EVENT
CONDITION REPORT

UKS participates in Condition Report, a 3-day international symposium on building art institutions in Africa organised by Raw Material Company in cooperation with the Goethe Institut and German Federal Cultural Foundation. The symposium takes place in Dakar, Senegal, from 18-20 January 2012.

According to the organisers, ‘Condition Report aims to address the changing role of art institutions and initiatives in relation to the broader artistic urgencies, and in relation to the society in its whole. The symposium is organised to evaluate a founding principle of many independent organisations that have emerged in recent years – namely that independent contemporary art institutions are an important voice in the construction of a strong cultural private sector as well as in forging a critical opinion from an open civil society. The importance of issues of action, space, power, control and quality will be covered. The sessions will also provide a platform for discussing case studies and experiences accompanied by an informed interpretative analysis’.

The symposium is divided into three leading chapters broken down into multiple sessions. In an effort to contextualise the African art scene and facilitate access and exchange to international participants, site visits to local art institutions are an integral part of the programme.

The first chapter, Actors, Agents and Mainstream, ‘looks at existing institutions and how they work to build a shared understanding of artistic agency’. The second chapter, Remains of the Days, ‘discusses how former colonial powers define and implement their strategies of cultural representation and exchange in post-colonial areas’.

The Norwegian delegation will participate in the third chapter titled Area Studies, which ‘investigates models and profiles of art institutions developed in other regions of the world with similar historical and contemporary settings’. The session scheduled on Friday, 20 January, titled Case Study: Norway, will elaborate upon a grass roots impulse that is assuming the scene of contemporary art and how it relates to international exchange.

Other international participants in the symposium include Abdellah Karroum (Appartement 22, Rabat, Morocco); Yto Barrada (Cinémathèque de Tanger, Tanger, Morocco); Oyinda Fakeye (Center of Contemporary Art Lagos, Lagos, Nigeria); Juan Gaitan (Witte de With, Rotterdam, the Netherlands); Livia Paldi (Baltic Art Centre, Visby, Gotland county, Sweden); Kerstin Pinther (Free University, Berlin, Germany); Dirk Snauwaert (Wiels Contemporary Art Centre, Brussels, Belgium); Ousseynou Wade (Dakar Biennale, Dakar, Senegal) and Marie-Cécile Zinsou (Fondation Zinsou, Cotonou, Benin), among others.