Intertwining HiStories. São Paulo Meeting, 24.10.2016 (AM). Minutes : microsillons
Johannesburg Working Group (Puleng | Ra | David)
History : Medu Art Ensemble
Medu Art Ensemble (group of artists, cultural workers, activists, based in Botswana in the late 70’s, 80’s) as main story, nod around which smaller stories are connected
Looking to establishe a lineage from the 60’s to today (including projects the groups members are involved in).
Central elements in the group :
- Intergenerationality of research team.
- Dialogues, talks, conversations and re-enactements
- Decentralisation of learning sites
- Potential of a festival
Medu Art Ensemble
Many of thoses artists, activists were coming from other countries. Exile after uprisings especially.
Interracial and intergenerational.
Referred to themselves as ‘cultural workers’
Interesting case study because of the variety of tools that they used (poetry, publications, performances…). Tools imported from different countries but universal dimension as well. Question of the skills in exile. Question of how the different units wanted to be rooted, embeded, in Botswana. Issue of language. Question of how those practices got localized, used local techniques.
Key moment/realisation -> Exhibition and symposium “Culture in resistance”, 1982. Need to localize and find what was important in the socio-political context of the time. Keep in mind that Medu Art Ensemble is a larger project than visual art (therefore : “culture in resistance”).
Another intersting thing is to look at how knowledge is exchanged. Use of suitcases in particular (“silkscreen workshop in a suitcase” for example).
1985 : brutal raid by the South African Defence Force. 12 dead including 4 members of the Medu Art Ensemble. The group is disbanded.
Project in Johannesburg (presented by Puleng)
Inkulumo (conversation)
Localising context through terminology
Use of the local terms :
Ulando (“plant stem” or “story”)
Inganekwane (indigenous folk tale)
Story telling technique.
Collaboration with the Keleketla! Library. After school programm to try to understand the past to better imagine the future and to relook at the present.
Interview of people involved in treason trial.
Use also of the term Solanka (we are in the mean time). Idea that post-apartheid structures are needed (and were not thought during the transition) and that the country is still in an in-between situation.
Terms also of : Inkulumo (conversation) and Mpen.
Q&A
CARMEN : Would like to know more on the last part.
PULENG : Elderly men talk about the transformative system put in place during apartheid. But no system was together in the post-apartheid area. Slang idea of solanka or “in the mean time” (cf song : “Sister Bethina” by Mgarimbe).
GEORGE : Importance of thinking about the oral histories within national liberation movements (including, music, rock and roll, etc…).
NANA : I see solanka as an alternative temporality and as a potential.
PULENG : “in the mean time” is also linked to educational aspects (time to learn…) even if Medu artists were defining themselves as “cultural workers”, not “teachers”.
RA : Banality and importance of songs. Current protests against the police forbidding the use of songs in the students demonstrations in WITS. Songs are crossing time (“historical” songs sung by young people today who were not there in in the 80’s). Songs as a way to be together during that moment of disruption that the protest is. Language becomes a huge issue.
NORA : Was there an idea of training to new techniques/new uses, in the Medu Art Ensemble ?
RA : The techniques and tools used have to be looked at in the context : suitcase for example were a way to get rid of the limitations…
PATRICK : How do you position yourself in the actuality of resistance today in Africa ?
RA : Many sources were destroyed so the process of collaborative image making for example is something important in that resistance, as a way to overcome fear.
GEORGE : What happened to women groups outside the country during Apartheid was not really documented. South Africa exported violence against independent groups in frontline states (Mozambique, Angola, Namibia…), not only against art groups but also to all independent movements. Very little documentation about what happened to those groups.
DAVID : Yes, it happened espeacially during the late 70’s – 80’s.
RA : (coming back on Patrick’s question) Importance of developing spaces of artistic production and education (rethink what is a gallery, a school, a club, a publishing house). Refuse to be locked in discipline is also a way to work in that resistance. As is the way I teach art (using for example the case study of Medu as a way to challenge the myth of a lack of existing material on decolonization). It is not because it not a book that it does not exist. Important to recognize that some people are still alive, still there… that the story can be written. Choose the example of Medu is a way to take an example close to use (some members are still alive and around) and to make it visible. This is how I see culture as a tool of resitance today.
OLIVIER : Could you tell us more about the idea of “art education against arts education” that you mention in your paper ?
DAVID : Idea is coming from the Documenta 12 “Education” magazine, mentioning “An aesthetic education against aesthetic education”. I have been involved in what has been named “art education” for a long time in South Africa, with a bad experience. The research on the Medu Art Ensemble but also of the connexions with other researchs in the Cluster (Biko’s reading of Freire for example) is a way to challenge that kind of art education, to revisit history and possibilities. Hopefully, through the Keleketla! Library and Puleng’s project, the curriculum can change very quickly, leanding to an “art education against arts education”.
NORA : I propose to add keyworks and dates for the construction of the timeline, collectively.
NANA : Beware of hyper-commercialisation of “music”, of “blackness” in the festival format. Why is festival the accurate exchange platform ? What I hear is more about inflitration, in schools, etc… Think skills and practices as sites of resistance… How to translate what Medu did in the contemporary and in an intersectional approach of the hegemonical framework ?
RA : The festival raises challenging questions : how to use festival as a place to really listen, hear, and also as aplace to act.
DAVID : What RA achieved in the Notrthern Province, as a form of festival was very different to commercialized festivals. Skill to be used.
Kampala working group (Emma | Kitto | George)
History : Margaret Trowell’s School of Art.
Many things influenced the work of the groupe lately : health issues, impossibility to travel to Uganda….
Start from Trowell and her legacy as a focus for specific reason… starting to plot convergences and simultaneity, thinking about possible connexions between this material and other timelines and interconnexions with other research groups… For example, Marion Richardson, who taught Margret Trowell to be a teacher could be a link with the Vienna group. Cult of childhood and child art as a possible other convergence.
Role of Christianity in the expansion of arts education : through art, through image, it become easier to convert illiterate people.
Discussion to be developped with Joburg and Lumumbashi on the role of visual art education outside and inside the colonial administration.
Margaret Trowell, takes part to the colonization process but in arguing that African people were “artistic”, which is a difference regarding the general discourse.
1949 : film to present East African College (Makerere Art School).
1968 : publication of Contemporary art in African by a german recruited teacher in Nigeria involved in anti-colonization struggle. First book for the west presenting artists from Africa who then became the only artists successful on western contemporary art scene…
Q&A
CARMEN : Link to Roger Fry (exhibition on child art where is compares children drawings in German and South Africa, discussing primitivism), link also to collectivism (idea of forming future voters), to Walter Crain (close to libertarian movement, writing on primitivism, but for liberation) .
EMMA : For anybody interest in arts education in colonies or foreign countries, a very interesting book is Draw they must: a history of the teaching and examining of art (Richard Carline, 1968).
MARIANNE : Christianity seems to be a point of convergence between many of our researches. Freire for example was somehow used by the World Council of Churches as a way to renew its Christian action.
GEORGE : In Central St Martin’s, 200 images were left by a former missioner. They can be useuful to look at the way people were infantilized.
EMMA : The Slade school of art has many pictures from the 50’s online. We can see a very diverse students body (more than today probably). Alfred Liyolo for example, who studied in Vienna, shows the kind of students’ journeys at the time. Those stories could be picked up too.
JANNA : Keep in mind, in the colonial process, the cultivation in individualisation as a way to enter the capitalist discourse. In Canadian artic in the 1950’s for example, art was introduced on purpose to introduce capitalism, through a system of coupons to purchase food, through cooperative to sell products… See the art collective : Art and Cold Cash.
Look also into the links between primitivism, the child and also the mad.
Convergence of anticolonial and anticapitalist discourses around the idea of madness. It would be great to look for anticolonial art education / radical psychiatry projets around that.
ANDREA : In Cairo, we are trying to be aware around those questions of individualization. Current movement from a big body of national education that is very accessible, to the privatization of (art) education, in very expensive structures… How the informal part (we are part of) can resist to that movement of education for the few ? Herbert Read is a main influence on art education in Cairo.
CARMEN : After writing Education through art, Read was appointed at UNESCO and brought the issue of art education there. So thanks to him taht we are there together today !
GEORGE : Parallel between Read and Hall for cultural studies (open space to work in an occupied context).
CHRISTIAN : The role of Christianity in the subject formation is very interesting area of research… Monasteries and Seminaries in Rwanda are places of the formation… Intrigued and solidary with the will to investigate further what the formation of the indvidual means, today as well, including in connexion to visual production.
EMMA : Churches are still the biggest group of patrons in many countries, but they should not be seen in a too simplistic manner. We need to remember the Liberation Theology and recognize its role in the liberation process. It’s a multi-facetted thing.
GEORGE : Church did/is producing things in the public realm. It sometimes occupy the place of the state. Therefore, it’s impossible not to look at that aspect.
NANA : I’m intrigued by that complicated relationship. What are the repercusions in the interested decisions of producing a specific type of artists (market oriented/religious) ?.We need to think about the role of capitalism within education.
EMMA : Margaret Trowell is the funding myth of art education in Uganda. Why did she wants to start teaching art, what was a personal investment ? Why everyone still oves her ?
