TiME TO PRETEND Constructions of Heritage Memory and Belonging

Exhibition of Performance, Video Works & Photography 

9. – 22. of November 2013

Within the scope of AFiRIperFOMA Performance Biennial 2013

supported by Goethe-Institut

Artists:

WURA-NATASHA OGUNJI (Nigeria / USA)

DENNIS FESER (Germany)

KEMANG WA LEHULERE (South Africa)

MARCIO CARVALHO (Portugal / Germany)

MUDI YAHAYA (Nigeria)

CHRISS AGHANA NWUDO (Nigeria)

JEANNETTE EHLERS (Denmark)

Curated by

Oyinda Fakeye, Martin Baasch & Jude Anowigh

On invitation of AFiRIperFOMA Performance Biennial 2013 the exhibition TiME TO PRETEND is focusing on the various links between performance art, memory, heritage and media.

TiME TO PRETEND assembles different ways to trigger traces of the past and transform them into contemporary narratives. The exhibition presents seven positions of performance art, body based photography and video works to complement the live program of the Biennale. The shown artists use performative practices to raise questions of cultural heritage and belonging, identity and social determination. In various ways they refer to memories and traditions of an (imaginary) past, re-discovering, re-enacting or re-writing it. The selected works shift from “straight into the face” statements to fragile positions, from rough documentary shots to carefully composed tableaux vivants.

Lights Camera Africa 2013 Film Festival

The Life House, Lagos proudly presents the 3rd Lights, Camera, Africa!!! Film Festival together with the African Film Festival, New York and Nadia Denton©, London.



This year the Lights, Camera, Africa!!! Film Festival is scheduled to hold again over the Independence Day holidays from Saturday, 28 September to Tuesday, 1 October 2013 with the theme, ‘Great Migrations’.



In the ever- shrinking ‘global village’ migration remains as strong a current as it always was. However, the age of technology has made it faster, more urgent and presented itself to us in more forms than one. We transfer thoughts, ideas, information, data, emotions and people more swiftly than ever before. The outcome is a changing worldscape. Ideas that were once innovative and implausible are now accepted and established. These great migrations, mirror our constant journey through life and all its facets and can be recounted loudly with time and physical distance, or subtly with personal growth and cultural evolution.



Lights, Camera, Africa!!! 2013 will feature a diverse range of African cinema and this year will include novel genres. Inspired by the theme ‘Great Migrations’ our 2013 film festival will explore the various aspects of migration and movement of African people, culture, art and existentiality. 



The Lights, Camera, Africa!!! 2013 Film Festival will highlight and explore the migrations and movement of people to and from Africa; the social dynamics that Africa has witnessed in post colonial years; the dynamic evolution of the continent’s art expressions particularly in film, music and literature and the general shifts in thought, philosophy, politics and our communal and individual identity as Africans.



Continuing to celebrate and propagate a rich African heritage through film, The Life House through its Lights, Camera, Africa!!! Film Festival this September promises to deliver to its enthused audience and sponsors a robust programme of educational talks and workshops; entertaining concerts and fairs and an even more diverse pool of riveting films in multiple genres including but not limited to feature, animation, experimental and documentary.



Our pioneer partnership with the acclaimed 20-year old African Film Festival, New York (AFF) continues to blossom and with a 5-day programme planned this year (our longest festival yet), The Life House is especially thrilled to present Lights, Camera, Africa!!! Film Festival to the people of Nigeria, Africa and indeed the entire world in 2013. This year, The Life House proudly announces new partnerships and exchange opportunities with the New Black London Film Heritage group and Nadia Denton© of the United Kingdom.



Lights, Camera, Africa!!! continues to showcase the brightest ideas in African cinema; promote the most promising film talent from within Africa and in particular the work of local filmmakers in Nigeria. 

Puma Films 4 Peace 2013 Online Stream

Puma Films4Peace kicks of this weekend around Lagos but for those who wont be able to make it to any of our three locations we are streaming the 2013 programme on our website www.vanlagos.org

Puma Films 4 Peace 2013 Lagos Screening

Join us at the Lagos screenings:

19th-20th September: MDSA 214c Eti Osa Way, Dolphin Estate, Ikoyi (www.mdsanigeria.com, info@mdsanigeria.com, 0809 999 6372)

21st September: A White Space, 58 Raymond Njoku Street, off Awolowo Road, SW Ikoyi

(http://www.whitespace-ng.com, lagos@whitespace.ng.com, 01 736 8094)

23rd-27th September: Goethe Institute, Lagos City Hall, Catholic Mission Street, opposite Holy Cross Cathedral, Lagos Island

(info@lagos.goethe.org, 01 774 6888)  

Puma Films 4 Peace

Films4Peace celebrates World Peace Day, 21st September 2013, with a unique global film project 

For World Peace Day on 21^st September, films4peace, an annual, unique short film commission by PUMA, again explores the subject of peace via the medium of film.  Now in its third year, the project is curated by Mark Coetzee, ex-Director of the Rubell Family Collection, supported by PUMA and produced by Shooting People. It features some of today’s most innovative contemporary artists all of whom are asked to visually interpret the subject of peace. 

These short films are released annually, on World Peace Day, both physically at cultural and educational venues globally, and online via websites, blogs and media channels.  The films are live screened at hundreds of cultural venues, from Human Rights Festivals to major museums public spaces, youth leadership conferences and new media centres, from Dakar, Senegal to Miami, USA to Kashmir, India - in 2012, screenings spanned across 23 countries.

Justin DeKoszmovszky, PUMAVision Program Manager, said: “We are proud to produce films4peace with Shooting People for the third year running. This year we commissioned seven fantastic artists to again explore and interpret the subject of peace Peace to catalyze discussion and action, starting -- but not ending -- on World Peace Day. At PUMA we believe that film can be a powerful medium for change that can enlighten, educate and engage individuals such as consumers, activists, investors, voters, employees and leaders on issues critical to all of us.”

This year, 7 acclaimed artists have been commissioned to create short films around the subject of peace: Rob Carter, Wilmer Wilson IV, Athi-Patra Ruga, Zanele Moholi, Anthony Goicolea, and Assume Vivid Astro Focus.

Zanele Moholi is a multi-award winning, highly provocative and exceedingly in demand South African photographer. Moholi’s work is mostly about increasing the visibility of gay and transgender culture in the black community and she has drawn considerable attention to the practice of “queericide” – people who are killed via gender related hate crimes.

Fellow South African Athi‐Patra Ruga is fast becoming an exciting rising star in performance art.  Ruga himself dresses up in a spectacular array of costumes, inserting himself, or rather the characters he is playing, into challenging situations. He pulls together film, fashion and photography to make thought provoking, striking pieces relating to cultural identity as a hybrid construct.

23 year old Wilmer Wilson (Washington, USA) is a recent photography graduate whose card was marked when the prestigious Conner Contemporary gallery singled him out as one to watch and invited him to debut his challenging first collection.  In creating ‘Domestic Exchange’ Wilson found his 3D voice to make live sculptures using every day objects with low cultural value to make poignant points around freedom, choice, race.

Over the past decade, New York based Cuban American Anthony Goicolea has gained a reputation as the consummate storyteller.  Having created a significant body of work which has gained great acclaim and found its way into numerous galleries both locally and internationally, Goicolea’s multimedia works are enigmatic, mysterious, ambiguous, humorous, unsettling, and provocative.

Brooklyn-based Englishman Rob Carter has a knack for exposing landmarks and iconic structures from above while using his often comedic but always thoughtful knife (literally and figuratively) to create collages of the original material.  Whether its placing the unofficial Church of England (the home of footballers Manchester United) in Canterbury Cathedral, the home of the actual Church of England or placing imagery literally among plants and documenting its growth, his work is thought provoking and engaging.

First initiated by Brazilian-born artist Eli Sudbrack in 1994 as a professional tag, assume vivid astro focus is now a continuously evolving international group of artists known for creating multi-sensational mash-ups of graffiti, disco worship, gay porn and carnival in the form of large-scale installations and performance art.  They are included in the permanent collection of the Museum of Modern Art, New York and the Judith Rothschild Foundation Contemporary Drawing Collection.

Films4peace celebrates World Peace Day - an international United Nations day of ceasefire, and a day for individuals, organizations and countries to demonstrate acts of peace.  Each artist will visually interpret the subject of Peace to create a short film, which, in keeping with the spirit of the commission, will be gifted to the world, within public domain and free from screening fees, as tools for peace.  By releasing these short films as broadly as possible, on multiple live and virtual platforms, the aim is to effect positive social change and broaden the discussions around peace globally.

The films include 35 mm live action, experimental animation and fine art approaches. The artists are selected for the quality and scope of their work and their sensitivity in interpreting the theme.

PUMA

PUMA is one of the world’s leading Sportlifestyle companies that designs and develops footwear, apparel and accessories. It is committed to working in ways that contribute to the world by supporting Creativity, SAFE Sustainability and Peace, and by staying true to the principles of being Fair, Honest, Positive and Creative in decisions made and actions taken. PUMA starts in Sport and ends in Fashion. Its Sport Performance and Lifestyle labels include categories such as Football, Running, Motorsports, Golf and Sailing. Sport Fashion features collaborations with renowned designer labels such as Alexander McQueen and Mihara Yasuhiro. The PUMA Group owns the brands PUMA, Cobra Golf and Tretorn. The company, which was founded in 1948, distributes its products in more than 120 countries, employs about 11,000 people worldwide and has headquarters in Herzogenaurach/Germany, Boston, London and Hong Kong. For more information, please visit http://www.puma.com

Création Vidéo

Compétition et worKshoP

Thème : Problématique d’unicité (Kelén-ya)

Après deux ans de crise, les élections présidentielles bien réussies prouvant que le Mali vient de franchir un pas vers une stabilisation politique. En prélude de la 3^ème édition du Festival Africain d’Images Virtuelles Artistiques (FAIVA), le centre Soleil d’Afrique organise en son siège une compétition suivie d’un workshop de création vidéo du 10 au 25 septembre 2013, sur le thème de « l’unicité » (Kelén-ya en bambara).

Cette compétition et atelier vise à réunir les artistes pour réfléchir sur le mot « UNICITE » qui a été beaucoup utilisé dans les discours politique ou de médiation pendant toute la crise qu’a connue le Mali. Certes la crise n’étant pas finie totalement, nous pensons qu’à travers ce mot magique, plein de signification,  les artistes de part leur génie créateur apporteront leur contribution pour une paix durable au Mali et dans toute la sous-région.

Les résultats obtenus de cette compétition serviront de support pendant la 3^ème édition de FAIVA prévu en novembre 2013.

Modalité de participation :

-          Envoyer par email votre CV et Scénario, avant  le 31 Août 2013  à l’adresse suivante :soleil@afribone.net.ml  ou déposer au Centre Soleil d’Afrique sise Aci 2000 Hamdallaye Bamako Mali.

-          La durée maximum des vidéos ou films est de 5mn.

Peuvent prendre part tous les artistes Africains évoluant dans le domaine du multimédia.

NB : Les auteurs des quinze meilleurs scénarios par rapport au thème donné seront invités  à l’atelier de réalisation prévu du 10 au 15 Septembre à Bamako.

A la fin de l’atelier les trois (3) meilleures réalisations recevront une récompense. 

Nigeria: the distinctive sounds of Lagos

Culled from: Africa's a Country

Armed with microphones, a digital recording device, and a video camera, Nigerian artist Emeka Ogboh captures the maddening hyper-visuality of Lagos: vivid colours, the syncopated cries of street and highway hawkers, yelling bus conductors, the impatient bleats of car and bus horns, and hoards of people in constant motion. In collaboration with the Goethe Institute Lagos, Ogboh recently launched an online live sound streaming of Lagos Soundscape, coinciding with World Listening Day on July 18, 2013.

Lagos is the subject and object of your visual interest. What makes the city so attractive?

Emeka Ogboh: 

I live and work in Lagos. I am deeply embedded in the city, just like everyone else living there. There is no way you can ignore the pervasive influence of Lagos. From the moment you wake up until you go to bed, you are affected by the city. As an artist, it's normal that one's place of domicile becomes the starting point of one's work. Lagos is a very dynamic city and nothing is predictable. Things keep evolving at a fast and constant pace, which make for an interesting narrative. It is a city of many faces and parallels. It is the unpredictability of Lagos, which informs my work.

An artist can approach Lagos as an erratic muse that needs to be disciplined and cuddled at the same time. It can also function as the artist's ultimate Neverland. I am curious as to why sound became your main form of intervention, although I know you have since begun to work with video and photography as well, which we will get to in a moment. But let's talk sound first.

If you have ever been to Lagos you will understand why sound is my preferred medium. One of the first impressions of the city is the intensity of its soundscapes. For a first-timer in Lagos, especially if you are from the global north, it can be a shocking experience to have the city's soundscapes invading your eardrums. But my forage into sound art actually began after I attended the media class on the audible spectrum taught by the Austrian multimedia artist Harald Scherz at the Winter Academy in Fayoum, Egypt in 2008. Upon returning to Lagos, I began experimenting with sound. I remember receiving a phone call from a friend around that time. This friend, who lives in Abuja, Nigeria's political capital, was visiting Lagos. After 15 seconds into our conversation I asked him if he was in Lagos because I could pick up the distinctive Lagos soundscapes in the background. He was startled that I knew that he was in Lagos. He had wanted to pay me a surprise visit. In a sense that phone call opened my ears to the uniqueness of the sounds of my city. So I started to listen, record, and experiment with these sounds. The more I recorded and listened, the more I appreciated their power to immerse and transport the listener. I find sound more engaging than any other medium.

At what point did the process move from the personal to become a work of translation for public consumption?

I think it was from the moment I made a conscious decision to present Lagos Soundscapes to the public. Before then, I was mainly recording and listening in the quiet privacy of my studio, completely taken by my new discovery. As an artist, I thought about what I could do creatively with the sounds. When the opportunity came to show the project in a public context, the question of how to present it came up. How do you put together sounds that you have recorded around the city over a period of time into short clips for an installation? What sounds should be included or not included in a representation of Lagos? In short, what sounds would best sum up Lagos as a place? These were the questions I had to answer for myself.

So how was the initial public reception? If I am right, your first sound exhibition was at the African Artists' Foundation in Lagos?

No, it was at the Winter Academy in Fayoum, Egypt in 2008. I installed an audio-visual work in the academy's bathroom. My first Lagos Soundscapes exhibition was at the AAF in 2009. I remember setting up the installation and not being sure what to expect from the public. But I think the idea of relocating familiar sounds to an unusual context gave the public an opportunity to listen to and appreciate Lagos differently. At the same time, many were just content with the idea of my work being a new thing in the art scene.

So how was the initial public reception? If I am right, your first sound exhibition was at the African Artists' Foundation in Lagos?

No, it was at the Winter Academy in Fayoum, Egypt in 2008. I installed an audio-visual work in the academy's bathroom. My first Lagos Soundscapes exhibition was at the AAF in 2009. I remember setting up the installation and not being sure what to expect from the public. But I think the idea of relocating familiar sounds to an unusual context gave the public an opportunity to listen to and appreciate Lagos differently. At the same time, many were just content with the idea of my work being a new thing in the art scene.

How have the sounds of Lagos changed since you first started?

Lagos is largely a work in progress and throughout this period the city sounds of course have been in constant flux. New structures are being established, while old ones are being dismantled. This process has had a noticeable effect. Hawking, for example, has been banned on most of the newly renovated roads, but hawkers are a major part of Lagos Soundscapes. With plans for the government BRT buses to expand to all the bus routes, it is only a matter of time before danfo buses disappear completely. Imagine how Lagos will look without its iconic yellow buses. This means that the verbal mapping (the bus route calls of the conductors) will gradually disappear. Bus conductors are a very important element in Lagos Soundscapes. Their verbal mappings – by this I mean their solicitation of passengers – add authenticity to the Soundscapes.

This implies that your previous recordings are now historical documents or belong to an archive of memory. It will be interesting to see how the old recordings and what you do in the future will come together to present a more complex Lagos.

True. When I first began to record, I did not envisage this development. I was only looking at things from a creative perspective and did not realise that I was slowly building an archive. It was only when Oshodi was restructured and renovated between 2009 and 2010 that it occurred to me that there had been a transformation in the sounds there. It was at this point that it became apparent to me that Lagos soundscapes were changing in relation to infrastructural developments going on in the city.

My goal is to create a narrative of the transformation of Lagos with the recordings I've already completed and those I have yet to make. I am not looking to work with only my own recordings but will seek out older recordings of Lagos from the past, such as archival video footage and other audio material.

To take our conversation in a different direction, I am particularly fascinated by how Lagos has become transportable or transposable in your work. You have been able to plant Lagos elsewhere and in several locations. In that way, you have made an interaction with Lagos "auratically" phenomenological and imagined rather than physically experienced.

My ability to create the interaction you just described lies chiefly in the medium I am working with. I have worked with other media in exploring Lagos (Video and photography), but I have found sound to be the most powerful in conveying a sense of the place. Lagos Soundscapes have a strong impact on the imagination. They cannot be ignored. I intervene by carefully choosing the sounds that completely embody or signify Lagos in a new environment.

Tell us about the audience reaction to your soundscapes outside Nigeria.

The reactions have been a mixed bag. They have ranged from positive to negative, as well as somewhere in between. Lagos Soundscapes have annoyed the hell out of some people, and at the same time stoked the curiosity of others. The work has been described as noisy and obtrusive, especially in some quiet European cities where it has been installed. In Cologne, someone broke one of the loudspeakers of the installation and the police were called in because the sounds were felt to be a nuisance. But for some people, Lagos Soundscapes was an intriguing intervention that added colour to the atmosphere.

I think the most interesting reactions to my work have come from Nigerians living abroad. The soundscapes stirred up their emotions and brought a whiff of home within earshot. One particular reaction was from a Nigerian student in Helsinki who thought he was having a mental breakdown when he came across the Lagos Soundscapes in a completely foreign environment. The experience inspired him to visit Nigeria that same year after being away for three years. In Cape Town, I remember some Nigerians heading out of their shops when they heard the danfo bus conductor screaming his lungs out on Adderley Street. So too, in Manchester;you could easily spot the Nigerians in the crowd based on their reactions to the installations.

Your most recent museum exhibition was The Progress of Love at the Menil Collection in Houston. You successfully installed a danfo bus. This was a shift from your more schematic representation of the danfo bus in previous exhibitions, with the yellow surface and two black stripes on the museum wall. What did the physicality of the actual bus add to the experiential context of your work?

In my aesthetic universe, the danfo bus is a stable visual sign around which I assemble acoustic references to Lagos. It is further conceptualised as a spontaneous "agora," in transit, shifting Lagos or its people from one stop to another. As you rightly observed, the danfo bus has been represented in my previous works as yellow paint with two black stripes on a wall surface. That concept was strictly a visual one. It evolved from the painted walls to constructed and painted booths in other exhibitions, and finally to the corporeal presentation of the danfo bus in The Progress of Love exhibition. Having a danfo bus as part of my installation was transformational. It shifted viewers' experience from the sonic to a more physical interaction with Lagos through its most iconic symbol. I think it created a more realistic experience of the city.

You have also begun to engage Lagos with other media, such as video and photography. Your Fractal Scapes (embedded above) are recent video experiments that treat Lagos in a radically different way than your work with sound. Can you talk a little bit about these new experiments and how they relate to your Soundscapes?

My experimental videos are abstract "time-based" paintings of Lagos. The city has been documented mainly through paintings, such as of market scenes, street scenes, skylines, bus parks, as well as of the inner city. Lagos has also been variously documented through photography. The paintings are either impressionistic or realistic interpretations. But they always present a singular view of Lagos, shorn of the city's legendary complexity. They are static, and hang on walls in art galleries or in people's homes. As an artist working with digital media, I love these paintings but cannot connect to their static quality. Nonetheless, they have provided a point of departure for me to use video to explore Lagos differently.

The Fractal Scapes are "mirror effect" experimental videos. When exported frame to frame, the still images are reminiscent of the impressionist paintings of Lagos. I then introduce sound to create an audio-visual narration of the city. The video experiments are elemental but possess an abstract quality that I think points to the chaotic nature of Lagos. The Fractal Scapes address the complex nature of Lagos, a city that is navigable via multiple points of entry and departure. My video experiments are time-based paintings as opposed to the traditional two-dimensional paintings or photographs of Lagos. In an exhibition setting, the videos can be installed alongside Lagos Soundscapes to create a more immersive or embodied experience. I produce the videos with this idea in mind, although the videos and soundscapes can also be installed separately.

Emeka's works can be viewed at: 14thmay.com