At the heart – and moving through the undercurrents – of the relational, process-based approach to the 2026 transmediale festival (co-curated by Neema Githere Sïphone and Juan Pablo García Sossa) were the Nkisi Netting Groups: a series of gatherings co-hosted with regional partners and coordinated by local curriculum designers (LCDs), focusing on lateral exchange across community networks around the imaginative coordinates By the Mango Belt & Tamarind Road.
Attuned to situated endemic knowledges, and the techno-political imaginations that arise from specific climatic, cultural, and infrastructural conditions, each Nkisi Netting Group brought together artists and technologists from diverse disciplines. Through co-designed activations and workshops, elastic mobile infrastructures, and hyperlocal techno-rituals, the gatherings braided pluriversal perspectives on computing, archiving, storytelling, and worlding – foregrounding situated forms of life and technologies that cultivate ways of living beyond extraction, acceleration, and global homogenization.
The participants of the Pasifika Netting Group were film producer and festival director of the Matatu Film Lab Patience Katsushabe, cyber-documentarian Maahleek, sound artist KMRU, sonic-papaya-researcher Merv Espina, with Local Curriculum Designer (LCD) Lynda Irai, as well as transmediale 2026 curators Neema Githere and Juan Pablo García Sossa, working alongside an expansive network of community practitioners.
The gathering Pasifika was realised in collaboration with the Pan-African Solidarity School (PASS), with support from the Mellon Foundation.
transmediale 2025/26 •Nkisi Netting Groups
By the Mango Belt & Tamarind Road • transmediale 2026
The Swahili Coast (November 2025)
The Swahili Coast Node unfolded as a week-long intertropical gathering across Nairobi, Lamu, and Watamu. Following the currents of land, rail, air, and water, the journey became a living net - metaphoring infrastructures of travel into practices of transmission and relation. The node brought together practitioners - spacialists designing the temporary architectures of the 2026 festival and protocols along one of the oldest and most interconnected cultural corridors in the planet.
Participants of the Swahili Coast Netting Group include film producer and festival director of the Matatu Film Lab Patience Katushabe, spatial artist and futurist Kidus Hailesilassie, interdisciplinary artists Catherine Lie and Rochelle Webster Nembhard, digital artist Jepchumba, musician Maya Wegerif, designer and researcher Jess Rowley, artist and curator Tsige Tafesse, sonic-video artist Yoon Ra, cultural worker and historian Wairimũ Nduba, as well as transmediale 2026 curators Neema Githere and Juan Pablo García Sossa.
The gathering on the Swahili Coast was realised in collaboration with the Pan-African Solidarity School (PASS), with support from the Mellon Foundation.