Here’s another review of the conference, sent by a friend who agreed I could re-post:<\/p>\n
Rules of Engagement – a few notes from the eKapa Sessions<\/strong> <\/p>\n Cape Town 04 – 06 December 2005, Jose Ferreira<\/p>\n Having done some early research for eKapa I was excited about the prospect of attending the Sessions in Cape Town. I opted to be a Sessions diarist for three days but in the process decided to write a bit more than a daily account of what happed in the conference. I want to mention here that these notes are my personal views and do not represent anyone else, least of all eKapa as an organisation! Having said that I know I don’t stand alone in my views of what transpired. <\/p>\n I want to start this blog by mentioning how incredibly efficient and flawless our trip to Cape Town was, this I imagine was due to the fantastic organisation of eKapa. Courteous staff from an events management group facilitated our stay in the hotel, and generally everything outside of the conference went very smoothly! <\/p>\n Comforted by the high degree of attention we received at the hotel I settled in to registering and collecting my parcel of promotional goodies at the Cape Town International Convention Centre. It seemed there was much anticipation from everyone hanging around the lobby and Sunday morning brought with it a tangible air of expectation. For many, this was one of the few opportunities to meet other professionals since the last biennale. People I hadn’t seen for years were present as we prepared to enter the auditorium. <\/p>\n To me activities like the eKapa Sessions represent powerful vessels of potentiality, places where transformation and change can be moulded into form. The role of these sessions was to solicit interest in a major question. How do we re-contextualise art practice and our cultural institutions as meaningful ciphers for people in this country, especially after the erroneous structures created by apartheid? Simple but not easy! I’d like to focus on the general ethos of these discussions here and to pick up on issues that for me were at best fascinating, and at other times rather vexing. <\/p>\n Day 1<\/strong> <\/p>\n The first day opened with minister Pallo Jordan speaking about the endeavour of Arts and Culture to address the "hidden genius" of people in this country. His words echoed a sentiment that was present throughout the gathering, which is to re-locate art practice within a global, African context. Here he digressed into the many infrastructural pillars that are missing, and those that need transforming; he spoke about very significant things like effective outreach programs and education. It was the kind of mildly efficacious speech expected by ministers, but a pleasant one. <\/p>\n N’Gone Fall gave a very lyrical account of her work with Paris-based journal Revue Noire<\/a>, as a curator and the Dakar biennale<\/a>. She made some crucial points about post-independent Senegal. On speaking about re-framing art in Africa she mentioned the dangers inherent in "the euphoria of independence", which seemed to permeate every node of society during the sixties, and intimated that a critical period of decline can emerge, a period of economic regression that often eats away at cultural institutions; one of the first places where funds are cut in attempts to retard economic regression. <\/p>\n She also spoke about the attempts of institutions to categorise artists from Africa, a form of "ethnic pigeon-holing", and a way of selling culture in neatly defined packages predicated on very narrow identity stereotypes. It is the kind of stereotyping that over-shadows more significant debates by typecasting African identity. This reductionist tendency, which many western curators are equally responsible for, can also be seen as a tactic of avoidance. By proliferating stereotypical themes of identity, artworks are then discussed superficially and more significant debates around post-coloniality can become marginalised. It seems that framing contemporary art from Africa requires a new ideological construction, one that doesn’t rely on antiquated values inherited through colonialism. <\/p>\n This is a topic that was close to everyone attending, that somehow artists from ‘developing’ continents want to be represented within new systems, new cultural institutions, and ones that don’t reinforce stereotype, mimicry and fetishism of their work. It is an intensely political debate as the role of the museum too is essentially a western canon of representation, very lucidly argued by Sylvester Ogbechie, therefore any art project of significance must take into account a deep interrogation of the museum as a "pre-eminent signifier of western power". <\/p>\n The following speaker was one very familiar to South African audiences. As the initiator of the project Memorias, Intimas, Marcas<\/a> shown in Johannesburg in 1998, Fernando Alvim shared some of the information about the proceedings leading up to the Luanda Triennial, the pitfalls, and necessary political affiliations. Being an artist himself he had interesting contributions to make about curatorship and political affiliation. The most significant point was their attempts as a cultural organisation to fundraise completely independently of the government in order to maintain full authorship of the events. In his words, it was much more significant for them to instigate a "movement" rather than curate a biennial-style exhibition, which in a country like Angola, stands a high risk of alienating its viewers. Precisely the kind of topic we had convened to discuss I thought to myself. His talk was moving, as having researched and curated exhibitions in countries like Mozambique and Angola I’m only too aware of the complexities involved in the process. Infrastructure is almost non-existent and the barrage of red tape required to even move the gear around is enough to put off many. <\/p>\n There was a lot of invaluable and generous information in his presentation that could benefit eKapa as an organisation. It was slightly disappointing though to hear Alvim falling into a ‘pathos of tragedy’ while speaking and articulating the need for an art event in Luanda. I’m not for a minute denigrating the very real causalities associated with the effects of war in Angola. It’s just that at times it felt as though there was a lot ‘war speak’, appropriation of terminology that is predicated on tragedy in order to convey a message. I’m not so sure this was needed in a South African context where many understand the subtle intricacies of repression, war and social upheaval. He did make a very interesting point at the end of his talk about how South Africans still seem mired in racial debates, something which Angolans have long since transcended. <\/p>\n One of the main concerns of the eKapa Sessions as far as I could discern was to find a way, through discussion and dialogue, to curate art practice outside of the museum, making it accessible to audiences that have previously been deprived of such experiences. There was some very intriguing input about this specific type of practice from Donna Conwell, one of the curators of insite 05<\/a>. This was a project spurned from issues prevalent in the US\/Mexican border region of Tijuana and San Diego. What was most revealing in her talk was the way in which curatorial input and art practice fed off each other in their project. This ‘integrity’ of practice was facilitated by incredibly long periods of research by the artists and organisers, together. The commissioning of artists’ interventions was augmented by an extended process of dialogue, which encouraged the projects’ integration into the fabric of its immediate surroundings, in her words "mapping intricate exchange" and "negotiating public visibility". This methodology in a sense is about the concerted engagement between artists, curators and the organisers of the project. <\/p>\n There was a lot of talk about "informal networks", and the ability to integrate systems of art practice that may not be expected or established genres into the public domain. This term, borrowed from Fritjof Capra’s<\/a> book Hidden Connections is not new but perhaps its application to art practise and curatorship is. Perhaps by engaging with a place over time it is possible to initiate projects that are more meaningful to the cultures that have to digest them. Capra writes, "With the new information and communication technologies, social networks have become all-pervasive, both within and beyond organisations. For an organisation to be alive, however, the existence of social networks is not sufficient; they need to be networks of a special type. Living networks, as we have seen, are self-generating. Each communication creates thoughts and meaning, which give rise to further communications. In this way, the entire network generates itself, producing a common context of meaning, shared knowledge, rules of conduct, a boundary and a collective identity for its members." <\/p>\n This means that in validating social interactions that may previously have been deemed domestic or relegated to vocations outside of professional practice, there exists the potential to extract meaningful and significant associations. It means that informal meetings, gatherings, conversations in the street, and new spaces for engagement that may not initially seem as significant as business meetings and the like, are indeed very significant. It is in these frequently overlooked interactions that sustaining dialogue can take place between various people in a community. Thus by tapping into these social loci as a curatorial framework, there exists the possibility of allowing those that engage with the art a feeling of inclusion. It also seems to allow for an increased self-reflexivity and determination on behalf of the artists, as they become agent provocateurs of social change. A common criticism of contemporary art shows is that artists and cultural practitioners fly in and out of these contexts without actually grasping the complexity and dynamics of a particular environment and, more importantly, this attitude is reflected in their work. The approach Conwell was presenting attempts to immerse the artists for a longer period in the immediate environment of the project, and so encourages a much broader interpretation of place. <\/p>\n