The one minutes Africa – Meeting in Rotterdam – February 4, 2010

From 27 January to 7 February a selection of One Minute videos from African makers has been presented as part of the Africa focus of the International Rotterdam Film Festival 2010. They are the result of a series of workshops and presentations organized by The One Minutes and its African partners in different countries. They prove that visual culture in Africa is very much alive and young artists/students are eager to make video productions that reflect on local and global questions from a personal and artistic point of view.

But the question is: How can The One Minutes, as a global platform for short videos, contribute to video art / visual culture in Africa?

We have been invited to join them in a discussion/brainstorm meeting about video production in Africa, where the needs and requirements and how can The One Minutes and its partners in Africa contribute to local, regional and pan African dynamics, was further discussed.

This semi-public meeting was divided in two parts:

For the morning session they invited Ousseynou Wade (Dakar Biennale), Majid Seddati (film and video festival, Casablanca), C. Ktydz Ikwuemesi (Art Republic and Pan African Circle of Artists, NIgeria), Guy Wouete (artist/Rijksakademie, Cameroon), Luc Fosther Diop (artist/Rijksakademie, Cameroon) to prepare short presentations about their experience as collaborators. During the lunch we would sit around the table discussing ideas and proposals how to practically develop The One Minutes Africa in the coming years.

Time Frame found very interesting those issues relates with sustainability in terms of :

-Providing infrastructures for locals to keep developing skills, researching and developing their own initiatives with interantional support.

-Ensuring regularity in the organization of upcoming editions and self-organization. Is it only a question of motivation?

- Presenting international channels of distributions so artists can understand what cames after video production and find their own way into the art market. Fostering also local distribution, the process should start from the bottom ideally.

- If the one minutes can’t be everywhere with regularity, then it might be better to strategically focus on a few countries and partnership with other initiatives on video art taking place in those countries in parallel.

We are very fond of this last idea, international cooperation and cultural intervention in Africa probes to be a great challence. We should foster collaboration between international foundations, share resources, energies and experience. Only then we will be able to design experiences with a greater impact. It’s not about colonizing but about sharing.

Thanks ‘The One Minutes’ for sharing this with us,

and we hope fruitful collaboration might come in the future.

TIME FRAME

At the beginning of 2009 the SMBA team started a research project under the title ‘Africa Reflected’. This project looks closely at representations of Africa within contemporary art production, with the aim of finding alternatives to predominantly stereotypical mass media representations. The research is designed to arrive at a critical discourse: it is after all about how our images of Africa are shaped, and how we seek to nuance this with the support of visual art, and not about ‘development work’ which reinforces the average European citizen’s dominant image of Africa.

Unlike earlier editions, this year’s get-together was accompanied by a public side-program consisting of a seminar, a lecture and a video screening. October 12,14, 2009.

VIEWS ON AFRICA IN THE AGE OF GLOBALISATION

A semi-public seminar with Kobena Mercer

In his introductory lecture Kobena Mercer presented a critical overview of key issues arising in the reception of international exhibitions of African art over the last ten years or so. His talk highlights some of the limitations of existing conceptual frameworks while pointing to opportunities opened up by art-historically grounded conceptions of modernity and globalisation.

After this theoretical part, African curators such as Koyo Kouoh (Senegal), Didier Schaub (Cameroon), Nonto Ntombela Mabongi (South Africa) and Oyinda Fakeye (Nigeria) would present impressions of their work.

AFRICA REFLECTED ON VIDEO at Netherlands Media Art Institute

The programme was comprised of artist’s films and videos which, coming from different points of view, all focus on themes and ideas relating to the continent. Works by Jude Anogwith, Leo Asemota, Theo Eshetu, Salifou Lindou, Vincent Meessen, Marcel Odenbach, Vitshois Mwilambwe Bondo, Guy Wouete, Emeka Ogboh and others will be screened. There will also be short presentations by Vincent Meessen and the curators Oyinda Fakeye (CCA, Lagos), Koyo Kouoh (Dakar), Didier Schaub (Doual’art) and others.

TIMES OF CONFUSION

A public lecture by Simon Njami

In this lecture Simon Njami reflected on the idea of the ‘African artist’. According to him, the difference made between African and Africa, between identity and nationality, between expression and politics is in itself political. His argument is based on the conviction that true expression does not exist without political reference. The artists talked about all have one thing in common: Africa. And yet, Njami advocates that the way of being African is individualistic and not self-evidently connected to a collective concept. “We might argue here” he writes in an abstract of his lecture, “that one is not born African – one becomes African”.

Thanks to the initiative Talking About! by iStrike Foundation (Rotterdam), TIME_FRAME had the chance to meet  six artists and cultural producers from Cameroon on September 19,2009 :

Ruth Belinga (artist, curator, Yaounde),
Goody Leye (artist, founder of artist’s initiative Art Bakery, Douala),
Herve Youmbi (artist, member of the collective Cercle Kapsiki, Douala),
Achilleka Komguem (artist, editor of newspaper Diartgonale, Yaounde),
Lionel Manga (writer, Douala),
Achille Atina (cultural mediator, Douala).

We had the opportunity to see their work and discuss the needs of contemporary art scene in Cameroon as well as the disfficulties and strategies that had to be developed in order to  hack the current system.

Artists have developed a strong political vision of the role of art in the society and are actively challenging existing definitions of art, while developing critical responses to the emergencies of every day life. They organise themselfes in collectives and are engaged in using art in community projects in order to create a process of awareness, emancipation and empowerment.Through public art projects and community events, these artists and collectives are taking responsability and actively working to enhance .