Proposal for the PACA Study Tour 2007
“Overcoming Maps 5”
November 13 - 21, 2007
Visual artists, creative
writers, musicians, culture journalists
“Maps show the wealth of territories by using a great poverty of
symbols. Above all, they serve to delimit boundaries. They tell us
nothing about the complexity of a place. But they establish
ownerships, discern nations and are often confirmations of acts of
violence”.
Amyel Garnaoui
Biakoye, 2002
Introduction
The geography of Africa owes its validity to the Berlin Conference
of 1884 where the continent was cut and shared among the
imperialists like a piece of breakfast pasta. The Partition of
Africa created a number of barriers, including that of language,
which has tended to pigeonhole the peoples of Africa in so many
ways. One of the areas where this compartmentalisation has been so
palpably felt is in the art-culture arena. There is only very little
opportunity inside Africa for the celebration and reinforcement of
African art and culture as a basis for affirming the African
identity in the face of threats of effacement that is part of
globalisation’s gift to the Others, especially the so-called
Third World
In the last two
decades of the 20th century, world interest (especially Western) in
African art attained unprecedented proportions. A huge number of
African artists found their way abroad as a logical response to this
historic boom. Not only that. Several Western universities
established African Studies departments, which, in spite of their
obvious merit, subtly occasioned the transformation of Africa, as a
branch of scholarship, into a playground of fancies. The same
situation is reflected in the publications about African art where
the dominant voices have remained those of outsiders. The
implication remains worrisome in so many ways.
Yet up until now,
many Africans are still scrambling to migrate to Europe or America
under one guise or the other. The situation is not different in the
art scene. These days, the best artists are often those who have
shown their works in Western centres. Thus one finds that artists
are more eager to exhibit in London or America than they may be to
show in Accra or Abidjan.
The
political-economic situation in the continent has not helped
matters, and it would amount to censorship of a myopic kind for
anyone to blandly condemn African artists’ foray in the West. But it
is, perhaps, time to also ask why Africans cannot begin to contrive
an environment as conducive to creativity and art dissemination as
they find in the West. Why are politics, economics, and development
so skewed in Africa that leaders have a straitjacketed concept of
society, one which brazenly excludes art to the detriment of society
itself? Why is it not as easy and attractive for a person or artist
to travel from Lagos to Bamako as it is for one to fly from Lagos to
London? These questions may appear simplistic, but an attempt to
answer them may lead to the discovery of the true meaning of society
on one hand and the real essence of integration – cultural and
otherwise – on the other. It is at this point also that the
Overcoming Maps project becomes highly relevant as an
interrogatory/discovery process that can enable artists in modern
Africa to reinvent and reposition themselves for the challenges of
the new millennium.
Objective
This position is
critically re-enforced by PACA’s experience in its preceding tours
in West Africa. The art circuits in the countries visited remain
highly impoverished, temperamental “outsider” spheres of living,
attractive only to a minority. Of course, this is directly connected
to the crisis in the socio-political mechanisms which have been
largely aberrant in these parts. But we at PACA also believe that
the solution to these problems as they relate to art and visual
culture is not only responsive activities and actions within the
countries, but also the ability of cultural groups in the continent
to forge lasting and meaningful networks that can help to invigorate
the art market in Africa and also bridge the dangerous gap between
art and society.
In other words, the
Study Tour is aimed at creating an opportunity for artists in Africa
to interact more meaningfully and to sensitise them to the need to
create useful networks that can ameliorate their work condition and
reinforce their relevance and that of their work to socio-political
development. As Africa yearns for greater integration in the new
century, the role of art and culture in that imperative should not
be underestimated. In this regard, the PACA Study Tour of Africa
seeks to draw the attention of the artists and governments to the
potentials of art in shaping the collective consciousness.
Tour Plan, 2007
In 2001, 2002 and
2004, the Overcoming Maps project, organized by the
International Advisory Council of PACA, took place in various
countries in West Africa. The fourth edition, held in
November/December 2005, focused on Kenya and Uganda. The 5th
Overcoming Maps is conceived as a composite project in which
all the creative arts can commingle in the pursuit of peace,
cultural integration and social development in the African
continent. The 5th Study Tour will take place in Zambia between
November 13 and 21, 2007.
Participants will be
invited from different countries in Africa. The tour will feature a
workshop, lectures, roundtable, exhibition, and open discussion..
At some of the events, the participating artists will present
reports on various aspects of the cultural enterprise in their
respective countries.
Overcoming Maps 5
will involve visual artists, writers, poets, journalists, critics,
anthropologists, among others. The aim is to intensify the
objectives and the gains of the previous tours by providing
participants an opportunity to interrogate the art-social situation
in the continent through cross-disciplinary, intellectual and
creative interactions. There will be a creativity workshop and
roundtable which will be organized as the centralising activities in
the tour to enable participants interact and confront their common
challenges and aspirations through their work and purposeful
discussions, as cultural actors from a highly challenged continent
in an increasingly challenging world.
The Creativity
Workshop
To be held at the
National Museum in Lusaka, the creativity workshop will allow
participants to create works from materials to be sourced locally
from the environment. Informal discussions on art and related
matters will be organised on a daily basis during the workshop to
enable artists, writers and others to exchange ideas based both on
their work, general cultural backgrounds and professional
experiences.
All discussions, poetry/musical performances as well as aspects of
the workshops and exhibitions in general, will be carefully
documented in the post-tour report to be issued by PACA.
Means of Travel
Invited artists will
travel by air to Zambia and visit interesting sites and art centres
in the country in line with a programme to be worked out by PACA in
association with the Zambian collaborators.
Commemorative
Publications
a
A comprehensive report of the tour will be produced on CD in
the form of a movie. A written report will also be published on the
PACA website and in hard copy, depending on the availability of
funds.
b
Publicity
The Study Tour will be publicized both in Zambia and Nigeria and
other African countries as much as possible. Poster, newspaper, and
T.V will be employed in order to present the tour as a worthy
socio-cultural initiative.
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