CAPE announces SESSIONS eKAPA 2005
After a two-year process of unfolding dialogue and development, Cape Africa Platform launches its first cycle, CAPE 2005/ 2006, with 'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005', an international art forum and workshop.
In keeping with CAPE�s key objective - to develop platforms and networks for contemporary African cultural practices - 'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005' brings together leading artists, cultural practitioners, curators, researchers, critics and historians of contemporary African art and the diaspora at the Cape Town International Convention Centre, Cape Town, South Africa from December 4 - 6, 2005.
With its theme being 'Mzantsi: (re)locating contemporary African art practice', the forum explores the location and production of contemporary cultural practices in Africa, and the interface between local art practice and global art circuits: what is lost and found in translation. Speakers and panel discussions will therefore address such issues as the framing of Africa in contemporary exhibitions and cultures of display; globalism, locality and new models of large scale curation; art practice and activism; and the development of African forums for multidisciplinarity, transnational networking and emerging voices.
'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005' also features an experiential engagement with the city itself in the form of several independently convened minilaboratories. The minilaboratories use site-specific and route-specific discussions, performances, activities and interventions to provoke conversations about urban texture, locality, and the nature and location of contemporary African art practice. 'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005' co-ordinator Julian Jonker says of the minilaboratories, 'Our goal is to draw on Cape Town�s unique urban fabric - both public space and the city's hidden topographies - as a laboratory as well as a catalyst for contemporary African art practice and cultural interventions.'
The programme is also aimed directly at developing future possibilities for action. The objective is a pragamatic one: how can the conversations that have taken place during 'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005' enrich the debates around contemporary art in Africa? How can what has been learnt inform the development of a major art manifestation to be held in 2006 in Cape Town?
The timing of the meeting is also crucial: it follows a series of major international exhibitions and conferences that focus on and speak for African art production, and it precedes CAPE's first major art manifestation of art works, practices and interventions set to take place in Cape Town in 2006. As such, SESSIONS eKAPA 2005 asks: where we have come from, what moment we are in and � in the words of poet Christopher Okigbo � 'How we shall go?'
'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005' therefore offers not only a vital and urgent African forum for thought and discussion about art practice on the continent, but also offers the opportunity to be part of the development of exciting new models for art practice and large scale manifestation.
Speakers already confirmed include Senegalese-born, Paris-based curator and art publisher N'Gonée Fall; Cameroonian-born journalist, DJ, cultural activist and editor Ntone Edjabe; africanhiphop.com's Thomas Gesthuizen and Cuban-born curator Osvaldo Sanchez, who is the current artistic director of 'inSite_05', a contemporary art programme that maps the liminal border zone of San Diego-Tijuan.
This innovative three day programme of discussions, workshops and interventions that have been formulated by a task team drawn from Cape Town's diverse cultural worlds. Task team members include Emma Bedford, Julian Jonker, Mirjam Asmal- Dijk, Mokena Makeka, Mustafa Maluka, Ntone Edjabe, Susan Glanville-Zini and Zayd Minty. The programme has also been developed through consultation with a number of artists and thinkers from the Southern African region.
CAPE is also calling for an Art Director or Art Directors' Team for its 2006 Manifestation, to be held in Cape Town in September 2006. Proposals are due on October 22, 2005.
For Calls For Proposals, programme updates, and to register for 'SESSIONS eKAPA 2005', visit the CAPE website at www.capeafrica.org
