Conceptually, Gibela is concerned with cultural consciousness as a way to cultivate safe space for the existence and expression of diverse cultural and ontological perspectives, especially those that exist outside dominant forms of culture perceived as universal, or in situations that preserve a homogenous culture of being and way of seeing.
This space of interest results in a matrix of references that exist on a spectrum between ‘the regional’ and ‘the universal’. We thus think of polar definitions by Bermet Borubaeva, who defines the ‘colonised’ production of knowledge as the “alienation from context, from creation of meanings and their replacement with external cultural dominants.” She also describes the decolonisation of knowledge production as a traumatic but emancipatory process and “experience of finding yourself, your context, your history, your background, your discourse and constituting it publicly.” In line with this, Gibela celebrates the power of creative and cultural expression as an enabling force in negotiating one’s place in the world, as reflected by the work of the participating artists.
Methodically, Gibela is an ode to South African sub-cultures centred around music, borrowing specifically from the logic of Kwaito, as a regionally specific cultural phenomenon which is layered with many global references – in its configuration of bass-heavy African percussion, slowed-down UK house beats, and the influence of American hip hop – to create a music genre which became an encompassing cultural movement and an assertion of style and identity for a new generation, particularly in repressive conditions.
This celebration of difference is an expression of a desire to disengage with western hegemony expressed through universalistic claims to validity, and a strand of decolonial thought, which as Ramón Grosfoguel suggests, projects a “pluriversal as opposed to a universal world”.
