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Reaching Sideways, Writing Our Ways

2017; UCLA James S. Coleman African Studies Center; Volume: 50; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1162/afar_a_00341

1937-2108

Ruth Simbao, William B. Miko, Eyitayo Tolulope Ijisakin, Romuald Tchibozo, Masimba Hwati, Kristin NG-Yang, Patrick Mudekereza, Aidah Nalubowa, Genevieve Hyacinthe, Lee-Roy Jason, Eman Abdou, Rehema Chachage, Amanda Tumusiime, S.-C. de Sousa, Fadzai Muchemwa,

Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies

Ruth Simbao: In Rehema Chachage's video installation, Kwa Baba Rithi Undugu (2010), sculptural objects representing old-fashioned transistor radios are mounted on the wall, side by side (Fig. 1). Embedded in each radio is a small video screen, which reveals a figure who stands in one place while the vertical line of the radio tuner crosses her body in search of the desired frequency (Figs. 2–3). A man's voice wafts in and out as it is periodically interrupted by unsolicited noise, revealing the difficulty of relating to others when sound is interrupted or there is an absence of voice. Voice, writes Chachage, is a “prerequisite for interlocution and the construction of discourse.”2 This work engages with the assertion that to “live means to participate in dialogue: to ask questions, to heed, to respond, to agree …” and to do so full heartedly with your “eyes, lips, hands, soul, spirit … whole body and deeds” (Bakhtin 1984:293).3Rehema Chachage, a Dar es Salaam-based artist who works with video, installation, and performance, explains that her work is predominantly determined by her situatedness. Her early work draws from her time spent as a student at the University of Cape Town in South Africa and she describes experiencing this situation as a “‘cultural foreigner’ and a non-South African, black female student in a predominantly white middle class … institution.” At this time, she says, her work was produced from “the point of view of a stranger, the outsider, the other, alien and often voiceless.”4Chachage's concern with dialogue and voice in Kwa Baba Rithi Undungu serves as an effective inroad into a multivocal conversation in the context of a scholarly journal, for “Without dialogue there is no communication, and without communication there can be no true education” (Freire 2005:92–93). Dialogue, writes Paolo Freire (2005:88–91), is about horizontal relationships; it is an existential necessity and an act of creation rather than an instrument of domination of one person over another. When one listens to a radio, voices can be tuned out selectively. Opinions exist as waves out there, but statements can be blocked with the turn of a dial. At times there is a crackle—a disruption of signal or an interference caused by the receiver. If one were to hold an old transmitter radio, one could attempt to receive better sound if one moved around, changing one's orientation.This multivocal dialogue reaches sideways as it opens up the dominant international discourse5 of the arts of Africa to include a higher percentage of voices from the African continent. (Participating writers are based in Zambia, Nigeria, Benin, Zimbabwe, South Africa, the Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, the US, Egypt, Tanzania, and Angola/Portugal.) This sideways reach registers the importance of intracontinental conversations in Africa that are sometimes missing from internationally visible scholarship on the arts of Africa, and it asks how scholars in the global South and the global North6 can benefit from a reconsideration of what the predominant orientation of our scholarly discourse is.A common understanding of the word “orientation” is one's position relative to, for example, the points of the compass, and its meaning in the nineteenth century was the “arrangement of a building etc. to face east or another specific direction.”7 The etymology of “orientation” links the word historically to the notion of facing East (hence the label of “the Orient” for “places in the East”), implying a particular position from which one views the world and thereby develops a certain standpoint. This dialogue attempts to encourage an understanding of orientation that situates speaking positions and gives credence to the physical positioning of knowing subjects, whilst also expanding beyond physical coordinates, seeking richer understandings of the orientation of our research.What is the orientation of the international discourse of the arts of Africa in the twenty-first century and what position do we see this discourse in relation to? In what ways might it matter that the vast majority of authors in journals such as African Arts and NKA: Journal of Contemporary African Art are based in the North? (See “Situating Africa: A Geopolitics of Knowledge, or Chapungu Rises” in this issue). In his thought-piece “What Is an African Curriculum?” Harry Garuba (2015) discusses the activism of James Ngũgĩ (now Ngũgĩ wa Thiong'o), Henry Owuor-Anyumba, and Taban Lo Liyong at the University of Nairobi who fought for the decolonization of the curriculum in the 1960s. Garuba (2015) argues that it was “place, perspective, and orientation” that needed to be addressed in order to position “Kenya, East Africa, and Africa” at the center of knowledge-production in newly independent Kenya. In this current moment of revived activism in Africa regarding the “politics of knowing” (Ngũgĩ 2012), what can we learn about historical calls for reorientation? Are there ways that we can hear contributions of other scholars more effectively if we adjust our orientation? Can we reduce the crackle that sometimes surfaces in the discourse if we shift our respective positions?This dialogue places an emphasis on the voices of scholars, artists, and curators based on the African continent, as it marks the start of an Africa-based editorial consortium partnership with African Arts.8 The dialogue is neither definitive, nor complete. Instead, it is a departure point that invites further conversation from people who, together, desire to learn more than we now know about our field of research and our respective roles in generating new knowledge. What is our view on the strength of the current scholarship on the visual and performing arts, and from what standpoint have we developed this view? How can we discuss various orientations and in doing so work towards generating scholarly knowledge and artistic practice that is more rigorous and diverse, and is relevant to different locally embedded and interconnected contexts?William B. Miko: Africa is like an absent landlord in most dialogues and discourses relating to her own arts. This African Arts discussion aims to turn a new page on scholarship and knowledge-generation, which has largely been produced and propagated by and with an “outsider's” point of view. Usually, when an opportunity for an African scholar arises to study the arts of the continent, the curriculum that is used remains foreign, thereby shrouding scholarship and keeping the knowledge of Africans in obscurity. How can an African scholar living and working on the continent today still ascribe to and perpetuate this status quo? (By “African” I mean every scholar living on the African continent or in the African diaspora, without engaging in dichotomies of skin color, creed, or ethnicity). The question is: Who needs to shift the production of knowledge about Africa and what are the engines and spaces of production of this knowledge? As I discuss further below, it is critical for Africans to be at the forefront of this shift.Eyitayo Tolulope Ijisakin: While one cannot but give credence to some Africanists and non-African writers who have played a role in laying the foundation for scholarship in the visual and performing arts of Africa as an internationally recognized field of research, it is critical to acknowledge that the West still largely dictates the rhythm of art scholarship in postcolonial Africa. Many critics and art historians (including some African scholars residing in the West) continue to apply predominantly Western considerations to the analysis of “contemporary African art.” Furthermore, a number of African artists who are celebrated in the West are not particularly popular or well-known in their own countries in Africa. Their works are seen as visual representations of African thought, but in some ways this gives an inaccurate impression of African intelligence and artistic dexterity.In rethinking the ways in which Africa is positioned in relation to the arts and beyond, I strongly suggest the use of the philosophies of African people in the critical discourse and analysis of their arts. African subject matter and cultural symbols that are deeply meaningful to an expression of African identity should be engaged with more often, and in my view it is only the person who is deeply immersed in a particular culture that is well-placed to advance the purpose of that research.At this point, we have not seen the emergence of sufficient momentum and quality of scholarship that could meaningfully challenge and positively shift this Western dominance. This is partly due to the challenges scholars on the continent face in terms of publishing, such as inadequate financial support and limited publishing outlets. Locally produced publications that meet international standards and benefit from the visibility of wide geographic distribution are rare. That said, scholarship and artistic practice that is rigorous, diverse, and meaningful, I think, can be generated by African scholars.Romuald Tchibozo (translated by Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi): I don't think that much has fundamentally changed in recent years regarding Africa's positioning in the world. Our fellow researchers in Africa haven't progressed sufficiently, and researchers based in the South continue to be viewed as appendices to research programs developed elsewhere. Research projects are often formulated without consultation, and without cooperative agreements regarding the mutual interests of both parties. The result is that other people write and think on our behalf. In my opinion, there is only one thing to do: we need to create research funds on the continent and facilitate work exchanges between Southern-based researchers in order to formulate new concepts. This has the potential to meaningfully change the gaze of other scholars and to shift the global positioning of African researchers and artists.We need to develop a better overview of the various platforms that grant scholarships in Africa, and it is important to share knowledge about funding that is specifically for writers and practitioners who are based on the African continent. This would play a significant role in challenging the perception that one needs to be located outside of Africa in order to be recognized. Scholarship-holders and other scholars could develop broad research themes every three years, and by identifying active researchers we could collaborate more and move beyond hierarchical differentiations between African researchers who are from different African contexts and who speak different languages. We could also develop a professional association of international standing in Africa that is able to defend theoretical and conceptual choices regarding the study of the arts in Africa.William B. Miko: Returning to my earlier point about Africans being at the forefront of shifts in knowledge production, I provide a relevant example from my own context in Zambia. Zambia gained independence over fifty years ago, but until 2010 there was not a single university that offered a Fine Arts degree. The Zambian Open University (ZAOU), which was founded in 2005, created the first university-level arts degree at the School of Media, Performing, and Fine Arts. With tenacity in the face of much doubt, I played a key role in establishing this Open Distance Learning (ODL) art school. Many argued that art cannot be taught in an ODL system, but in my view this perpetuates established colonial notions of education designed to prevent the “other” from excelling.Colonization has its own fair share of mental constrictions in the formerly colonized person's mind. What is from the West is often perceived as good even if it was initially taken from Africa, repackaged in the West, and brought back to the continent. Unfortunately some contemporary artists hold this viewpoint and think that it is more prestigious to study abroad, and they have little knowledge of their own national art history.Students at the ZAOU art school learn through a combination of contact periods and distance learning, and we bring together formal university education and engagement with the non-formal sector and practicing artists. During contact periods we visit local art collections and art platforms, such as Chaminuka Lodge, the Lusaka National Museum, Namwandwe Gallery, Lechwe Trust, Henry Tayali Centre, and Twaya Art Gallery. We also visit many artists’ studios and community-based art initiatives. The academic progression observed in students has been amazing—one has to see this modus operandi in motion to believe in its success in a developing nation with limited resources. My philosophy is, “It can only be done for you if you do it yourself; the rest will join in on the way.”The first cohort of students graduated in September 2014, and to mark this momentous event I produced a public performance with my students at the graduation ceremony in Lusaka. I purchased a new white Pier Luigi suit, and during the ceremony the graduating students transformed the suit into a “human canvas” with paints and brushes hidden in their graduation gowns (Fig. 4). Dancing to traditional music performed by the theater and drama students, they signed their names on the suit, registering their role in creating a new space in the production of academic knowledge in the arts. Some of these undergraduates are currently pursuing their Master's degrees, and together we are asserting ourselves by generating scholarship, knowledge, and artistic practice that is rigorous and relevant—first to ourselves in Zambia and secondly to the rest of the world.Ruth Simbao: At this critical time of ongoing and revived calls on the African continent for decoloniality, it is evident that not enough has changed in terms of the way the world imagines, views, frames, and consumes Africa, subsuming the complexitites of its numerous contexts. How can we continue to rethink the ways in which Africa is positioned in relation to the broader artworld? To what degree do external forces continue to shape artworks, artists, and theories, and what alternative forces already exist? Whose agency is exerted and recognized? As Masimba Hwati asks: Who pushes the wheelbarrow?Masimba Hwati: The way that Africa and its contexts continue to be imagined and seen by other groups of people is problematic, because commercial motives tend to lie at the heart of political and cultural engineering of representations of Africa. Due to ongoing perceptions of Africa as a dangerous and poor place, artists from Africa are burdened with the political pressure to appease the ill-informed appetites of collectors and curators. Being an African artist or an artist from an African context is often a negotiation of history itself and a constant navigation of the various images associated with the word “Africa.” In my engagement with different Occidental cultural platforms, I find that sometimes people view my artwork through distorted lenses. At times this challenge can transform into positive processes of dialogue that can become an extension of the work.Unfortunately, there remains a persistent preconceptualization of art from Africa as “tribal,” “ritualistic,” and “functional.” This does not mean that Occidental authors have not played a positive role in negotiating the image of Africa as a cultural space. There are quite a number of credible critical reviews on art from Africa by various writers who are not from Africa and who succeed in countering erroneous images. However, the onus also rests on writers on the African continent to challenge certain bodies of knowledge created about Africa, and it is critical that this is not just done in a reactive way, but in proactive ways such as creating more critical platforms that are not insular in nature but are inclusive of multiple audiences.This raises important questions around the definitions and parameters of curatorship as an institution and its potential to reform or to perpetuate the problematic images of the African continent, which has become a cultural albatross. This question becomes critical as we explore the sources of funding that are available for some of the major curatorial projects on the continent. Most funding from former colonial masters’ countries creates a fundamentally problematic situation for the arts on the continent in terms of agency and dependency, hence the need for more African-funded curatorial projects on the continent. Many foreign policies treat the African continent as an entity that moves only by external pressure.In my artwork I use the wheelbarrow to symbolize a lack of agency, as it is an inert apparatus that requires external force to move it. The wheelbarrow appears in the form of a wheelbarrow-table in the installation Don't Worry, Be Happy exhibited in “Consuming Us” at the 2016 Cape Town Art Fair [see p. 7, Fig. 10 in this issue]. It also appears in the installation “Rinamanyanga Hariputirwe” exhibited at SMAC Gallery (Fig. 5). The title of this recent work refers to a Karanga proverb that can be loosely translated as “that which has horns cannot be wrapped,” alluding to the idea that the truth will always come out or that nature will always mete out vengeance and eventually provide a balance.Through the hybridity of form and symbolism, such as the wheelbarrow-table or the wheelbarrow-boxing bag, I explore the absurdity of definition and containment. The boxing bag is an object designed to be punched or pummeled. It's an object of appropriation and fantasy; an object of training and experimentation. Meanwhile the wheelbarrow is a symbol of raw labor, a classic example of inertia.In the work Rinamanyanga Hariputirwe, I explore the Zimbabwean sociocultural context, whilst making a broader connection to the African context.11 The work explores events of August 2016 when Zimbabwe started experiencing mass citizen protests against an oppressive government system. We witnessed a group of people questioning definitions imposed upon them and resisting a narrow mold formerly used to characterize them. In my work these developments are explored using various objects built around the boxing bag as if to defend the bags, and the horns allude to a nascent aggression built up in a group of people.Ruth Simbao: I am currently grappling with the ideas of learning sideways and reaching sideways to develop two approaches in my own work as a scholar and a teacher: 1) South-South12 and intracontinental scholarly engagement that does not always look “upwards” to the theories, methodologies, and institutions of Europe and North America13 and 2) nonhierarchical—or at least less-hierarchical—ways of learning in educational and other contexts that emphasize reciprocal, horizontal learning (Simbao 2015b). In what ways are the concepts of learning sideways or reaching sideways articulated in the visual and performing arts, and how might they be further implemented in our various contexts of scholarship, education and art production? How could a sideways reach change the orientation of the dominant discourse of the arts of Africa that in many ways continues to emphasize an “upwards” reach?Kristin NG-Yang: My work is situated in the global South and engages with South-South collaboration. It is, in part, autobiographical in that it references my own predicament as a Chinese/African artist/mother/father. My identity is tempered, as different philosophical, cultural, and gendered dimensions both challenge and shape me. Reflecting the complexity of working in this position, I recently produced an installation titled Bird/Fish14 (Fig. 6), which draws from a Chinese song in which a bird falls in love with a fish. Alluding to the ephemeral and the impossible, dancers interact with the shadows of suspended fish/birds that are painted onto plexiglass.The installation encourages viewers to meditate on issues of time and continuity, presence and absence, as well as sameness and difference. It also alludes to ambiguity: One is confronted with choice but is also subject to fate, obliged to accept or resist, in the process of learning about self and other. Through the use of live performance and music, the installation references African, Chinese, and Western cultural idioms in a collision and fusion that is both strange and yet familiar. I commissioned musician Jianjun Wang to compose a special piece for Bird/Fish, using the traditional Chinese musical instrument the guzheng and the African djembe drum. These musical instruments from different regions combine in a way that conveys a sense of otherworldliness—a sound meditation that shifts between the realms and vibrations of both birds and fish.Patrick Mudekereza (translated by Jean-Sylvain Tshilumba Mukendi): In my context in the Democratic Republic of the Congo, this logic of knowledge sharing is evident in artists’ collectives in a much more relevant way than in formal arts institutions. In particular, I have experienced this in the case of the Vicanos Club in the late 1990s and early 2000s in Lubumbashi. Reflecting on our various experiences over time, it seems evident that our challenges differ when we focus locally on Lubumbashi and when we try to have a regional or international impact. In the Vicanos Club, we didn't bother much about what was happening elsewhere and we focused very locally, renaming things in a language that fluidly mixed Swahili, French, and English. Today, the practice of Waza, Centre d'art de Lubumbashi15 (Figs. 7–8) is part of the flow of information shared worldwide. This openness should not temper our enthusiasm to name our reality in our own way. Instead of using the international art world's language, we need to choose voices that reflect what we have to say, and we can then dare to expand the references used in the field. This is a big challenge, because even when interactions are broader and more fluid, the prisms and frameworks tend to remain unchanged and the same ambitious explorers are visible and present themselves to us as intermediaries. For this reason, we choose very carefully the collaborations we get involved in.Waza has integrated two networks that are worth mentioning in relation to the concept of sideways learning—Arts Collaboratory and the Africa Cluster of Another Roadmap School.16 Arts Collaboratory is a community of artistic organizations from Africa, Latin America, and Asia. The project Arts Schoolaboratory, which forms part of this network, redefines our responsibilities and develops a framework for content and methodologies based on an alternative artistic education that focuses on “learnagogy” instead of pedagogy. The Africa Cluster of Another Roadmap is a research project that sets up relevant educational tools in our own African contexts, breaking with “missionary stances” in the teaching of art that were inherited from colonization.Aidah Nalubowa: Education has different meanings for different people. In Uganda, our education continues to conform to the legacy of colonial education and as such remains a largely Western concept. If a student simply attends an institution that has a curriculum, takes exams or tests, and receives a diploma, certificate, or degree, she or he is considered to be educated. But what about a kind of education that is different—more creative and engaging? This could be, for example, something as simple as learners and the instructor sitting in a circle facing each other or the use of creative games to generate a sense of equality and active participation rather than passive agreement and conformity. Forms of sideways learning are not common in education in Uganda.As a member of the Artivists 4 Life collective in Uganda, I seek to bring creativity to scholarship and scholarship to art. Artivists 4 Life is a community of practice in Uganda that fuses artistic processes with social activism to respond to the conditions that plague our everyday modern existence, which still reflects a colonial framework. The collective was founded by a group of young artists including photographers, graphic designers, dancers, actors, painters, cartoonists, graffiti artists, and arts lovers, who have a deep desire for social change. After a series of informal meetings and brainstorming sessions that began in a small studio at Makerere University in March 2011, the group developed the name—Artivists 4 Life (from the concept of “Art + Action”)—as well as a logo (Fig. 9), a slogan, a set of core objectives, and a manifesto.The collective uses various art forms to identify problems, find solutions, and communicate particular messages. The messages are tested in the community and later presented in the form of drama skits, dances, murals, and billboards. Members of the collective, which is a registered community-based organization in Mukono District in Uganda, are based in Kampala and Kayunga Districts, as well as in Canada.17 Made up of members of varying education levels, the group embraces the approach “each one teach one,” which links to sideways learning as everyone shares knowledge and learns from one another. Group members have no permanent roles, and duties and responsibilities are distributed according to interest, availability, skills, and need at particular times.Critical to our methodology is Freire's (2005:72) notion of moving away from the “banking system” that simply “deposits” knowledge. In Freire's understanding of pedagogy, the teacher's role ceases to be that of the knower and the giver of knowledge, and the learner participates in the process of creating, analyzing, and sharing knowledge. As such, indigenous creative methods can be used to own and repurpose knowledge, creating inclusive decolonial spaces.Genevieve Hyacinthe: I was educated as an art historian and also trained as a West African ritual dancer for sixteen years, and a colleague once told me I use dance as art historical social practice. I like this descriptor; if sideways learning is about challenging hierarchies, then we art historians might consider stepping out of our comfort zones of clean, critical distance, where our words can sometimes rain (reign) down upon the artists, artworks, and contexts that we include in the discourses that we construct.One of my recent collaborative performances, entitled The West African Dance Experience (Performance and Discussion with the Students of West African Dance: History, Theory, Practice), took place in November 2016 in the Neuberger Museum at Purchase College, State University of New York, where I taught for a number of years. Here, and in many of my courses, I endeavored to collaborate with my students by breathing life into Robert Farris Thompson's (1974) now canonical text, “African Art in Motion: Icon and Act.” In this class, after reading and discussing key scholarly ideas with my students, I moved out from behind the podium and into the studio with them to share dance choreographies from djembe styles born in Senegal, Guinea, and Mali. The students were in turn encouraged to add their own contemporary moves.As I played the drums for The West African Dance Experience performance, I saw elements of the Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, and Fees Must Fall movements being transcribed in the bodies of the student dancers, who were still recovering their breath from the recent US election failure. In the first photographic image of this series (Fig. 10), the viewer sees the back of a black male dancer who moves his hands up into the “hands up, don't shoot” position, translating through his body a catch-phrase of our era. In that photograph, however, the male student is covered, protected. His breath won't be taken, for his sisters dance in front of him, their hands fully raised, in the spirit of black preservation as women's work. In the second image (Fig. 11), two young men are protected by the Sounou dance of femininity that I taught the students of various gender expressions, cultural, and ethnic backgrounds, who come together in collective breath; in collective protest and art-making. None are alone; all of our hands are raised. The gestures of “hands up don't shoot” become the waving hands of testament, and these hands then turn into raised fists of solidarity (Fig. 12).Ruth Simbao: In recent years, critically important movements and forms of protest and activism, including Arab Spring, Black Lives Matter, Rhodes Must Fall, and Fees Must Fall have challenged oppressive regimes, ongoing racism, police brutality, outmoded institutions, and increasing income disparity. In what ways have, could, or should such pressing events shape our production of scholarly and artistic knowledge? How do these movements and protests, as well as the situations of injustice that drive them, shape our writing, teaching, creative processes, and activism? How might we choose to engage with pressing social justice concerns as scholars and artists in Africa and the African diaspora without, as Basim Magdy (2003) writes, being stereotyped and limited to our respective local sociopolitical contexts and thus consumed as artists and writers in a narrow way?18Lee-Roy Jason: In October 2016 I chose to photograph the Fees Must Fall movement during a fresh spate of protests, as students in South Africa continued to demand free and decolonized tertiary education. Through my photographic work I responded to what I saw in newspapers and on television, and what I heard about the demonstrators over the radio and online. It concerned me that the “Fallists” were simply being labeled as the problem in the mainstream media and by those in power at academic institutions and in government. Regularly they were referred to as disorganized hooligans who were simply in defiance of writing exams.I wanted to be part of those who were documenting other versions of this story.I went to Witwatersrand University in Johannesburg every day for two week