Africa Cluster's contents tagged with "intertwining hi/stories"

The Ignorant Schoolmasters at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna (9 April 2019)

Fri, 14 Aug 2020 15:01:11 +0000

Lineo Segoete of the Maseru Working Group gave a lecture entitled The Ignorant Schoolmasters at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna in the context of the seminar "Art and Education. Positions and Analyses," led by Barbara Mahlknecht of the Vienna Working Group on 9 April 2019. the lecture was based on a joint essay between Lineo and Nora Landkammer (Vienna Working Group) also titled The Ignorant Schoolmasters. The collaboration is reflection on the didactic role of two educators as emancipators in the context of knowledge being a universal phenomenon, and the implications of power and mutual learning associated with it.

In the study, Lineo and Nora critique Jacque Ranciere's text: the ignorant schoolmaster and Swiss missionary Edouard Jacottet who worked in Lesotho as an educator and writer. The lecture was followed by the "un/chrono/logical timeline game designed by the Another Roadmap Intertwining Histories Cluster, ie, an educational tool developed to engage with arts education histories and their global connections.

Maseru and Cuernavaca participate in «Elephants in the Room» at Casco, Utrecht (November 2018)

Sat, 08 Aug 2020 11:32:00 +0000

Elephants in the Room, presented by Casco Art Institute in the Netherlands in November 2018, was the first in a new yearly assembly aimed at becoming a meeting place for art organizations to question habitual institutional patterns and imagine ways of “commoning” together. This year’s assembly was designed to investigate how, in relation to ideas of the commons, “art-institutional change relate(s) to unlearning, particularly with regards to redistribution of power.” This topic was presented in relation to the collaborative project between Annette Krauss and the Casco Art Institute team “Site for Unlearning Art Organization,” a series of practical exercises that culminated in Casco’s name change, from “Casco – Office for Art, Design and Theory,” to “Casco Art Institute: Working for the Commons.”

Unlearning capitalist relations is a question of survival. Besides its effect on climate, capitalism has been corroding social cohesion for centuries and created the greatest inequalities the Earth has ever seen. Art (understood as the extended field of people involved in the practice of the Imaginary) should play a role in leading us to safer ground—or it risks becoming irrelevant and/or purely escapist. However, we can’t unmake and remake the world overnight, and I can hardly blame the assembly for not providing clear answers. Elephants in the Room did what its title implies: it brought into focus some glaring but difficult-to-acknowledge truths—including the fact that most of us inadvertently perpetuate problematic institutional habits and those structures of power.

Given that Another Roadmap shared common areas of inquest and practice, we were invited to share a panel with Arts Collaboratory represented by Lineo Segoete (Maseru) and Sofia Olascoaga (Cuernavaca) and discuss our points of intersection and areas in which we could learn from each other. The event was filled with robust discussions, activities and mappings that applied the idea of organisations as sites of unlearning. You can read more about it here.

ARAC Will Convene for its 3rd Colloquium in Maseru (7-13 January 2017)

Tue, 28 Nov 2017 13:00:51 +0000

Excerpts from an Interim Report: Activities of Johannesburg, Lubumbashi and Maseru Working Groups (2016-2017)

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 11:08:03 +0000

The Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC) aims remain to: make a critical and timely contribution to the development of practice and policy in our field. To this end, the project strives to support the development of innovative arts and education projects at grassroots level while at the same time networking Africa-based scholars and practitioners, and enabling them to advance research and practice in arts education, share knowledge and nurture further practice and scholarship and contribute to an African and global discourse on arts education. These broad aims are being met at this interim across the different working groups. This report should be read with the ‘mother website’ of Another Roadmap for Arts Education, Another Roadmap School.

Background

Johannesburg
The Johannesburg is developing a framework that is generative – we are identifying the key presences in our research project, many of which are found in the practices of Medu Art Ensemble:

Intergenerationality of research teams, debates, information gathering and decisions. This extends to the collective, ensemble-like methodologies present for the research;
Dialogue/talks/conversation and re-enactment sessions;
Decentralisation of learning sites;
The potential for a “festival” format that authorises itself, has broader appeal and crosses disciplines;
The centrality of grappling with language – and ideological languages;
The working group has considered a set of tactics that might be described as both metaphorical and methodological, drawing from Eduoard Glissant’s understanding of histories as processes that highlight the following guiding metaphors:
To exhaust
To realise
To endlessly discover
To illuminate and then retreat

These presences and metaphors have enabled a working process that maps the research scope in generative ways. The working group is entering a dynamic phase in which students and a broader consistency may begin to interact with the research material and processes.

Lubumbashi
In Lubumbashi, we have organised a meeting every second month, we have had 3 meetings now. We have conducted the preliminary research and identify 4 axes of our work:

Self writing and decolonising practices of arts education: Pierre Romain-Desfossés and le Hangar, Ecole d’art d’Elisabethville
Highlighting informal / alternative education: Research on artists workshops in the 1980s and 1990s
Rethinking the dichotomy elite vs popular: The question of “authencité”
Art education as space for political and social emancipation: Knowledge production under Mobutu dictatorship

Maseru
Maseru Working group’s practice-based research seeks to study current teaching practices/methods in primary schools to identify plausible strategies to advance the level of language literacy that student and instructors alike have in the Sesotho and English subjects. In performing the research, the team will survey students and teachers, each with a different questionnaire, to evaluate the baseline environment and identify opportunities for improvement.
The research approach includes interviews ad data analysis and interpretation as practice. The multi-tired research thus aims to respond, in so doing:

Evaluate curriculum to identify places where locally relevant examples could be incorporated;
Consult with Another Roadmap partners about instruction best practices and applicable educational literature;
Eventually share suggested curriculum with the Ministry of Education;
Develop and offer exercises that will be used as a measuring device of change, both in approach and student achievements results garnered;
Workshop with teachers from target schools on how to apply teaching methods not conventionally found in prescribed teaching resources

Success and/or Achievements of the Project

Johannesburg
The Johannesburg working group have had sparse but rich and rigorous working sessions. The first one was attended by Thembinkosi Goniwe (independent curator, writer and artist), Chepape Makgatho (artist), Molemo Moiloa (Director Visual Arts Network of South Africa), Sipho Mdanda (Freedom Park), Tracy Murinik (independent curator and writer), Rangoato Hlasane and David Andrew. The session emphasised the importance of methodology, particularly methods that contribute to a decolonial project. The Intertwining HiStories public project in which the Johannesburg working group ‘re-‐enacted’ the keynote address by Prof Keorapetse Kgositsile at the Medu Art Ensemble (Botswana, 1982) took place in October 2016 in the midst of the 2016 #FeesMustFall. It was an event that attracted not only Prof Kgositsile himself, but also people who were present in 1982 at the conference, and former Medu members. A strong representation of students and academics, as well as artists and activists found the event enriching and rare.

Lubumbashi
During this first phase, we have worked to develop mutual understanding and a common methodology among a very diverse group of participants. Going forward, we plan to expand the working group beyond Waza to incorporate academics from Lubumbashi University and teachers from fine art schools to enable us to better achieve our broader mission. We have had positive and in-depth contact with other working groups of Another Roadmap School - both in Africa and beyond.

Maseru
We have focused on developing insight into the factors affecting artistic education in our localities. We have received ground-breaking information that paves the way for further research and possibilities of reform based on best practices Lineo has been exposed to in the United States as a Humphrey Fellow. And we have been learning from one another by sharing our varied bodies of knowledge and practice. To be more precise Keleketla! and Ba re e ne re have a lot in common and it was agreed that it will serve both groups to collaborate on facilitating workshops and creating resources that can benefit all audiences involved, especially given the shared history and proximity.

Challenges and Lessons Learnt

Johannesburg
Some difficulties: Foreign exchange and labour laws, as well as differing currencies affect the budget considerably. (For possible solutions, see “Interesting Info”, below.) Difficulty in securing regular meetings – there is a desire to grow the working group, especially streching to a wider local constituency. To this end, we plan to develop research ‘hubs’ in different parts of Johannesburg, in informal and formal education spaces. For example: the ‘unchronological timeline’ could be housed and developed in the Wozani Block studios of the Wits School of Education and the RISO duplicator for independent publishing at Keleketla! Library.

Lubumbashi
Difficulty to have regular meeting as some members are not permanently based in Lubumbashi (Johannesburg, Likasi, etc.). The working group is exploring practical solutions towards increased stability in phase two.

Maseru
Red-tape in relation to getting approval from school administrations and the government. Time restrictions and remote overseeing of projects. Visual documentation of activities due to school opting to monitor proceedings themselves.

Our Common Ghosts: the Nyanza and Kampala Working Groups Meet at the Venice Biennale (May 2017)

Wed, 10 May 2017 12:46:04 +0000

Africa Cluster Colloquium 2 (April 2017) Public Programme

Wed, 26 Jul 2017 14:14:40 +0000

The Another Roadmap Africa Cluster held their Second Colloquium from 3-7 April, 2017. We reserved the Thursday and part of the Friday for public events hosted at the Wits University School of Arts and School of Education.

Highlights

Thursday 6 April, 8-11am, Public timeline making event at Wits School of Education

ARAC members were invited to create a timeline that was juxtaposed with the history of visual arts in South Africa and the world at large. In this exercise, people added dates that held significance to them personally or in their work in order to demonstrate how history intertwines and mark one's place as part of history.

Lunch:13.15 – 4pm, Wits School of Arts (The Point Of Order)

Members introduced themselves and shared their research and experiences with the public. The timeline created earlier in the day was rolled out on the floor as part of the conversation and a symbolic representation of what brought the different working groups together. The gathering included an interactive writing exercise as well as music session to help bring working groups and audience members closer together.

Friday 7 April

1.15 – 4pm, Semi-Public: The Point of Order
Wits School of Arts Fine Arts ‘Drawing & Contemporary Practice’ III: 3rd year student made presentations on Medu Art Ensemble Newsletters in groups. The activity was followed by casual discussions between working groups and students about archiving, recovering and disseminating knowledge.

Evening: 6pm onwards, public
The cluster hosted a reception and dance party to wrap up the weeklong discussion, presentations and deliberations. Every member was invited to play a DJ set as part of the mutual exchange and connectivity of the group. The event offered everyone the chance to recap on an intense yet fruitful week while brainstorming ideas for the way forward.