Recap with Amal AlhaagRecap with Amal Alhaag

In this final iteration of Life at the Niteshop x Het Nieuwe Instituut, Malique Mohamud from Concrete Blossom discusses the video essays Articulating Sauce and _Slinging Slanguage _together with curator and researcher Amal Alhaag. They take a look at the production of knowledge on the margins of society and the origins and perception of slang.

Articulating Sauce reflects on music artist Gucci Mane as a philosopher. Mane speaks indirectly about the knowledge that emerges on the fringes of society. He talks about 'the sauce', a metaphor that he uses to explain his life and mindset.

_Slinging Slanguage_ researches the origins, development and perception of slang. Today, slang is still seen as a language that is predominantly present in multicultural working-class neighbourhoods, and mostly used by successive generations of young people. In the 21st century, however, multilingualism is the norm and learning more than one language is an advantage. This raises the question: what if we were to take slang more seriously?

Amal Alhaag is a curator, researcher and co-creator and facilitator of various initiatives, such as Metro54, a platform for experimental sonic, dialogic and visual culture, and (together with dear friend and artist Maria Guggenbichler) the Side Room: a space for eccentric practices and people. Amal continuously develops experimental and collaborative research practices, public programmes and projects on global spatial politics, archives, colonialism, counterculture, oral histories and popular culture.

This three-part series of video essays and podcasts is a collaboration between Concrete Blossom and Het Nieuwe Instituut and is part of Concrete Blossom's podcast series Life at The Niteshop. The podcast episodes are recorded in The Niteshop, the first knowledge centre for urban culture in the Netherlands.

If you are familiar with hip hop culture, you are familiar with the fact that it is a world where everything gets remixed. From imagery to language to space, everything changes into building blocks that are used to create new worlds. Since its rise in the 1970s and 80s, hip hop has passed through the hands of many generations of young people who transformed it into a tool for social-cultural alchemy. It represents the power to challenge a world that is not made by you, and is not for you to change. Think of fashion, media, and other domains that could follow. Through Life at The Niteshop, listeners will learn how exponents of urban culture, aka The Culture, are developing new languages and knowledge from the position of underdog that have the potential to change society.