The contribution of the Another Roadmap School Africa Cluster (ARAC) to documenta fifteen is a sequence of three week-long editorial meetings held in June, July and August 2022 in Kassel, comprising open and closed sessions and contributions to the documenta fifteen public programme.
The editorial meetings are a continuation of ARAC’s Schoolbook Project, a series of five “exercises books”, namely: Provocations Book, Exercises Book, Glossaries Book, Images Book, and a Playlist Book. The five books aim to make accessible the work that ARAC has done and the knowledge that ARAC has produced since 2015. The ARAC’s Schoolbooks are an evolution of the Another Roadmap School’s existing practice of creating “learning units”.
The three editorial meetings are held in a modular setting that attends to ARAC’s chronologies; its genealogies; and its Typologies. The setting was developed through Another Roadmap’s method of “an exhibition kit”: an open-ended method of art making and learning through creating company and fellowship. The setting plays host to works developed through ARAC’s collective methods including the Un/Chrono/Logical Timeline; the Traveling Printing Suitcase that extends the artistic methods of the Medu Art Ensemble, a South African collective that used jazz and poster making in their fight against apartheid; wooden sculptures developed by the staff and students of École d’art de Nyundo as part of the art school pedagogical programme, in an exchange of the context of the study of the school’s history not only through recorded media and books, bu t also through material practice as well. The setting also features further symbolic creative works in various formats and media emerging from ARAC Members’s own practices; rotating entries of works that keep ARAC’s artistic company; and a preview of ARAC’s Images Book presented as a stream of projections across the space.
The public programme, held within and beyond ARAC’s space at Fridskul includes workshops; École du soir or evening programmes made of screenings and discussions; and People Who Think Together Dance Together, a recurring moment of musical gatherings; all of which feature friends and guests of ARAC.
Altogether, ARAC uses documenta fifteen as a welcome opportunity to meet and work together in Kassel to complete first drafts of 3 of the 5 Schoolbooks, but also as a momentous occasion to engage deeply with fellow collectives from across the planet and to develop methods and frameworks for long-lasting mutual exchanges.
