Seminar EHESS 2018/2019

The arts in Africa and in diasporas: practices, knowledge, mobility - with Marc Johnson

Thursday, November 29 2018, at 07:30 pm

En ligne | Online - Dialogues Afriques #2
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Seminar organized by Christine Douxami, lecturer at the University of Besançon (IMAF), Sarah Fila-Bakabadio, lecturer at the University of Cergy-Pontoise (MONDA-CENA) and Dominique Malaquais, researcher at the CNRS (IMAF).
Carlo Celius, CNRS Research Officer (IMAF), Anne Doquet, IRD Research Officer (IMAF) and Éric Jolly, CNRS Research Officer (IMAF) are participating in the seminar.

 

 

Photography credits: Untitled (portrait of Bienvenu Nanga, Mega Mingiedi and Eléonore Hellio, Kinshasa 2013) © Sean Hart

"Futurologie des archives #1" 

 

This seminar proposes to reflect on the driving roles of artistic forms, practices and knowledge in the development and circulation of political structures, movements, ideologies and imaginations on the African continent and in its diasporas. Our work will focus on the visual and performing arts in the broadest sense of the term (dance, theatre, visual arts, photography, cinema, music, literature, digital arts...) and will be part of a critical and transdisciplinary approach. Anthropology, history, art history, political science, visual and material cultures, colonial, postcolonial, decolonial and diasporic studies of Africa... will rub shoulders and question each other. The sessions will be structured around presentations by researchers and/or practitioners - artists, cultural actors, activists. Diverse and reflecting a wide range of points of view, the work and approaches presented will have in common that working (on) the intersections between art and politics requires a commitment on the basis of which reflection and theorization are required.

 

Thematic of the 2018-2019 cycle: Future Africa 
Future or, better still, future. The future of cities, ecologies, gender constructions; the future of technology and science; violence - political, economic, social; hope; the very notions of the future... Thinking, saying, giving substance to these and other related futures from Africa: these are the tasks that plastic artists set themselves through their practices and thoughts.ne.s, filmmakers, performers and writers, philosophers and researchers, curators and cultural activists who will be participating in the seminar in 2018-2019. Committed, indocilious, even radical, the proposals they develop undermine apriori and doxas.

 

 

Marc Johnson is a director, visual artist and architect. He is a graduate of the École nationale supérieure des beaux-arts de Paris and the École nationale supérieure d'architecture Paris-Malaquais. He also studied at the China Academy of Art, Hangzhou, and Hunter College, New York. His work explores the haunted spaces of the Anthropocene, the post-human, multi-species sociability, the complexities of storytelling and speculative fabulation. Her practice focuses on various strategies, ranging from research to collaboration, field study, writing, teaching, film production, installation and photography. Too often, human beings are perceived as superior to other species, in a master-slave logic; in Johnson's case, this logic is by definition evacuated. This leads to the understanding of new relationships: in connection with innovative approaches to ecology, evolutionary concepts and science more generally, it leads to an approach to all living beings as equals and belonging to interdependent ecosystems.

Practical Information

Free admission, within the limits of seats.

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