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46258-01 - Seminar: 'Contemporary African Art': Stakes, Debates and Issues in the 21st Century (3 CP)
| Semester | fall semester 2016 |
| Course frequency | Once only |
| Lecturers | Marie-Laure Allain Bonilla (m.allainbonilla@unibas.ch, Assessor) |
| Content | On January 8th 2016, Le Monde published an article entitled “What is an African artist?” [“C’est quoi un artiste africain?”]. In the era of globalization, that is to say in a time when a rhetoric of open borders holds sway and when the art world seeks to posit itself as a space of free exchange (in the sense of a network for the circulation of artworks, artists and ideas), this question, calling for a geolocated definition, might prove to be in turns naive, incongruous, ethnocentric and/or racist. Its persistence is most productively understood as the symptom of debates around identity issues that shouldn’t be happening anymore in the 21st Century. Such debates are very often the expression of a ‘colonial unconscious’, which guides the way artistic productions made on the African continent or in the diaspora are understood from a Western point of view. Full program also available on ADAM (download "Syllabus" file) 20/09/2016: Foreword: The art historian’s approach vs. the anthropologist’s one, how to articulate both? (Presenter: Marie-laure Allain Bonilla) 27/09/2016: ‘Contemporary African Art’: An introduction to some issues (Presenter: Marie-laure Allain Bonilla) 4/10/2016: Writing Art History, Part I: “Defining and Periodizing Contemporary African Art since 1980” [Reading assignment: Enwezor and Okeke-Agulu 2009a] 11/10/2016: Writing Art History, Part II: “Strategies and Themes in the Work of Contemporary African Artists” [Reading assignment: Enwezor and Okeke-Agulu 2009b] 18/10/2016: Writing Art History, Part III: “the Role of Art Criticism” [Reading assignment: Deepwell 1997] 25/10/2016: Exhibiting, Part I: Some Issues [Reading assignment: Okeke-Agulu and Hassan 2008] 1/11/2016: Exhibiting, Part II: Fault Lines (2003) [Reading assignment: Tawadros and Campbell 2003] 8/11/2016: Exhibiting, Part III: Africa Remix (2005) [Reading assignment: Njami et al. 2005] 15/11/2016: The Biennial Phenomenon, Part I: Dakar, a case of success? [Reading assignment: Araeen 2003; Konaté 2010] 22/11/2016: The Biennial Phenomenon, Part II: Johannesburg, a case of failure? [Reading assignment: Marschall 2010; Becker 2011] 29/11/2016: Reframing the Black Subject: a debate. Part I [Reading assignment: Enwezor 2000] 6/12/2016: Reframing the Black Subject: a debate. Part II [Reading assignment: Atkinson and Breitz 1999] 13/12/2016: ‘The Burden of Representation’ [Reading assignment: Ogbechie 2010; Wemega-Kwawu 2011] |
| Learning objectives | The aim of this seminar is to revisit the rise of the so-called ‘contemporary African art’ phenomenon through some of the stakes, the debates and the issues it still provokes in the 21st Century. We’ll try to see how the ‘colonial unconscious’ can be circumvented to engage with a decolonization of critical and curatorial, as well as commercial practices in the ream of contemporary art. The two first sessions will give the students a general overview of the issues that will be discussed during the seminar. The first one will focus on the different approaches of the art historian and the anthropologist through examples of groundbreaking exhibitions in order to see their respective strengths and weaknesses and how these two approaches could be articulated together. The second session will be an introduction to ‘contemporary African art’ and some of the issues that will be further discussed. The following sessions are then conceived around crucial topics necessary to the understanding of ‘contemporary African art’ (how to write art history, the exhibition of ‘contemporary African art’, the biennial phenomenon or issues of representations). Each session will discuss a topic in-depth, drawing on the assigned reading that will be presented and commented by the students. |
| Bibliography | Araeen, Rasheed. “Dak’Art 1992-2000: The Problems of Representation, Contextualization, and Critical Evaluation in Contemporary African Arts as Presented by the Dakar Biennale.” Third Text 17:1 (2003): 93-106. Atkinson, Brenda and Candice Breitz, eds. Grey Areas: Representation, Identity and Politics in Contemporary South African Art. Johannesburg: Chalkham Hill Press, 1999. Becker, Natasha. “Africus Johannesburg Biennale 1995: Butisi Tart?” In Globalization and Contemporary Art, edited by Jonathan Harris, 86-95. Oxford: Blackwell, 2011. Deepwell, Katy, ed. Art Criticism and Africa. London: Saffron, 1997. Enwezor, Okwui. “Reframing the Black Subject: Ideology and Fantasy in Contemporary South African Representation (1997).” In Reading the Contemporary: African Art from Theory to Marketplace, edited by Okwui Enwezor and Olu Oguibe, 377-399. Cambridge (MA): The MIT Press, 2000. Enwezor, Okwui and Chika Okeke-Agulu. “Defining and Periodizing Contemporary African Art since 1980.” In Contemporary African Art since 1980, edited by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, 10-27. Bologne: Damiani, 2009 a. Enwezor, Okwui and Chika Okeke-Agulu. “Strategies and Themes in the Work of Contemporary African Artists.” In Contemporary African Art since 1980, edited by Okwui Enwezor and Chika Okeke-Agulu, 30-50. Bologne: Damiani, 2009 b. Konaté, Yacouba. “The Invention of the Dakar Biennial (2009).” In The Biennial Reader, edited by Elena Filipovic, Marieke Van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, 104-121. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, Bergen: Bergen Kunsthall, 2010. Marschall, Sabine. “The Impact of the Two Johannesburg Biennials on the Formation of a ‘New South African Art’ (1999).” In The Biennial Reader, edited by Elena Filipovic, Marieke Van Hal and Solveig Øvstebø, 454-465. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, Bergen: Bergen Kunsthall, 2010. Njami, Simon, ed. Africa Remix. Contemporary Art of a Continent. Exhibition catalogue. Ostfildern: Hatje Cantz Verlag, 2005. Ogbechie, Sylvester Okwunodu. “The Curator as Culture Broker: A Critique of the Curatorial Regime of Okwui Enwezor in the Discourse of Contemporary African Art.” Aachronym (16 June 2010): http://aachronym.blogspot.ch/2010/06/curator-as-culture-broker-critique-of.html?view=timeslide Okeke-Agulu, Chika, and Salah M. Hassan. “The Twenty-First Century and the Mega Shows: A Curators’ Roundtable.” Nka: Journal of Contemporary African Art 22/23 (Spring/Summer 2008): 152-188. Tawadros, Gilane, and Sarah Campbell, eds. Fault Lines. Contemporary African Art and Shifting Landscapes. Exhibition catalogue. London: Iniva, 2003. Wemega-Kwawu, Rikki. “THE POLITICS OF EXCLUSION. The Undue Fixation of Western-Based African Curators on Contemporary African Diaspora Artists.” Stedelijk Museum Bureau Amsterdam (SMBA), Project 1975, Newsletter 125 (2011): 10-23. Online: http://smba.nl/static/en/exhibitions/tala-madani-the-jinn/smba-newsletter-no.-125-.pdf |
| Language of instruction | English |
| Use of digital media | No specific media used |
| Interval | Weekday | Time | Room |
|---|
No dates available. Please contact the lecturer.
| Modules |
Modul Culture and Society (Master's degree program: African Studies (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Fields: Knowledge Production and Transfer (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul Fields: Media and Imagination (Master's degree program: African Studies) Modul Sachthematische Fragestellungen der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Sachthemen der Ethnologie (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) Modul Wissenschaftliche Vertiefung (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology (Start of studies before 01.08.2013)) Modul Wissenschaftliche Vertiefung in der Ethnologie: Sachthemen (Bachelor's degree subject: Anthropology) |
| Assessment format | continuous assessment |
| Assessment details | Every student is expected to register to one of the session and make a presentation of about 45 min., followed by a discussion of 30 to 45 min. Each presentation should be accompanied by visual material (readable images + precise captions are expected) that should be commented. In order to have lively discussions, it is mandatory that everybody reads the assigned readings (all available on ADAM). Students who want to write a seminar paper (which will add 3 CP) should also do a presentation of about 45 min., followed by a discussion of 30 to 45 min. It is expected that the presenters writing a seminar paper search for additional literature and develop a presentation that gives the other students an in-depth overview on that particular subject. Seminar papers should be circa 4 000 words long (12 pt., 1.5 line spacing) and be accompanied by visual material (readable images + precise captions are expected). Registration for seminar papers is open until November 15, 2016. They are due on January 17, 2017 for those who will need the credits this semester. All others may submit their papers until the beginning of the spring term, i.e. by February 1, 2017. All papers should be submitted as ‘.word’ or ‘.pdf’ files via e-mail to m.allainbonilla@unibas.ch. |
| Assessment registration/deregistration | Reg.: course registration; dereg.: not required |
| Repeat examination | no repeat examination |
| Scale | Pass / Fail |
| Repeated registration | as often as necessary |
| Responsible faculty | Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences, studadmin-philhist@unibas.ch |
| Offered by | Departement Gesellschaftswissenschaften |