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Ideas are shaped and evolve with our changing cultural climate.
The questions that we ask of our history and of the present ultimately
impact how we see our future selves. This section is about inquiry,
discussion and thought, focussed into the essays, interviews, concepts
and creative work presented here.
If
you would like to contribute to this critical thinking space, please
fill out our contact form.
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to essays online:
Et temahæfte om Afrika
Skriftlig dansk
http://pub.uvm.dk/1999/elskole2/cdrom/pdfrap/stil.pdf
Dutch
article on Africa and Images of Black people in European visual
culture
Africa
is People
Chinua Achebe (presented on the 17th June 1998)
http://www.africaresource.com/scholar/achebe.htm
“Africa
Is People has another dimension. Africa believes in people, in cooperation
with people. If the philosophical dictum of Descartes—I think,
therefore I am—represents a European individualist ideal,
the Bantu declaration—umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu (a human is
human because of other humans)—represents an African communal
aspiration.”
The
Africanisation of knowledge
Victor Mecoamere
http://www.afrofuturism.net/text/Manifestos/Sipho.html
"…The African identity of the institution should be located
in the treatment of African issues not as a by-product but by moving
African issues in the academic, social, political and economical
milieu from the periphery to the centre."
Afro-Futurism: A statement of Intentions – Outside
in, inside out
Paul Miller
http://www.afrofuturism.net/text/Manifestos/Miller01.html
“…On-line
culture is a social and psychological world configured first and
foremost by the codes and algorithms of a cybernetic syntax--a system
for creating codes that are first and foremost utilitarian, and
meant to be used as components in a larger framework. In short--pretty
much everything you encounter on-line is part of a structure where
identity (as code, as representation of self, etc etc) much like
the "real world" is utterly relative and based on a completely
variable system of controls.”
The
Global African Presence – A collection of essays and history
notes online
Runoko Rashidi
http://www.cwo.com/~lucumi/runoko.html
“…"That
other African" is not the stereotypical African savage so graphically
depicted in Hollywood movies, but the African that first peopled
the earth, and gave birth to (and significantly influenced) the
world's oldest and most magnificent civilisations. This is the African
that first entered Asia, Europe, Australia, the islands of the South
Pacific and the early Americas, not as slave, but as master, in
control of his and her own destiny. We believe that this African,
whom many wish to remain invisible, is to be found wherever one
truthfully seeks the origins of nations and religions.”
Black
Independent Cinema and the Influence of Neo realism – Futility,
Struggle and Hope in the Face of Reality
Chris Norton
http://www.imagesjournal.com/issue05/features/black.htm
“…One can see how these filmmakers attempted to renegotiate
the black image on screen and ground it firmly in issues of realism,
something that the blaxploitation films of the early 1970s sought
to remove the spectator from. Simply put, blaxploitation sought
to be escapist while the black independent films discussed here
sought to document and comment on the reality of black existence
in America.”
Art and ‘Art’ in Africa: Conceptual Clarification,
Confusion or Colonisation?
Jennifer Wilkinson
http://www.africanphilosophy.com/afphil/vol1.1/wilkinson.html
The story of Africa which gives credence to the belief that there
is no real art in Africa is well known. When the Europeans ‘discovered’
Africa they found what seemed to them a strange and static culture
producing artefacts, which were made and used for ‘tribal’
purposes. These, being of archeological appeal, were taken as evidence
rather than booty to Europe where they were displayed in ethnic
museums with elephant tusks and peacock feathers. Later, moved to
cultural museums, they were shown and contextualized with beadwork
and weapons. However, after Picasso and others had recognized and
used the formal qualities of these relics, they found their way
into art galleries and exhibitions—although they were still
displayed within a social and cultural context and not as autonomous
objects of aesthetic creativity.
Plantation Rhymes: Hip Hop as Writing Against the Empire
of Neo-Slavery
Quincy Norwood 2002
http://www.proudfleshjournal.com/proudflesh/vol1.1/norwood.html
“In historical Black musical genres such as the spiritual,
gospel, blues, soul, jazz, and funk, themes such as coping with
the strife of social inequity and the constant presence of racism,
political organization, self (re)definition and subversion are commonplace
in the music of Black folks. The aforementioned themes have been
constants in Black music primarily because people of African descent
in the United States have always had to confront the same primary
obstacle: a continuum of oppression backed by physical and psychic
violence, which has its genesis in slavery.”
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to Interviews online:
Art
is Borderless
Interview with Ery Camara
http://www.africultures.com/index.asp?menu=revue_affiche_article&no=2414&lang=_en
(Click on English at the bottom of the page to translate page)
“
Anthropology opens up a new perception of art for us. Before, we
used to say that we couldn't mix art and ethnology or sociology,
etc. Now, we've realised that we shouldn't seek art's formality
but rather its potential for integrating, or an understanding of
the context itself, which makes it possible for this art to take
a particular form. I think that today's artist is more of an ethnologist.
He talks about his environment, about the restrictions of his surroundings
and this is reflected in his work. Today's art is very often politicised
one way or another. We therefore have to accept the idea that a
person's environment has a very big impact on them.”
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