COSMOCIDES: ART(S), VIOLENCE, 21st CENTURY
Wednesday April 18th at 7pm COSMOCIDES: ART(S), VIOLENCE, 21st CENTURY A conversation between the artist Emeka Okereke, Dominique Malaquais and Lionel Manga. Kadist office The conversation at Kadist will start with a talk by Emeka Okereke, who will address different types of violence – “passive”, “daily”, “institutional” – in relation with his personal work, undertaken between Lagos, Amsterdam, Berlin and Paris, and with the collective Invisibles Borders project, of which he is the founder and director. For this evening, the seminar “Something You Should Know : Artists and Producers Today”, directed by Patricia Falguières, Elisabeth Lebovici and Natasa Petresin-Bachelez, will be delocalizing to Kadist, in the context of a series of presentations proposed by Dominique Malaquais and Lionel Manga, titled “Cosmocides: Art(s), Violence, 21 st Century”. “In the face of silence, of mediocracy and brutality, we must set afoot something big enough that the wretched can trade it against the terrible memory of loss they bear – something that, at the same time, will wash the well-heeled of the sad conviction that they have won – for in the war that today opposes thought, reason and intelligence to the mediocratic world we inhabit, there will be but one victor: cosmocide.” (Sony Labou Tansi, Encre, sueur, salive et sang, Paris: Seuil, 2015, pp.113-114) In 1973, Congolese writer Sony Labou Tansi invented a neologism: “cosmocide.” The term was intended as an onslaught. It aimed to take to task the violence inflicted by the savagery of capitalism on bodies, spirits and landscapes, to do battle against colonialism and neocolonialism, against blood-soaked states, juntas and police forces of all kinds, against the foreclosure of democracies and futures worldwide. The act of putting such violence into words, for Sony was a means of beating it into retreat. To write was to set off a bomb, not so much to destroy, responding to disaster with further disaster, but to wipe the slate clean, doing away with “ugliness” to create spaces wherein one might breathe and imagine new possibilities. Naming horror in hopes of giving rise to its obverse: such was his goal and so shall we attempt to do here. Our guides will be creators who, like Sony, seek to flush out – and in the process to do in – violence. Anthropocene or, yet again, capitalocene; eco- and urbicide; apartheid regimes; deserts and seas turned refugee graveyards; coltan, dioxin and other disruptors – of communities, dreams, endocrine systems; camps and jails… Architects and urbanists, historians, performers, visual artists, choreographers: these are their foci. Highly diverse, their work and approaches share one, distinct characteristic: all are exercises in breathing out of school. Emeka Okereke is a Nigerian visual artist and writer who lives and works between Lagos and Berlin, moving from one to the other on a frequent basis. He came in contact with photography in 2001. He was a member of the renowned Nigerian photography collective Depth of Field (DOF). He has a Bachelors/Masters degree from the National Fine Art School of Paris. Okereke’s works oscillate between diverse mediums. He employs mainly photography, the time-based medium of video, poetry and performative interventions in the exploration of the central theme of borders. Another aspect of his practice lies in project organising and lecturing: coordinating artistic interventions which promote exchanges cutting across indigenous and international platforms. He is the Founder and Artistic Director of Invisible Borders: The Trans-African Project . Dominique Malaquais is an art historian and political scientist. Her work centers on intersections between political violence, economic inequity and the elaboration of urban cultures in the age of late capitalism. She has taught extensively in the United (Columbia, Princeton, Sarah Lawrence) and is today a senior researcher at CNRS (Institut des mondes africains). With Kadiatou Diallo, she co-directs SPARCK (Space for Pan-African Research, Creation and Knowledge), an experimental curatorial platform. Recent and ongoing projects include: reflections on exchanges between Africa and Asia as seen through the visual arts, literature, urbanism and spirituality ( Afrique-Asie: arts, espaces, pratiques , co-edited with Nicole Khouri in 2016); Archive (re)mix: vues d’Afrique (2015, co-edited with Maëline Le Lay and Nadine Siegert), a volume of essays on the trajectories of artists, writers and musicians whose practices explore intersections between art(s) and archive(s); exhibitions ( Dakar 66 , at Musée du quai Branly in 2016; Kinshasa: chroniques urbaines , Cité de l’architecture et du patrimoine, 2019); Yif menga (2018-2019), a collective research initiative on performance art as political proposition. Lionel Manga is the author of L’Ivresse du papillon (2008), the first study published on the contemporary arts scene in Cameroon. Following a brief period of study at the Sorbonne, forty years ago, he was whisked out of France by a family conspiracy. Back home, he became widely known as the brains behind African Logik in Yaounde (1992-1998); in this capacity, he brought the local Hip Hop scene to the forefront of national attention. His radio chronicle, Klorofil (1992-1996), opened the eyes of tens of thousands of his compatriots to the global ecological crisis. An insatiable observer of History who staunchly refuses to be coopted or categorized, he has published extensively – notably in Tombeau pour Aimé Césaire , edited by Daniel Delas in 2007, and in numerous journals ( Mouvements ; Riveneuve continents , Local contemporain , Chimurenga ). An adept of all things improbable who is deeply inspired by the writings of Michel Serres, he was invited to speak at Musée du quai Branly during celebrations honoring fifty years of African independence and opened the second edition of Ateliers de la pensée, hosted by Achille Mbembe and Felwine Sarr in Dakar in November 2017. Detailed program of the seminar : http://sysk-ehess.tumblr.com