RAW Académie is back, apply now!
DEADLINE: 25/06/2023
EDITION: Session 10
DIRECTED BY: doual'art
LOCATION: Douala, Cameroun
DURATION: 5 weeks
AGENDA: October- November 2023
See on e-FLUX
Ouvert du 2 au 29 mai 2019
Dans le cadre de l’exposition P04 (Blackout) sur la recherche en cours de l’artiste danois Christian Danielewitz sur les dommages socio-écologiques causés par les industries mondiales de l’extraction des ressources, RAW Material Company organise trois ateliers de renforcement de capacités et de partage d’expériences, de ressources et de méthodes entre les militant.e.s de la cause environnementale.
Il s’agira de rallier des causes pour espérer créer une dynamique encore plus forte constituée d’hommes et de femmes soucieux et soucieuses des enjeux environnementaux et prêt.e.s à s’engager dans une communauté d’activistes. Les ateliers organisés dans le cadre de cette exposition seront aussi l’occasion de réfléchir à des alternatives de luttes pacifiques et de découvrir des propositions de solutions qui, mises en pratique par les communautés touchées par des problèmes majeurs environnementaux comme le village de Gad situé dans la région de Thiès, apporteront des changements positifs à leurs conditions et cadre de vie. A la suite de ces échanges, nous espérons participer à la consolidation et à la montée en puissance du processus de mobilisation en faveur de l’engagement pour la justice sociale.
Si vous avez de l’expérience dans l’activisme environnemental et/ou souhaiter avoir plus d’outils d’éveils, ces ateliers sont faits pour vous.
Oumar Diallo
Oumar Diallo a une formation de juriste à l’Université Cheikh Anta Diop et à l’Institut Supérieur de Droit de Dakar succursale de l’Université de Perpignan (France). Il est spécialisé sur les questions de droits de l’Homme et de Gouvernance. Il est Directeur Exécutif de la section sénégalaise de la Société Internationale pour les Droits de l’Homme (SIDH/Sénégal) et a travaillé durant 13 ans à la Direction de la (RADDHO) Rencontre Africaine pour la Défense des Droits de l’Homme sur les questions de gouvernance. De 2014 à 2017, il a été Chargé des programmes droits humains et secteur Extractif au Comité Sénégalais des Droits de l’Homme (CSDH) et a également été récipiendaire du Centre d’excellence sur la gouvernance des industries extractives Yaoundé (Cameroun).
Oumar Diallo est actuellement Chargé des Programmes de la Coalition sénégalaise de Publiez Ce Que Vous Payez (PCQVP/Sénégal) et coordonnateur du projet d’appui institutionnel et de renforcement des capacités de ses membres et des responsables de la société civile dans les régions minières au Sénégal. Il est Consultant sur la Gouvernance des Ressources minérales.
Abdoul Aziz Diop
Abdoul Aziz Diop est Coordinateur National Adjoint du Forum Civil sénégalaise. Il est également Membre du comité directeur de la coalition OSC Publiez Ce Que Vous Payez et Directeur du comité national de l’Initiative pour la Transparence dans les Industries Exécutives Sénégal.
Pour postuler, veuillez remplir ce formulaire avant le 29 mai. Pour plus de renseignements, nous vous invitons à écrire à:
What the task of a curator is or has become is not a relevant question or debate anymore. The starting point of our reflection is rather the fact that today curating is an established practice in the field of translation and mediation of artistic and intellectual production. It takes part in disclosing visions, which in turn have the potential to contribute to broadening our understanding of complex geographies and narratives.
CURA, RAW Académie Session 6, is the result of RAW Material Company’s collaborative reflection after five sessions of this programme. It is a session dedicated to curatorial practice as a contemporary cultural currency, and as social and political agency. Curating as a way to write and re-write histories, a way to read the present and imagine all possible futures. A method to change the meaning of things, and thus our readings thereof. Curating as a tool to occupy spaces and to interact with works of art. Curating as a model to be, to live, and to think with and through art and artists, in proximity to them and what they make, from their studios to the exhibition formats of their choice.
RAW Material Company is a nucleus, inhabited and animated by the spirit of a team of curators, where curating is both our work and at work. Inspired by and responsive to the creativity of its environment in Dakar, Senegal, RAW is Pan-African, with an ear cocked and a hand extended to the rest of the planet. It is a trans-disciplinary site for the thinking and practice of art. While the exhibition as a form is at the heart of our work, we do not consider it the only format for engaging with art. We are interested in the porosity of forms of mediation. Many have argued that the history of art is no longer a history of objects but of exhibitions, but for an institution such as RAW whose praxis deals with knowledge in its diversity of forms, the history of art we initiate embraces the multiple possibilities that are coming into being for curating ideas and the shapes of their materialization. We look from the visual arts to the sonic, sartorial and edible and are inspired by the arts of hospitality, movement and social performance. We turn a critical eye to the practice of pedagogy itself and think always about how these forms can ignite the political imaginary. We are curious about the before of before, the while of while and the after of after.
RAW is in addition the workplace for twenty fellows and an ever-increasing number of Académie faculty for a total of six months every year. We continuously question our proposals and curatorial ideas as we are constantly exposed to the invaluable input and knowledge of the professionals who work with us and enter our universe. The space of RAW, and its team, become placeholders and interlocutors for methods that challenge the way we approach curating. What does it mean for an institution to enact such suppleness? And to what extent is the Académie programme a curatorial project by RAW, or an opportunity for RAW to be curated? Several decades after the establishment of institutional critique in the artistic sphere, the ways in which institution building is itself a form of curatorial practice still constitutes an oft-overlooked field of enquiry.
Session 6, CURA, will offer a much-needed platform for delving into these questions and more, offering the opportunity to discuss and experience the institutional proposal that is RAW Material Company and its collaborators. We will explore the conundrums that feed our profession in contexts as specific and diverse as the environments they arise from. Such complexities include conveying the most recent critical thinking and aesthetic theory produced in the field of curating, invoking its historiography and the possibility of a decolonial curating. We will go further — what of resisting curating as a path that emerged from a theoretical framework predominantly shaped by the West, or reflecting on the impact of male dominance and misogynistic transgressions in a professional field defined, amongst other paradigms, by hierarchies of gender and race.
And lest we forget the interdependency that exists amongst curators and artists, critics and art historians, and the increasing crossover between these disciplines, CURA will welcome fellows from across the arts, focusing on practice over title and in the process asking necessary questions about the nature of collaboration.
The session will play out as a curatorial summit of a different order. Curators who have nourished and sustained a critical tension with regards to the craft and created unique perspectives and universes will form the body of the faculty. These are individuals and collectives who at once inform and challenge the work of RAW Material Company, and expand the possibility of transforming cura from noun to verb.
Faculty will include Zoe Butt, Diana Campbell Betancourt, Princesse Marilyn Douala Manga Bell, Elvira Dyangani Ose, Adrienne Edwards, Reem Fadda, Kate Fowle, Natasha Ginwala, Samuel Leuenberger, Chus Martinez, Gabi Ngcobo, Ruth Noack, Maria Lind, Miguel A. López, Marion Louisgrand Sylla, Bisi Silva and WHW.
Planting a seed in the right soil is not enough to make it sprout. The material and structural conditions around the seed, that may have left it in a state of dormancy, must be taken into consideration in order to provide fertile ground for thinking about ways in which we work, live and create together. Each element such as the soil, rain, heat and humidity are equally necessary and vital for the process of germination to take place.
Otobong Nkanga’s multi-stage project Carved To Flow is a long-term research and practice oriented platform that uses material investigation and experimentation to produce new systems of support across economy, sociality and art. The 3rd phase - Germination comes to Dakar, Senegal to build a new pillar of creative sustenance for a project that is envisaged as a structure that can have real impact on lived reality, using art as a device to reflect on what it means to sculpt or carve possibilities within societies and create collective responses within spaces of crisis.
It is becoming ever more urgent to understand how entangled our existence is to the very elements we exploit, use or waste. How can we create structures for care and repair? How can we carve or sculpt against the grain to create a flow? How can we work in coherence with the land and mineral body that holds us all? We can no longer ignore the particles we breath into our lungs, speckled sometimes with particles of arsenic but at other times with the pollen of a jasmine flower.
Germination functions as a laboratory space between the imagined and lived experiences which allows for the possibility to explore ideas around ecology, architecture and sustainability. Fellows and invited faculty will work with practitioners in Senegal to connect and enrich structures that run beyond the lines of usual curatorial norms but that teach us how to be in space and resonate beyond, to resist stalemate and hibernation by seeking symbiosis with the localities we live in.
October 4th-24th, 2018
Curated by Koyo Kouoh and Dulcie Abrahams Altass
With works by:
Papisto Boy
Maïsama
Leonore Mau
Thierno Seydou Sall
Isabelle Thomas
In response to Fichte’s call to action from 1980, “I beg you to build walls, so that Pape Samb can paint them!” and the rarity of Papisto Boy’s remaining murals in the rapidly shifting urban landscape of Dakar, this exhibition lends its walls to the archives of this pioneering artist. Incorporating photography, video and drawing, it is a dialogue amongst artists whose own histories are entangled with those of Papisto and Fichte and who have a practice that actively mines positions of marginality and sensibility, predominantly working in the public sphere. In doing so, they continue the quest of Papisto Boy and Hubert Fichte for a truly inclusive humanity.
This exhibition is organised on the occasion of the multi-stage project Hubert Fichte: Love and Ethnology under the artistic direction of Diedrich Diedrichsen and Anselm Franke, artistically revisiting and translating The History of Sensibility in a number of the locations that feature in the book.
May 5th-June 6th, 2018
For over two centuries, print media has been a space for varied experiences. Born out of urgency and often in the colonial context, in line with a critical, political, aesthetic, poetic and literary ambition, journals helped to sustain the graphical and scriptural creativity whose scarcity deserves a mention. They have constantly appeared in the struggles that women and men have waged for their emancipation. Made up at once of formal singularities and political objectives in favour of human communities and their aspirations, the journal, this fragile object, often put together in difficult material, social and political conditions, motivated by noble causes and the determination of committed authors, reveals a rare aesthetic power. In this all-digital era, we must re-establish and qualify its formal, aesthetic and political function on a global scale. This exhibition is in two parts.
1968 – 88: The morning after the revolution?
Seismography of struggles – Towards a global history of critical and cultural journals
May 5th - June 6th, 2018
This video and sound installation presents an inventory of non-European journals or those produced by the diaspora in the wake of the revolutionary movements of the end of the 18th century up to the watershed year of 1989 and the end of a world dominated by two blocs. The populations of the territories mentioned in this sound and visual work have experienced colonialism, practices of slavery, Apartheid and genocides. Others experienced violent dictatorship and brutal political and cultural convulsions. The struggle against slavery may be at the root of what can be called a critical or cultural journal, namely a matricial object of modernism. Such is the case with the struggle against colonialism. While, due to its very nature, colonialism impacted the social and cultural cohesion of a number of communities, it was also fought hard in writing and in gestures.
We are by nature ambidextrous, able to use the right and left hands equally well, and yet most of us favour the use of the right hand for serious matters. We have internalised the metaphor of the conflicting binaries created by left versus right. This metaphor extends to politics and even to the manner in which we are socialised to accept that right and 'the right' constitute, and are, correct(ness). This binary is reflected in general politics and racial conflicts: Democrat versus Republican, White versus Black. Right has come to mean normal, appropriate, just as white has come to signify that which is clean, pure and innocent. The reverse is also upheld as truth; left and black are charged with negative values.
This metaphorical imposition takes form in capitalist strictures and structures of time that are man-made constructions for labour, and do not correspond to our biological and spiritual needs. Renowned South African photographer Santu Mofokeng once said that African time is in contrast very forgiving, meaning that at its core, it is in conflict with the Western capitalist ideals of chronological control.
We are interested in the Corpus Callosum, the space which bridges the left and right hemispheres of the brain and which constitutes a grey area, a site of communication and play beyond and between the imposition of binary division. An engagement with the Corpus Callosum allows us to ask what would happen if the dominance of the right could be redressed and imbalanced by a more empowered left hand, and how this can be played out in artistic and curatorial practices.
These are some of the queries this session will investigate in collaboration with the invited faculty who are connected via a diverse range of issues regarding the body politic, gender, the formal nature of mediums of documentation and their problematics, coloniality and racial politics, Performance art and the spirit. Faculty will include curator Christian Haye and artists Sara Mikolai, Christopher Wessels, Yuki Kihara, Alibeta and Zen Marie.
RAW Material Company a le plaisir de vous inviter à Retour sur 14/17 - The past, the present, the future and the praying mantis une présentation de l'artiste créatrice Selly Raby Kane, ce vendredi 9 Mars 2018 à 17h30 à la Zone B, rue sans soleil, Villa N°2B.
Cette présentation est organisée dans le cadre de CITÉOLOGIES, une réflexion sur l'espace urbain africain contemporain à travers le prisme des politiques architecturales et urbanistiques en collaboration avec l'architecte Carole DIOP. CITÉOLOGIES est un volet du programme de débats publics hebdomadaires les vendredis @RAW.
Superpositions de réalités et de générations adossées à un espace en constante mutation: Dakar, Espace que l'on se partage, que l’on se cède à travers le temps et les formes expressives. Dakar-transition : ceux qui nous ont précédés lui ont imprimé un rythme. Aujourd’hui, de l’ouvrage commun, son versant (surface topographique comprise entre un talweg et une ligne de faille) attend d’être rempli de nos postures, de nos visions et de nos ambitions créatives. Jeu de miroir entre Dakar la mante religieuse et ses artistes, 14/17 dresse un portrait en ping-pong de deux entités qui s’entre-nourrissent puis le temps venu, se dévorent. 14/17 est une projection temporelle, une quête de repères dans un futur qui se déroule au fil de l’action, elle est l’expression d’un besoin viscéral de contribuer, de questionner, de mesurer, de fédérer.
Ce retour consistera en un échange sur les interactions et les jeux de transmission entre la perception de la ville et les identités créatives puis fera un focus sur Alioune Samb, artiste du groupe Muus Du Tux qui fait un parallèle complexe entre techniques de tressage ancestrales et pression démographique dans ses œuvres en tuyaux isol
RAW Material Company a le plaisir de vous inviter au panel Les mouvements de contestation universitaires: focus sur 1988 et 2012 organisé dans le cadre de son programme Parlons Sénégalaiseries le vendredi 2 Mars 2018 à 17h30 à la Zone B, rue sans soleil Villa N°2B.
Le programme mensuel Parlons Sénégalaiseries est une série de communications et débats organisée en collaboration avec le journaliste et éditeur Ibou Fall et qui entre dans notre volet de débats publics les vendredis @ RAW. Il constitue un focus sur des sujets liés à la société sénégalaise.
En prélude au cinquantenaire de Mai 68, nous consacrons le premier trimestre de Parlons Sénégalaiseries à un retour sur les temps forts de l’histoire des mouvements de contestation universitaires allant des événements de Mai 68, en passant par l’année blanche de 1988, aux mouvements nés de la préparation des élections présidentielles de 2012.
L’année 1988 a été marquée par les élections présidentielles et législatives qui se sont tenues simultanément au Sénégal. La présidentielle, remportée par le Président Abdou Diouf, fut l’objet de moult contestations qui entrainèrent l’incarcération de plusieurs leaders politiques. Cette période tumultueuse a causé un boulversement profond du calendrier scolaire qui aboutit à la déclaration in fine de la première année blanche au Sénégal. Entre frustrations et revendications, plusieurs mouvements de contestations virent le jour. On assista à la naissance du mouvement hip-hop au Sénégal, et à travers le rap, à d’autres formes d’activisme politique menées par la jeunesse sénégalaise.
Ce panel sera animé par Dr. Ibrahima Wane, Mr Fadel Barro et Mr Cheikh Sene dit Keyti
A propos des intervenants
Dr. Ibrahima Wane
Ibrahima Wane est titulaire d’un doctorat de troisième cycle de lettres modernes et d’un doctorat d’État de lettres et sciences humaines. Il est professeur de littérature et civilisations africaines à l’UCAD, Université Cheikh Anta Diop de Dakar. Il enseigne aussi l’histoire sociale de la musique à l’Institut supérieur des arts et cultures (ISAC) de Dakar. Wane est le directeur de la formation doctorale Études Africaines de la Faculté des Lettres et Sciences Humaines de l’UCAD et le premier vice-président du Réseau euro-africain de recherche sur les épopées (REARE). Ses axes de recherche actuels sont la poésie et la musique populaires en Afrique de l’Ouest, les littératures écrites en langues africaines, les cultures urbaines et l’imaginaire politique. Il vit et travaille à Dakar
Fadel Barro
Fadel BARRO est titulaire d’un Diplôme d’Études Spécialisées en Journalisme et en Communication Politique. Il a acquis huit ans d’expérience dans le journalisme avant de se lancer comme consultant en communication et en leadership transformationnel. Il est membre fondateur du Mouvement Y’en a marre dont il est le directeur et un des principaux architectes
Cheikh Sene dit Keyti
Keyti s’est révélé au public hip-hop sénégalais en 1998. Porte étendards d’un rap fortement versé dans la contestation sociale, lui et son groupe Rapadio ont su tracer la voie à une nouvelle génération de rappeurs qui réclamait être la voix du peuple.
Dans ses chansons, Keyti pose de vraies réflexions sur les changements sociaux au Sénégal et invite au débat à travers des thèmes comme l’immigration, la mendicité des enfants, le chômage des jeunes, l’éducation.
Il se distingue aussi pour son engagement dans des causes sociales notamment la promotion des droits de l’enfant pour laquelle il a beaucoup voyagé en Afrique de l’Ouest. Sur d’autres fronts, il a aussi travaillé dans des prisons du Sénégal en initiant des détenus à l’écriture mais aussi en formant d’ex détenus mineurs à parler français et anglais.
Depuis 2013, Keyti présente avec Xuman, le Journal Rappé (JTR), une émission télé/internet hebdomadaire qui résume l’actualité en musique et en rap tout en abordant des questions civiques qui ciblent principalement les jeunes. Parallèlement, il présente le rap sénégalais dans de nombreux pays afin d’inciter les artistes à s’imprégner de leurs réalités socio-politique et d’agir.
May 30 – June 5 2016
Zone B space
Closed session for selected participants only
In partnership with RAW Material Company, ICI organizes a Curatorial Intensive in Dakar. With this fourth Intensive in Africa – following past programs in Johannesburg, Addis Ababa, and Marrakech – ICI maintains its commitment to supporting the development of curatorial practice and international networks in Africa. This programme was conceived in collaboration with Koyo Kouoh and will be a follow up ongoing collaborations with RAW Material Company.
The Curatorial Intensive, a weeklong professional development programme, offers curators the opportunity to discuss, among colleagues, the concepts, logistics, and challenges of organizing exhibitions, public programs, and other curatorial models. In addition, the Curatorial Intensive will expose participants to the historically vibrant art scene of Dakar, a city known as one of the major sites for artistic and intellectual production in Africa. Seminars, site visits, individual meetings, and roundtable discussions will be led by a group of international and local professionals including Nancy Adajania, Babacar Mbaye Diop, Riason Naidoo, El Hadj Malick Ndiaye, Franklin Sirmans among others.
RAW Material Company worked with young Senegalese architect, Carole Diop, on the renovation of a 1950s residential home of modernist inspiration in the historic district of Zone B in midtown Dakar. This house is our second address; an extension of the space at Sicap Amitié 2, which we are turning into residency and studio spaces for young art school graduates. The new site is dedicated to the forthcoming, RAW Academy, an experimental study program for art and curatorial practices that will launch in October 2016. It will also be the location for our continued programme of exhibitions, art and societal debate, publishing and library activities. It allows us to present more ambitious projects and engage with educational institutions in the neighbourhood. These include University Cheikh Anta Diop, School of Library Science, College of Architecture, Higher Institute of Management, British Council, and last but not least, the legendary high schools Lycée Blaise Diagne and Lycée John F. Kennedy. Both later institutions have educated multiple generations of leaders since the early 1960s. The renovation of this space is also the point of departure from which we wish to develop a debate on the politics of architecture and urban planning in African cities.
After a fruitful sabbatical year RAW Material Company is pleased to welcome you again
in its space in Sicap Amitié 2 and in its new space in Zone B. A special programme of events — residencies, workshops, exhibitions, in situ works, talks and lectures — will take place from 27th April to 5th June 2016 on the occasion of Dak’Art, the 12th edition of the Biennial of Contemporary African Art (3rd May – 2nd June 2016).
a programme of debates and lectures led by Seloua Luste Boulbina
From 3rd – 8th May 2016
Zone B space
Free and open to the public.
The production of discourse has become more of a component than a complement of artistic practice.
This serie of critical conversations is the continuation
of a colloquium at Collège International de Philosophie, in Paris, led by philosopher and political scientist
Seloua Luste Boulbina. Three main concerns were its starting point. First, the idea that the postcolonial is made of entre-mondes – worlds in between – rather than different worlds activated by migrations. Secondly, the idea that in these entre-mondes, artists, writers and philosophers who contribute to the different processes of decolonization of the imaginaries and logics can be seen as deterritorialized producers of meaning. Thirdly, the transition from theoretical practice to artistic practice allows a greater understanding of the decolonization of knowledge in all its complexity.
Tuesday 3rd May 2016, 4pm
Kader Attia
Addressing current events
Thursday 5th May 2016, 4pm
Julien Creuzet
Le portrait paysage
Friday May 6th, 4pm
Barthélémy Toguo
History from below
Saturday May 7th, 4pm
Jean-François Boclé
Bandung and after?
Followed by the screening of the video “Le voyage à Bandung”
Sunday 8th May 2016 4pm
Hela Ammar
Gender (in) Politics
Responding to the context of the centenary, EVA International 2016 curated by Koyo Kouoh will be entitled Still (the) Barbarians and will investigate the post-colonial condition of Ireland as a point of departure from where artistic reflections, critical redefinitions and political transformations are articulated.
The online application process is now open and closes at noon (IST) on Monday 15 June 2015.
More informations here : http://www.eva.ie/still-the-barbarians
As part of the 2nd Assembly of Arts Collaboratory. RAW MATERIAL COMPANY is pleased to invite you to the public discussion on "Common Goods: Networks and alternative models for culture". This discussion will be held Monday, April 13 at Librairie Athena from 17:30.
Blain|Southern Berlin’s current exhibition, Useful Dreams, is a comprehensive survey of the work of the Malian artist Abdoulaye Konaté, one of the most eminent West African artists of his generation. Useful Dreams comprises works from the 1990s to the present, including nine new works created for this significant presentation.
The exhibition is curated by Koyo Kouoh.
Organised by the Malian Ministry of Cultureand Institut français, the Bamako Encounters is the first and principal international platform dedicated to African photography on the continent. A veritable platform for discovery, exchanges and interaction, the Bamako Encounters are known as a meeting place for African photographers and other art professionals from across the world. It will take place in Bamako, from 31st October to 31st December 2015.
The Executive Director of the Bamako Encounters is Samuel Sidibe, Director of the National Museum of Mali, who has been directing it since 2009.
The Artistic Director of the 10th Bamako Encounters is Bisi Silva, an independent curator and the Director, Centre for Contemporary Art(CCA, Lagos).
The Pan-African Exhibition, resulting from a call for applications and the selection of artists representing all of the African continent and its Diaspora, is part of the Biennial’s central presentation. In 2015 the title is « TELLING TIME ».
The call for applications to the Pan-African Exhibition of the 10th edition of the Bamako Encounters is open for African photographers and video artists from 15th January to 30th March 2015.
For more details : http://www.rencontres-bamako.com