AFROROUTES is an immersive VR experience retracing the three slavery legacies: the Trans-Saharian, the Trans-Atlantic, and the Trans-Pacific one. AFROROUTES transports the user on a journey from Tangier (Morocco), via Salvador, do Bahia (Brazil) to Gujarat (India), making visible a previously, invisible connection to descendants of African slavery and the cultural practice of their countries of origin. - Where are the descendants of the millions of displaced African men and women living today? Did their original culture and language disappear? How did their heritage contribute to constructing new countries, cultures, communities? How has this memory subsisted, and how is it lived and celebrated today?
AFROROUTES is designed to be a multi-sensorial experience that engages both the mind and our emotional being through sounds, music, dance, and imagery.
The user discovers their respective stories. At the center of the experience are different cultural music ceremonies originating from Africa that are still being practiced today in each of these communities. Why a ceremony? Ceremonies are the cultural core of communities, often hidden, special, and playing a major role in cultural identification. They are powerful manifestations of resilience, a glimpse at a well-conserved heritage and identity, a non-tangible form of memory that crystallizes different layers of the African diasporic journey.
- created by Selim Harbi and Sönke Kirchhof, produced by INVR.SPACE.