The Bike Gang (2015-18) is a series of fourteen 2-3 minute clips, to be experienced on smartphones, which employ anecdote and re-enactment to narrate four stories of bikes and belonging in Nairobi’s Eastlands.

In Nairobi, every weekday afternoon, starting from about 4pm, thousands of young Kenyan men congregate and relax at bazes, multi-ethnic, spaces of affiliation. The baze is a Kenyan public space par excellence, it is where people debate the news, swop stories and tell anecdotes. The baze, a space of performance and discussion, evidences a constellation of contemporary Kenyan identities.

The baze is deeply connected to digital media. Accounts of events are illustrated with images displayed on people’s phones, which are then passed around the baze to be inspected and critiqued by the gathering. This digital media is often a) self-produced b) saved locally c) shared peer-to-peer via bluetooth. The combination of this unique public space and smartphone images results in a special and extensive media ecology. Offline data becomes a generator and a vector for multiple narratives of Kenyan identity.

The Bike Gang is a project that inquires into this emergent bicycle scene and its affiliated media practice. John Kamicha and I worked with a group of cyclists from the Offroad Base over a period of 3 years, extending an existing “filmmaking” practice to try and catalyse and distribute stories of belonging.

Thanks to: John Kamicha (Co-Director), Anke Trojan (Editor), Carlo Peters (Sound Design), Ronald Ronix (Camera), Kena, Mlambuzi, Mori, Shiro, Dagy (Actors). Supported by: Iwalewahaus, Akademie Der Kuenste Der Welt, Cat Colognefull project