through shared inquiry and dialogue. The series forms part of Re:assemblages, curated by Naima Hassan with support from the teams of Yinka Shonibare Foundation (Y.S.F.) and Guest Artists Space (G.A.S.) Foundation, and an advisory committee comprising Serubiri Moses, Dr. Beatrix Gassman de Sousa, Natasha Ginwala, Dr. Rangoato Hlasane, and Dr. Oluwatoyin Zainab Sogbesan.
Head image: John Akomfrah, Testament (still), 1988.
