IN PERSON

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Presented in partnership with the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts, the UCLA Game Lab, and Nyamakop, this program centers on Relooted, an innovative video game by the South African studio Nyamakop. In the game, players undertake a high-stakes mission to reclaim African cultural artifacts from Western museums, blending action-driven gameplay with urgent questions of restitution and cultural memory.

The program will begin with a live gameplay demonstration, followed by a conversation featuring Ben Myres, CEO and Creative Director of Nyamakop; Mohale Mashigo, Narrative Director at Nyamakop; and Erica P. Jones, Senior Curator of African Arts at the Fowler Museum. Drawing from their respective expertise in game design, narrative worldbuilding, African arts scholarship, and museum practice, the speakers will explore the research, storytelling strategies, and cultural considerations that shaped the development of Relooted. The discussion will also examine the broader implications of repatriation within the museum sector, including the Fowler Museum’s ongoing initiatives to return cultural heritage to originating communities.

The conversation will be facilitated by Jenna Caravello, Assistant Professor of Design Media Arts and Associate Director of the UCLA Game Lab. Together, the speakers will consider how digital media can serve as a platform for engaging complex histories and imagining new futures for restitution discourse.

Ben Myres is CEO and Creative Director of Johannesburg-based game studio Nyamakop. In 2018, Nyamakop released Semblance, the first African-developed game to launch on a Nintendo console. Ben previously served as Program Manager for A MAZE. / Johannesburg and lectured in game design at Wits University. He has been recognized on Mail & Guardian’s ‘Top 200 Young South Africans’, Design Indaba’s ‘Emerging Creatives’, and Forbes Africa’s ’30 under 30′.

Mohale Mashigo is a multi-disciplinary storyteller: novelist, songwriter, and narrative designer. She is the author of the bestselling novel The Yearning and the short-story collection Intruders, and has written comics for Marvel and DC. As Narrative Director at Nyamakop, she is responsible for worldbuilding and creating unforgettable characters for the African-futurist heist game Relooted.

Erica P. Jones is senior curator of African arts and manager of curatorial affairs at the Fowler Museum at UCLA. She has curated exhibitions including The House Was Too Small: Yoruba Sacred Arts from Africa and Beyond and Meleko Mokgosi: Bread, Butter, and Power. Jones serves on the board of African Arts journal and co-chairs the Collaboration, Collections, and Restitution Best Practices Working Group. Her research focuses on colonial-era collecting, provenance, and the arts of the Cameroon Grassfields.

Jenna Caravello is an Assistant Professor at UCLA in the department of Design Media Arts, Associate Director of the UCLA Game Lab, and an artist working across animation, installation, and video game forms. Her practice uses game systems and often non-human perspectives to stage deeply personal narratives that center absurdity, liminality, love, and loss. Her work has been exhibited internationally, including at REDCAT, the Melbourne International Animation Festival, Seoul National University College of Fine Arts, Raindance, GIRAF, and Slamdance.

Image courtesy of Nyamakop