Digital Dust

MATI DIOP’S FIRST FEATURE FILM, ATLANTICS, IS firmly rooted in the earthbound reality of present-day Dakar, Senegal. Its characters, portrayed by first-time actors, are precisely drawn, and their homes are filled with chatter and the tinny strains of pop songs playing from cell phone speakers. The exploitative labor conditions on the building site of a massive high-rise sets the film’s narrative in motion. But it’s also a deeply surreal and haunted film: its young characters navigate love and the refugee crisis by conjuring and physically embodying ghosts.

This sense of “bothness,” of the ancient and otherworldly existing within a hyper-present tense, is captured and enhanced by the film’s score, composed by Kuwaiti musician Fatima Al Qadiri, who was born in Senegal. Al Qadiri is a prolific and multifaceted artist, deftly imbuing electronic music with sharp political commentary. Her narratively driven solo albums and EPs include 2016’s , a dark pastiche of the sounds of protest and state repression, and 2014’s , a trippy and barbed electronic travelogue through aural stereotypes of China. She’s also part of the Gulf artist collective GCC, whose multimedia projects and installations slyly address the aesthetics of Gulf Futurism in a changing region.