From Accra With Love (Part 1)

Ordeal of a Wanderer | Indecisive Moments | James Town, Accra 2013

It suffices to say that i am in Accra as I write. Yesterday we were out to Tawala beach where we convened as part of the IB Accra Project workshop. The idea is to have a sort of laid back afternoon reading and discussion around the works of some important thinkers and contributors to the African Critical Theory. We did - we read the likes of Reiland Rabaka, Mia Couto, Bonaventure Ndikung, and Emeka Okereke.

We opened up on the topic of what is African? We deliberated on various point of views as to what Africa is, and what makes us Africans. Indeed, it was an interesting conversation session. I could invariably term it a feedback session for myself. It was rewarding to hear a few people caught within this African reality talk about how they perceive themselves in it. Take for example, Samuel Kolawole talked about finding the human essence rather than what labels we give to ourselves, be it African or whatever. Therefore to him Africa is a term still unresolved and to an extent, irrelevant in relation to his human essence. As he spoke, I reflected thus: but what are the constituents of this human essence? And what propagates these constituents? 

As I quietly listened to the participants share there various views on the matter, my thoughts took various twists and turns. I began to make a difference between Africa as a place, a group of people or cultures, and Africa as a deliberate philosophical construct. Talking about the later, it is true that the attempt to define Africa has in no way affected the former, or change it's meaning that much (No amount of definition, redefinition or reposition could displace Africa from its location, or negate already confirmed traditional customs). But what this attempt at definition has succeeded in doing is that it created a perception by which everything from this location, this group of people this string of cultures, is seen - a box of stereotypical partitioning so to speak. And over the years, indeed centuries, this perception have been deliberately nurtured, invested upon by other groups of people who needed this perception as to be at advantage in detriment of the perceived. 

Therefore, today when we assert that we do want to take part in "telling the story of Africa", What this invokes is that we want to become stakeholders in creating, nurturing and investing in the manner by which we are seen and perceived by all peoples of this world. It is of secondary preference what we are called, whether African, Nigerians or People of the Bantu tribe, what we ought to focus on is the implication of what we are called, what this means when called thus. This emphasis on a "deliberate construction of perception" is very crucial because up until now people of African origin have had little or no chance in making their perception of themselves the yardstick for how they are seen, positioned or referred to, especially within a context void of self-defence and apologetic validation. 

Talking about the human essence, can we have a human essence, if we do not first embark on a deliberate  deconstruction of those perceptions which have interwoven over the years to become the primary constituents of our "opportunities and struggles"? Can one talk of a real discovery of the human essence within the African reality without endeavours at making that mountainous step towards undermining the skilfully woven perception, indeed doing away with the glass prism which over the years, have distorted the view of a particular kind of  place, people, and culture?  Furthermore should this not lead to our becoming lead players in the construction of a self-conscious perception which on the long run would culminate in the longed-for identity?

The question then is: How do we go about this?

Reflections on "Return to N'djamena"

Emeka Okereke with photographers of Photo Cam Tchad collective, during the workshop session in N'djamena. IB exhibition at Institut Français Tchad. Photo by Robin Riskin. IB 2013

We have just returned from N'djamena after a very intense but super exciting 12 days. As some of you may have seen from all the postings on Facebook, the project was exciting and very well received by the N'Djamena public.

The public engaged with the images displayed in a profound and unpretentious manner. They equally identified very much with the concept of Invisible Borders. What was intriguing (I believe, to them) was the fact that the exhibition featured mostly images from N'Djamena, but also Khartoum, Addis Ababa and a bit of Lagos and Abuja. From the feedback we picked up, the audience were able to situate themselves within the reality portrayed by the images. They identified familiar places, but were also able to project their imagination beyond as a result of the "openness" of the images and their tendency to depict occurrences in the public spaces of African cities. The N’Djamena audience was able to identify with the familiarity of places; people and structures proffered by the images, while at the same time relished the unorthodox gaze suggested by the works.

This exhibition in N'djamena afforded us the opportunity to learn a thing or two about interacting with the public within a specific context. It revealed to us the importance of "returning" to places, the city and people where the actual works were created during the past road trips. The people get to interact and connect with the work on a much more intimate and tactile level. Our preoccupation since the last four years is to understand and arrive at a method of using art as a tangible means of social intervention.

In Tchad we had a glimpse of that possibility: The Invisible Borders Road trip will be loosing a limb if at the end of it all, we do not get to show those work in the context they were made. In as much as it is very important to reach the rest of the world through exhibitions in far-flung places and online interactions, the indispensability of a return to places travelled cannot be over emphasized. This is the so-called building of Networks. It is even more so when the exhibition comes two years or more after the road trip. This interval in time leaves room for memory to play its role. The immediacy of the road trip finds its completeness in the return that should incorporate exhibitions, workshops, and other activities aimed at engaging the public using the works created in the past as a tangible reference. With such a pattern, it wont be too long before the results of such strategic knitting of exchanges becomes significant and a force to reckon with through out the continent.

During these 12 days, we had a workshop with the budding Tchadian photography collective known as Photo Cam Tchad. These photographers are in the process of coming into "being" but they had already set out on a good foot under the supervision of Abdoulaye Barry, a more established Tchadian photographer who has already instilled in them the ethics of specificity and categorizations into themes and body of work. This quality gave their endeavours a structure that enabled the audience understands their intentions where the quality of the images failed to do so.

The parent theme for the workshop was Urban Mutation, an attempt by photographers to document the transformation and resulting evolution of the city of N'djamena - a phenomenon that is in perpetual   replication across major cities in Africa. The artists see a duty in documenting this volatile process of change taking place in the city, a rapid progress to what would be the N'djamena of tomorrow.

Before the arrival of Invisible Borders, the collective had already began working on this parent theme, taking N'Djamena one district after the other. Each person has his or her own theme and subject they worked on. During the workshop, which lasted for about 8 days, we deliberated on the implications and significance of imagery in the African context: Photographers are writers of history and memory. On the other hand, with the advent of digital photography, we see a tremendous increase in the number of commercial photographers, and a rapid decline in photographers using photography as an art form and social engagement.

This of course can be attributed to the desperate need for survival and the uncertainties of making a living out of being an artist/activist. But, when this acute sense of survival is removed from the equation, what is left is the heavy truth that, history is likely to repeat itself again - a history of "Africa with no history" - if agents of imagery (and this extends beyond photography – I will add writing, film making, performance etc.), do not recognize and indeed put to use this power to preserve our histories through a tactile engagement and a subsequent reflections about the happenings of today.

I am of the opinion that, for Africa to see any real progress, the people must be sensitized and educated. The real invention then lies on what form and content constitute this sensitization and education – sensitisation and education towards what? The answer I believe is "towards self-reflection". Towards asking questions, profound questions about what constitute the occurrences within one's immediate environment. This self-reflection will induce as sense of worth in oneself, which will invariably materialize on the immediate environment as well as the one's neighbour.

The spaces and occurrences (the coincidence of spatial arrangement) depicted by photographers are only a materialization of the inward state-of-being of those therein. I am of the notion that every object, every line, every crack on the wall, and every footstep is a photographical depiction of who we are. In this sense, it is no coincidence, but choreography of a collective be-ing. In the same light, the photo object becomes not just a frame on the wall, but a landmark for journeys through our existence and those of others - more so when the photographs are viewed in retrospect, when it has accumulated debris of time's content.

As we use the space, and allow ourselves be nourished (or repulsed) by its ambience, we take part in a collective performance of designing that space. Everyone and everything related to that space take part in this perpetual art of spatial design, and hence the one with camera, a pen, or just his/her body.

Therefore social intervention through photography and other equally strong forms of artistic expression is not as abstract as it may sound, especially when weighed with the same scale as valuable contributions towards the progress of the society and the improvement of the standards of life of all peoples. All life is first conjured in the workspace of the mind (at least as far as humans are concerned), and every endeavour that aims at affecting mind-space, is not only essential, but inevitable in the rehabilitation of our already misguided sense of purposefulness and harmony.

Discussing Aesthetics in The Trans-African Project. From the Diary of a Border-Being

Leaving the Container | Quadritychs | Accra Ghana, 2012 | Emeka Okereke

Reality can be synthesized

I am sitting in a moderately furnished apartment, in the living room precisely. There is a flower vase right before me, on top of my desk – with flowers, yes. Only that these flowers are synthetic and not the real thing. It got me reflecting…

The extent to which reality could easily be synthesized in a bid to approach or reproach its inherent substance…

For more than 20 days, I have been on the road, together with eight other participants; we are artists – photographers, writers, filmmakers and even one who simply calls himself a visual artist.  The project is called Invisible Borders, and as the name seems to imply, it is all about rendering the Visible Borders invisible, flattening it, blurring it, but in actuality, the experiences gathered after three years and three editions of the trip, suggests that the name of the project could be seen at most as encompassing different layers and aspects, or at worst, a very vague term.

Here we are travelling through borders by road from one African country to the other, starting from Lagos. We are stuck in our van, with our van, a box in every sense of the word. A box that seems pleasant to be in for the first-timers of the trip especially during the first few days but becomes something to escape from towards the middle and end of the trip, a van which dangles between extreme poles of being an asset and yet a massive liability.

I am forced to evaluate our position in all of this especially, when seen in the context that social-political membranes could be pierced through artistic interventions. In order words, art can become a tangible social intervention.

That brings me back to the flower vase standing before me now. And even though this vase is made of real glass, it carries a synthetic flower, a replica that by the intention of whoever placed it here should offer the same beauty, pleasure or whatever as the real flower. Well, perhaps it could, or at most suggest it. It of course can never be mistaken for the real thing, but its performative value can never be neglected either. It is an intervention in reality that could spark an argument, or sensitize one to a certain consciousness. This flower might not offer me the beauty of a real flower, but it might propel me to want to want to know the real flower, in this case, it (the flower) is not as synthetic as it comes off, especially by the virtue its metaphorical values.

I like to see things this way, the non-materiality of reality. The real is not in the substance but in the energy, which assembles the substances into existence. To that effect, our travel across border is beyond the physical act, no matter how sensational an adventure can sound or be. What strikes as most impressionable is the performative value of this journey. We are a fiction, in other people’s reality. No matter what we do, we will always be a pretense of that reality when seen from the point of view of those whose everyday existence we interfere or intersect with. But have we not by this intersection created a version of reality both for ourselves and for the others, a sort of a third dimension but something much more remarkable to both parties respectively?

Public Space, more of an intricate network

I am of the strong opinion that art practices and process should aim to reach out to the ‘everyday person’ and most importantly in the public space. But as we travel, I am compelled to reflect on what public space means. It is not so much the physical space as it is the social space of the people who occupy that physical space. Indeed if we should refer to the immateriality of reality, then it suffices to say that the physical space in itself is a derivative of the intricate networks of events, perception, personalities embodied by the people within the space – this is the real Public Space and every work that intends to exist or work with the public space must put into consideration or dialogue the everyday reality by which the physical space is a function. The physical space is a function of the social space and the social space is in turn a product of the immaterial radiations of those who occupy it.

Therefore, as we progress on this discourse surrounding borders, it becomes imperative not to undermine the performative nature of this intervention as a philosophical foothold and to inculcate it into the aesthetics of representation. Our objective therefore would be to constantly look for ways to present this project as an intervention within the everyday reality of the regular inhabitants of any given geography taking into account the element of spontaneity and improvisation, which are the core ingredients of uncurated interactions. 

We are masters of Improvisation

If today I were asked what exactly is contemporary Africa, I would first of all begin to talk of radiations, a kind of energy which flows through the continent like a continuous line. This energy, this radiation is indeed what a whole lot of people tend to coin words to define. It has been there from the onset, and no matter how time changes, it surfaces in myriad forms, it is ever constant and reinventive in nature, it permeates everything and everyone whose feet are rooted in the soil of the continent and thus has long since become our nature - subconsciously. This radiation gives rise to the shared reality of the people of this continent, but at the same time is nourished and fine-tuned by the struggle to circumvent unfavorable situations. It is what gives rise to the ‘arbitrary’ indefinable nature of existence in the continent. This energy is the unequivocal tendency towards spontaneity, the sheer extent of improvisation – that which flaws any form of predefined statistics. It is said that it is in Africa that the weatherman is always wrong. Why? Because naturally people live shoulder to shoulder with the moment and between two moments there are one billion ways of being. 

Living in this reality is like being in a space where everything is non-linear, shapeless, yet this is the shape because it works. It reevaluates the defined and invigorates the stagnated. It momentalises every interaction in such a way that it seems far-fetched to base one’s reason of action on the awareness of the past or the assumptions of the future. This however does not mean that people do not make plans but this planning is never incapacitated by predefined notions, every moment is a stand-alone regardless of the fact that one leads to the other.

If there is anything like contemporary African art, it is those creations that are cognizant of this element of spontaneity and improvisation, which tends to work with, and draw from it the possibility of alternative forms and aesthetics. Therefore “being African” is to blur the lines between possible and impossible rendering the very state of “being” indefinable.

This radiation, this energy permeates everything but manifests prominently through the everyday space of the African people – the public space, where all the drama of living and co-existing is symbolized. Consequently, our work over the years followed this trajectory and hinged on depicting the exchange, the interaction of people and things within the public space; looking at what might be dismissed as banal, but by the act of “putting a frame to them”, we extract them from the ordinary. Moreover, we are consistently conscious of the fact that no click is a waste as far as posterity is in consideration.

Therefore our approach to imagery goes beyond making “beautiful photographs” or the need to show astuteness in photographic skills or even capturing the “decisive moments”. For us, the real story – often left out in the quest for blatant headlines – is embedded in the indecisive moments. We are much more interested in how the approach to imagery mirrors the reality that we are immersed in, rather than how images define this reality.

We are in transition towards another era as by virtue of our present circumstance we perfect the act of improvisation becoming a master of it by the minute. In this energy, which is becoming ever assertive, we find the vestiges of stagnation and the wake of creative vigorousness. The African public space has come to symbolize that spirit of dynamism that is as a result of the playing-out of everyone’s creative attempt at survival. It has become the heritage of today’s struggle to transcend the limitations for which her people have always been defined. It has come to become our studio, our space of work and our core philosophy.

La Nouvelle Expression" is an image I created reacting to the spontaneity of the moment. The Chinese passing through the frame was never planned nor does the umbrella really belong to Landry but a passer by who then had to stand in the rain and wait for us while we concluded the image. We obstructed his reality albeit for some minutes, but this very act implies the crossbreed of reality discussed in this article.

Aesthetics, Presentation and Interpretation

In the past years, what has become challenging is not just the struggle to permeate the implications of borders, but also (1) in what ways to use the different media at our disposal to effectively question and invigorate discussions about limitations in Trans-African exchange (2) how to present and interpret the project in such away as to convey the true experiences of the journey as a performative endeavor for which the process of the journey is in essence the outcome.  

It is rightly said that it all began as a photographic project, but over the past years it has evolved beyond the term “photography”, as writers, filmmakers and art historians began to play a major role in the discourse.  This came with its challenges as many people continue to see the project as solely a photographic one, thereby neglecting or paying little importance to the literary and filmic aspect of the project. It is indeed deliberate that we have had only few exhibitions where we had to put up photographic prints on a (white) wall.

As we progress from one edition to the other, so does our experience, and we have come to the point where we realize that the idea of borders could act as a double-edged sword, therefore must be approached meticulously. It could easily play us against our dogma. The naivety that borders are something tangible and eradicable. We have come to realize that borders are what happen when an individual or a group of people decides to transcend the norm. Therefore the subjects of this project are first and foremost the participants and the very first intention to go beyond the norm – the act of becoming a fiction in other people’s reality using themselves as the proverbial guinea pig. Furthermore, there are those who we meet in their everyday reality – a crossbreed of realities occur and the offspring of this crossbreed is a circle of deconstructed dogmas and freshly acquired perceptions.  

These things happen at random, and at a pace that could never be likened to a normal routine – we are constantly in roller-coaster mode. We make plans and we counterplan, to an extent that haphazardness becomes our orderliness. It is never realistic to see the trip as one definite thing, it encompasses everything, failure compliments success and vise versa. It is where “wrong” is not easily written off as the opposite of what is right, but could be seen as its precursor or its consequence.

When we travel on the road trip we see flashes of images and not one single photograph or two, therefore it is completely impossible to talk of a selection of images in this context. How can we “freeze” a moment when we are swamped with infinite moments?

"Sometimes the image made does not justify the experience lived, and this amounts to a certain frustration, the shortcoming of the camera, the lens, the view and the limitations of materiality: the window screen shielding you from all the expanse out there, the van constantly moving and bumping, your position displacing at 100 miles per hour (and so are your thoughts) - all of that is lost to the click of the camera. Therefore the indecisive-moment images tell the story much more than the decisive.

The true nature of the African Space is that swarming with unquantifiable moments carrying in each one of them an integral part of the people’s existence and by that, their history. Therefore, every click of the camera is history in the making.

In photographing the “banal”, we tend to focus on those tiny moments, which give the "headlines” their backbones. Our concept is basically simple: to highlight the everyday interaction between people and the space that they occupy, and with time and consistency we would have created an anthropological archive of how people shared in their various modes of co-existence – the beauty, the harmony as well as the many contradictions"

The installation of the Invisible Borders show at the Biennale Benin 2012. View 1

The installation of the Invisible Borders show at the Biennale Benin 2012. View 2

The near-best form of presenting this project so far would be an installation that depicts a performance of imagery rather than a succession of meticulously curated photographs.  We are not interested in the photographic nature of imagery but in its performative nature, that which suggest the process as an important precursor to a conclusion, there will be no conclusion without the process, which lead to it, there will be no decisive moment without the myriad indecisive moments sandwiched in between.  We ought to make installations that convey that feeling of being overwhelmed with images upon images as we experience from the interior of the moving vehicle, but more so because this is the reality of the African public space.

This became the inspiration for our installation at the Biennale Benin 2012, where we came up with the idea of recreating a suggestive replica of the interior of the van as we have experienced it during the trip, using the relics of the actual van since we drove in the van from Lagos to Cotonou for the festival.  The installation also featured reconstructed objects that we were obliged to use (or things that used us), such as the road signs, the checkpoint barricades etc. There was equally a large plasma screen on which images and texts from the artists were displayed in a loop - flashes of images after images, with texts. The display was comprised of the actual photographic works by photographers, photo essays that were a joint venture between the photographers and the writer Emmanuel Iduma, as well as photos of participants while on the trip. We created a “pool” of images, which tend to convey a feeling of being submerged in the experience of the trip through images rather than emphasizing on the individual approach of the artists.

A note from my diary on evening of the installation reads thus:

“We are much more interested in conveying the feeling and atmosphere within the van as we journey thousands of miles traversing landscapes and people of immeasurable numeric, that feeling of wanting to take in everything in a gulp of a click yet the picture falls short of conveying anything close to what is lived. How can we convey this particular experience, which transcends the photographers’ ability to settle on a particular frame, a particular scene out of thousands?”

Having said this, it is therefore imperative to understand that we aim to go further than the act of image-making, but to seek ways to put them to use as a performative tool, to set in motion its ability of being a strong implement of sensitization. We are constantly asking the never-ending question: How can photography be used in such a way, as it becomes a tangible act of social intervention rather than art for art’s sake? How can also “seeing” with the eyes carry the entire body along?

I believe that this is the stage we find ourselves today. We do not lack the energy nor the vigor to create or be inventive, what we need in abundance is the sensitization towards myriad forms this creative energy could manifest.

I believe we will head in the direction of an answer when as photographers; we begin to perform images, rather than make them. 

© Emeka Okereke, Accra 2013

 

Transcending "Africa"

Beautiful Obstacle by Emeka Okereke. IB 2011 (Lagos - Addis Ababa)

In several terms, Africa has been bombarded with various nomenclatures in times past in efforts to define and sometimes cup its complexness. With vast stretches of lands, landscapes and intricate networks of people, making up one-sixth of the world’s population, that are constantly evolving, it is indeed understandable that it makes for concision to coin singular terms in order to abbreviate this ever dynamic continent and all that comes with it.

Such terms as Pan-Africanism—which was a derivative of the much-coveted Afrocentrism and a product of the European slave trade—had, for a long time, paraded the consciousness towards African unity or more expansively, Afro-unity. Black consciousness, whose most loquacious proponent was the South African activist Steve Biko brewed by the events of apartheid era, is another which tends to align with the same aim—all geared towards moving the black race and continent towards a new identity unbridled by the straps of Western interventions. Lately, the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbebe, in an attempt to offer an extension to these thought processes unravelled new perspectives through Afropolitanism.

One thing central to these terms as they evolve is that they seem to be hinting at the values of exchange between Africa (both as a race and a continent) and the West (more as an ideology than a race). At first it was in staunch opposition to Western ideologies and a retracing of roots within the continent, followed by a call for a conscious acceptance of the values embedded in these roots as legitimate rather than them being a sub-civilisation. Most recently it hovers somewhere between taking those values as the fundamental kernel, without any need for justification or validation while reaching out to other cultures. Now, Wole Soyinka’s “A tiger does not proclaim his tigritude” could well read, “A tiger does not need to proclaim his tigritude to dine with a wolf.”

This gradually points to the fact that gone are the days when ignorance is detrimental only to the ignored. Like a boomerang, it is bound to alienate those who do not strive to become a part of the knowledge pond in which every race in the world strives to bathe mutually, without necessarily proclaiming their respective tigritude. This is the outgrowth of the increasing interconnectivity of a global world. Beyond that, it also signifies that Africa or African or Black- whoever of today will be very difficult, if not impossible, to summarise with any pre-saved template of a definition of Africa, especially not a template synonymous with external perspectives. This holds true even for those who live in the continent and have never set foot outside it—those purported to be “very African”.

In the art sector, which I would like to speak about specifically, it is as if one is stuck in time with all the talk of “African art.” The term African art or African artist, as it is used today whether connoting art or artists from the continent, is now in a state of dormancy with a lack of movement or life, as if stale. More so because it is like a box, romantically decorated from the outside, with which we strive to contain many variables in constant motion that seek to break out from their confinement. Perhaps it would have been appropriate to talk of Africa a century or even decades ago with the same set values that we tend to define it now, but can we also talk about this “Africa” with all the events recorded in the belly of its history without in fact projecting the past verbatim to the present? Should the definition of Africa not take into consideration the transient forms by which its core manifests today?

In a conversation with the Berlin-based, Cameroonian curator Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, he made a point that the term “African artist” is still valid in every sense and is not in itself perishable. He continued that one must not reject the appropriateness of the term for the sake of a few (whose pseudo- or non-knowledge of Africa offers only a nose view). While I agree with this notion, I believe that more vigor and activity has to be injected into the term not by a redefinition, but by a re-evaluation. The Africa of today is constantly undergoing change, and not just changing but reaching beyond limits set by pre-saved definitions. It is indeed in the continent’s nature and that of its people to defile statistics and pole projections. A city like Lagos with its 17 million inhabitants is among one of the many fitting examples of such transcendence, but also Congo’s Kinshasa, Cairo, and even Sudan as a Nation State. This characteristic of “going beyond” the preordained is as a result of unplanned pressures and tensions from all angles on the quest for survival and sustenance. They are equally met with unplanned solutions, which invariably escape the charts of analysts.

Therefore, rather than talk of the African artist, I propose that we talk about the Trans-African artist. The prefix Trans- by definition connotes “going beyond”, “transcending,” and in some cases implies a thorough change. It suggests dynamism and vigour—that from which something unpredictable emanates. It equally implies crossing back and forth, like in an exchange, and wherever there is exchange, a boundary is traversed into unfamiliar spheres where another dimension takes on existence. Although this term has been used mostly in relation to economic factors as it pertains to particular geographic structures such as in the case of the Trans-African Highways—roads constructed across the continent by the African Union in collaboration with The Africa Development Bank aimed at promoting trade in the view that it will consequentially alleviate poverty, it could equally apply as a metaphor for the method of artistic exchange, or any other exchange for that matter, in Africa today.

It is important to lay emphasis on this idea of exchange as a distinctive quality of Trans-Africanism. Here I want to mention that the Trans-African Highway, which, for the sake of analysis, we could adopt as a physical symbol of exchange, was never promoted during the colonial plague. It was far more advantageous to have an Africa that the colonizers could define according to their gains, and it is no new knowledge that any chance at African unity or even exchange was greatly shattered during the power ping-pong played during those decades. Therefore, as we propose to carry this term over to the arts, one begins to see that is implies building artistic highways, bridges, and links with one another. It implies an Africa unhindered by any form of border or location, whether physically, in thoughts or in ideas of creative processes. As Achille Mbembe duly noted:

These states and borders were mere fabrications, there is really in the strictest sense nothing in them that would have us exalt them... it is imperative, therefore, to do something different if we want to breathe life back into Africa and in so doing revive the possibilities of the survival of art, philosophy, and aesthetics that will surely contribute something new to the world in general.¹

The Trans-African artist is the artist whose sensibilities transcends or goes beyond the pre-saved definitions of what constitutes art from Africa. They draw inspiration from exchange between peoples of diverse tribes and countries within the continent without having to contest, compare, or seek validation for these sensibilities. They do not seek a definition of Africa in their African-ness because Africa is what they make of it and not the other way round. Trans-Africanism is the ability to transform African-ness into fluid forms that need not be defined. It is not an outside covering, but an inside mechanism of networks and exchanges. Therefore gone are the days of long pens writing about Africa from New York and Paris without having ever set foot on the continent—no, boots must get dirty first. There is no African art if it all depends on the whims, taste, and even the political knowledge of a curator or collector in Paris who neither understands nor partakes in the reality in which the artists create these works, whether she or he is French or French-Senegalese.

The Invisible Borders Trans-African Photography Initiative takes its cue from this re-evaluation. It is a project whose essence lies in promoting exchange and building links between artists and artistic processes within the continent and beyond. It is dedicated to nurturing photographers, writers, and filmmakers with a consciousness towards the dividends of exchange and networking within diverse cultures and people. This concept only takes the African continent as a departure point, but is not in any way limited to it. For those in the diaspora it calls for a rejection of brain-drain and blind integration as a dangerous disease but, better still, embraces the schizophrenic nature of multi-experiences as an advantage in the human advancement. This relives the deduction made by Mozambican writer Mia Couto:

The ambivalence of African intellectuals, politicians, and artists must be viewed as something positive…It is a foundation that may well contribute to the invention of an identity conceivable only in a dynamic and changing manner. Being inside and outside as well is an advantage in a world whose borders are eroding. ²

The concept of Trans-Africanism attests to the non-linearity of the human experience and the elasticity of human capabilities. Instead of reinforcing borders through clinging to an identity for fear of losing oneself, we ought to see ourselves as work in progress, constantly in motion and activity, and finding ourselves in each other’s identity, a communal identity so to speak. In as much as my view is inclusive of all humans and all races, I strongly stand by the fact that it falls on Africans (artists or not) to encourage this exchange greatly amongst themselves in order to continuously consolidate that which constitutes the core values, for charity which begins at home will never leave the stomach foodless while parading its goodwill abroad.

There are many projects operating in/from Africa and Europe that are mostly founded by Africans whose activities echo the attributes of Trans-Africanism. A few of them include: the Pan-African Circle of Artists (PACA), Nigeria; Art Bakery, Cameroon; Art Moves Africa, Belgium; Mobility Hub Africa, Belgium; Creative Africa Network; Appartement 22, Morocco; Doula Art, Cameroon; Centre for Contemporary Arts Lagos, Nigeria; The Addis Foto Festival, Ethiopia; Kuona Trust, Kenya; as well as artist-led projects such as “Do We Need Cola Cola To Dance?” by dancer and choreographer Qudus Onikeku. These endeavours are pointers towards a new era in Africa’s art scene where the parameters of artistic processes are recorded and evaluated by activities from within the continent rather than from lofty heights of external intellectual misappropriation. And despite the odds against the survival of an independently flourishing art industry, these artists and art operators keep up the good work. 

Footnote:

1. Achille Mbembe, "Afropolitanisme", Le Messager, Decembre 2005

2. Mia Couto, "Africanidades: Las identidades huidizas", in Emergency, coord. Alfredo Jaar (Leon MUSAC/Actar 2005)

Article first Published by: 

1. The New Museum, New York in the exhibition Catalogue: The Ungovernables, Feb. 2012 

2. Savvy Art Contemporary Art Journal (Berlin) 3rd Edition

Exchange In Changing Times

As I sit to write this article, I am yet again confronted with a double intuition: should I? Should I not? This stems from the fact that the issue I intend to address contains aspects that lends itself as inevitably important because of its positive attributes, so much that it feels incomplete not to pen it down. But within this also contains situations that breed causes for unrest and scepticism usually seen with dealings of exchange involving these two concepts: Africa and the West. In my mind, it is as if this mixture is unpleasant, as if one contaminates the other, making the option of saving my mind’s breathe very tempting. But again, my mind has a way of rejecting all the sleeping pills especially if it is saddled with something worth sharing. So as an attempt, I will endeavour to sift the grain from the chaff, not to eliminate the chaff, but to place them side by side with the grain.

In June 2010, I got an email from a Spanish organisation known as AECID, an arm affiliated with the Spanish ministry of culture. It was for a photographic project in Spain. The concept was short and direct to the point: seven photographers living in Africa are being convened under a project known as Africa.Es (Africa dot Es), a project which will see each photographer from a particular country photographing an assigned city in Spain, for just a period of one week. It is an initiative which rides on the back of the AECID’s many agenda towards promotion and development of cultural exchanges between Spain and Africa.

Exchange! The big word, the contemporary word, a word with several connotations, some use it when they want to mildly say “aid”, or “globalisation” and to add the good old brother, “colonisation”. Therefore whenever I hear that word, my antenna instinctively begins to tingle, watching out for underlying meaning. Such was my impression of the first email, but then this proposal came with an adjoining clause: the photographers are to be invited for seven days to their respective cities in Spain, and could use their time in the city as they wish without any limitation nor suggestions as regards the theme, style and the medium with which they approach their work. There is no specific amount of images to be delivered thereafter; neither was there any curator to play the middleman. Equally, the monetary promise could actually be termed quite satisfying, the photographers will be well paid from the author’s fee to cost of pre and post production, which leads me to the first argument about exchange:

It is the norm for African artists and curators to be invited to exhibitions and commissioned projects only to be promised little or most times nothing in the way of a financial reward. I speak here specifically of the plight of the artist from Africa, much worse, those living in Africa. If there is a slight shift for the better, it is mostly seen with those of the Diasporas, who through proximity and a true knowledge of the system could obstinately insist on their right, but even at that it is still deplorable. In the spirit of exchanges as they often claim, how can one ever justify the fact that despite the shortages in funding, that an organiser is able to produce an exhibition and sometimes even invite the artist to the opening but could not afford an author’s fee? And sometimes even a per diem? Recent cases involve utter humiliation of the artists by transporting them several miles to a venue only to offer them dungeons for accommodations. Some that I know tend to answer this question by asserting that exhibitions in museums and festivals are not the key source of income for artists, but rather galleries and art fairs. But in counter-argument, any exchange suffices as a source of income for the artist as long as a budget is designated for such a project. In my opinion, it is the vestiges of the utter undermining of the artist in relation to her works, coupled with the fact that negotiations demands a two-way agreement and African artist seem to assume or rather have been conditioned to believe that they can’t peel off the price tag on a commodity and call for a renegotiation.

It is not so much about the actual amount than is a sense and a feeling of mutual exchange which becomes absolutely void when an artist is deprived of any of her rights. Beyond the monetary implications of an author’s fee, it also plays a symbolic role especially in Africa where most people still regard art not as a career. It is a manifesto in counteraction of that notion. It becomes increasingly important, that a certain amount of money is earned for every honest artistic endeavour. It does not devaluate the artist or her source of inspiration, if anything the lack of money is counter-productive. There are countless examples of such extortions in the name of exchanges but one pattern I have noticed is that, these people tend to “help” the artist in public, but steals from her in private. When I say this, my thoughts align with all these kangaroo awards and call for applications, reminiscent of wolves in sheep clothing.

Having ascertained my position on the above, it is imperative to point out that a selected few in the wheel of the artistic mechanisms do embrace the concept of exchange by according the artist her rightful compensations both monetarily and ethically. The Africa.Es project falls deservedly in this category. The artists were not considered beggars who even with their consistent record of outstanding talent and achievements still needed to be sympathised with. The terms of exchange were clearly spelt out, “you have what I want, you want what I have”, and it was respected. Furthermore, the monetary implications of the profession was not intertwined with the artistic demands of the project giving rise to one patronising the other, but rather each entity had its own orbit of operation and was treated as if on par with each other.

A second argument relates to the concept of freedom of manoeuvre within the volatile abundance of the creative magnetic field. A project which assembles artists together but offers them the freedom of free thinking beyond the safe-margins of themes, subjects or models creates the foundation and the only platform needed for genuine creation. Already there is a sense of “fresh emanating from the anticipation that something new for the artist – even if not for the art scene – will take form. In cases like this, it is even alright for the artist to be confused with an absence of a landmark to begin her creative process, for inherent in this confusion is the ability to detach oneself from familiar norms.

The South African artist, Zanele Muholi who amongst other things she suffers as a result of the subject of her quest, is at the brink of being marked with the stigma of a “queer photographer”. Being a Lesbian herself, her works are stark revelations of her sensitivity towards the marginalisation surrounding same-sex. For the same reason, she is somewhat of a hotcake for all those art projects that would want to identify with such boldness. But to her, she feels she is becoming an object of art-politics because the essence of her work was as a result of a natural course of events, that which has to do with the artist investigating her personal unrest, but it does not conclude her essence, she is other things besides a lesbian photographer, and as a young artist, the only way to explore that part of herself( which could still be unknown to her) would be through projects which do not play to into the hands of order and classification.

In the Africa.Es poject, she was assigned the city of Las Palmas de Gran Canaria. Plagued by the language barrier which was a shared predicament between all the photographers except Arturo Bibang from Equitorial Guinea, she found herself in an unfamiliar terrain. As Patrick Wokmeni from Cameroun stationed in Seville asserted in his essay “being away from home is confusing, but this uprooting experience could be productive artistically speaking”, Zanele found herself struggling with the absence of verbal communication (which is confirmed was a deficiency) coupled with being faced with a different subject – the Island. From that came a new body of work which lacks nothing in the intensity and starkness of her previous subjects. She photographed landscapes which embody the juxtaposition of beauty with imperfection, not as something to be repudiated or condemned, but as the inevitable adverse of the human condition – “as long as we are human beings, we will always produce a by-products in the quest towards perfection, so take note even in the white man’s land there is imperfection far from the stories we’ve been conditioned to”. She didn’t need naked female subjects to make her point.

In the same light I perceive the work of Mamadou Gomis, from Senegal who photographed in Bilbao. The rendition of his perception of the city through the elderly, enveloping them in an aura of vivid but subtle colours and shades, forces the question: did he have to specialise in how to photograph the white skin? Of course not, but in detaching himself from the reality of his Senegalese backdrop, immersing himself in a new space, helped by the fluidity that comes with the freedom to just observe, tantamount to a retreat, he was able to capture those images that could have easily disappeared in between the lines was he to approach the subjects with the seriousness of a thematic assignment.

Other photographers not yet mentioned are Nii Obudai, from Ghana, assigned to Valladolid, Mohamed Konaté from Mali who worked in Barcelona, and myself, from Nigeria assigned to Madrid. The catalogue of the project, of about 283 pages featuring about 12 to 25 works of each artist also bears texts from these artists. Texts from Miguel Albero (head of departments of cultural cooperation and Promotion), Santiago Olmo and Salvador Nadales both independent writers herald the concept of the project, providing a backdrop for the understanding of its departure point. All textual contents are in three languages: Spanish, English and French (in that order). Looking at the catalogue, one agrees immediately that nothing was compromised in terms of quality, at the same time was not overloaded with over-ambitious ambiguous chit chats which would have been distracting. The texts from the two writers were rich in content, while being modest. It is not a book made in Spain for the photographers, it is a book made by the photographers, in Spain.

Having said all this, we are not oblivious of the fact that such a project is a political agenda, and as such must fulfil that purpose. During the opening we witness in various instances, politics at play. Some photographers pointed out that a few of the images they would have preferred in the catalogue were omitted mainly due to its content. While such an argument could easily get lost in a valid counter-argument that not all works could have fitted into the catalogue, it still remains viable that the photographers think this is not proper. But most important is that the photographers own the exclusive rights to their images and are not restricted in any form to show them in any of their future projects, including those not shown.

Such is one of the models of exchange in these changing times, worthy of commendation if dealings between two long-opposing concepts – Africa and the West – will ever be considered anything near the fruitful expectations of human equilibrium.

The views I have expressed above are my analysis from a point backed by opinions picked up from artists who also were part of this project. Though I may have sounded too certain of my views, that is because I am certain of the point from which I analyse. However, I do not claim any authority besides that bestowed on me through the power of the freedom to express. That suffices for me.

© Emeka Okereke. The Hague, March 2011