This symposium takes that question as its starting point. Hosted at the AfricaMuseum in Tervuren, it brings together artists, researchers, and cultural organisations involved in two European initiatives: S+T+ARTS Afropean Intelligence and S+T+ARTS Buen-TEK — projects that, over the past 18 months, have fostered collaboration between Africa, South America, and Europe.

As organiser of the S+T+ARTS Buen-TEK project, IMPAKT is part of this wider dialogue on ancestral knowledge, ecology, technology, and collective forms of innovation. Through Buen-TEK, artists, curators, and organisations working across South America and Europe connected. Buen-TEK now brings this perspective into the symposium’s conversations on archives, knowledge-making, and cultural collaboration.

Both projects are rooted in the conviction that innovation does not begin with technology alone. Afropean Intelligence asks what artificial intelligence looks like when developed from and for African communities. Buen-TEK explores how artistic and technological practices in South America engage with ecological knowledge, territorial practices, and Indigenous worldviews. Together, they demonstrate that archives of local knowledge — when activated through art, technology, and collective practice — can become tools for social justice, ecological resilience, and more inclusive forms of innovation.

The programme brings these practices into dialogue through presentations by participating artists and researchers, followed by roundtable discussions with cultural actors from Africa and Europe, alongside policymakers, technologists, and scholars. These conversations ask what can be learned from such collaborations, what challenges they have surfaced, and how they might point toward more sustainable and context-sensitive forms of knowledge-making.

More information and registration via the AfricaMuseum website.