Paper short abstract:

Based on visual anthropology techniques, the study provides new insights into the participatory activities taking place in the city of Alexandria-Egypt. The main question is: How the citizens of Alexandria City used visuality to create a third space of participation to express their opinions?

Paper long abstract:

While exploring new avenues of self-representation within a heavy surveillance context that is constantly a subject of undergoing transformations, it is better not to frame our analysis within conventional research techniques or limited cases of study. Using visual photographing of the public writings on the walls produced by ordinary citizens around the Mediterranean city of Alexandria, the research explores different field sites where people work on the creation of new participatory spaces. Whether by studying the public writings on the walls of shrines, the walls of public buildings, or at the back of private-owned cars, the researcher aims to create a topographical library of these messages in relation to explore the temporal versus the permanent, the public versus the private, and the Feminine versus the masculinity. The primary findings, till now, showed that though the main goal of the public-writing messages is to be shown to a broader audience and attract their attention, most of the political-opposite messages appear only in hidden places while the social, cultural and funny messages are bravely displayed with total publicity.

Paper short abstract:

Research with activists and artists in Kampala highlights the influence of heritage narratives on the political imagination. Drawing on and disrupting the cultural archive can help activists imagine the world they want: "art sustains our spirits and imaginations."

Paper long abstract:

In this paper, we (Emilie Flower and Ruth Kelly) reflect on research workshops with young urban artists and activists in Kampala (July 2017 and March 2018) using creative methodologies to break out of traditional roles, explore alternative ways of knowing and enlarge the scope of what development might mean. Achille Mbembe argues that art has the potential "to free us from the shackles of development both as an ideology and as a practice"; to pave a way for a "practice of the imagination" and the future-oriented struggle to "write our name in history" (Mbembe and Paulisson 2009). We argue that images and texts from the past, or heritage narratives, have a strong influence on the political imagination today, that is, the cognitive space available for imagining and articulating alternative futures. In our workshops, activists emphasised the value of repertoires of resistance drawn from the past - Buganda oral poetry traditions and 'madness' in feminist protest - and artists created pieces referencing and revealing these repertoires. Screenings of short films of the artists' work provided powerful methodological prompts for debate and analysis; rather than asking audiences to respond to a communication product with a clear message, the (often ambiguous) artistic outputs generated in this project acted as catalysts for lively discussions of new ideas about what development could look like and how it could be framed. Drawing on and disrupting the cultural archive helped participating activists "to imagine and create the world we want …art sustains our spirits and imaginations."

Paper short abstract:

Opposing representations of chieftaincy and modernity in women's postcolonial African film: Yaba Badoe's 'The Witches of Gambaga' vs Rungano Nyoni's 'I am not a witch'

Paper long abstract:

Since the past decade an increasing number of successful African born women filmmakers have conquered the hearts of global audiences. The author will focus on two of these socio-politically engaged filmmakers who recently produced films on spirits and witchcraft in modern Africa. She will concentrate on the interaction between traditional African and modern authorities in Northern Ghana and their representation in these films. In Yaba Badoe's (Ghana/UK, 1954) documentary 'The Witches of Gambaga' (2010) the chief of a witchcraft camp in Northern Ghana (Gambaga) is represented as a progressive force; a traditional leader who collaborates with modern Presbyterian Church members, governmental representatives, academics and activists to enable the camp women to return to their home villages. In Rungano Nyoni's (Zambia/UK, 1982) poetic film 'I am not a witch' (2017) the witch camp chief is instead portrayed as an evil force. Both Badoe's and Nyoni's films are based on the filmmakers' fieldwork on the women accused of witchcraft and their confessions in real witch camps in Northern Ghana, which are quasi-governmental settlements. The author, who conducted extensive fieldwork on witchcraft and chieftaincy in Ghana, will share her research findings on the plausible cause of the distinction in the representation of the camp chief. With her research on the interaction of the real-life chiefs with urban societal forces and the rural camp women, the author aims to increase insight in power relations in society and the understanding of what and who these filmmakers act against in their postcolonial anti-witchcraft film.

Paper short abstract:

The history of Kotéba is a history of connection and disruption. Urbanization and globalization have shaped the evolution of Kotéba-theatre performances in Mali, both, connecting and disrupting with original rural performance practices.

Paper long abstract:

In Mali, Kotéba-theatre has a long history and is known for being a space of "freedom of speech". In rural villages Kotéba constitutes the satirical critique, of social behaviour or stereotypes in the micro-cosmos of the community. It figures as a space where the community reflects upon itself. During the colonial period, performances were influenced by established French schools and the introduction of occidental drama, preparing an evolution in Malian theatre. Breaking with its village-bound structure, Kotéba became mobile, inducing the Kotéba National Theatre in the capital of the postcolonial, independent nation. Subsequently, the modern influences flowed back to the villages by urban theatre companies performing and reconnecting with rural districts. Kotéba-theatre was in the center of a young nation longing for cultural self-re-creation through reconnection to cultural roots (Diawara 1980, Traoré 2014). Since, Kotéba has become an important communication channel on a multimedial level, played on TV, on the big stage as well as in the streets and in social intervention projects. Kotéba is a frame in which the stage provides a space of visibility and voice not only to professional artists, companies or NGOs, but also to individuals (as the theatre initiative Essingan (2008) by returned migrants shows).

I argue that Kotéba is a space for individual and collective construction of citizenship, where society is shaped and critically reflected upon and where connections and disruptions with the past and present find powerful expression. This paper wishes to unpack Kotéba theatre as a connecting and at the same time disrupting element in rural-urban theatre performances in Mali.

Paper short abstract:

This paper approach personhood through the lens of Fuji music to show the nuances which reflects individual desires as well as shared social expectations.

Paper long abstract:

This paper revisits the debate on personhood as derived from earlier works on Yoruba's notion of being human - eniyan in the contemporary Yoruba society. This is approached through the lens of Fuji music, a contemporary popular music in southwestern Nigeria to show the nuances which reflects individual desires as well as shared social expectations. In this sense, Fuji music transcends the sphere of entertainment to become a tool of self-actualization experienced as part of everyday realities. This paper demonstrates how creative works could be read beyond their representational meanings to map complex connections especially the notion of self -projections and performance against the backdrop of socio dynamics of politics, economics, and religion. To this end, the paper draws on Delueze and Guattari's concept of rhizome explained as ceaseless establishment of "connections between semiotic chains, organizations of power, and circumstances relative to arts, sciences and social struggle (1987:7). The paper draws on interviews and participants observations materials gathered from ongoing ethnographic research in the urban cities of southwest Nigeria.

Paper short abstract:

This paper explores photography, its materiality and enduring efficacy activated in various modalities. Photography emerges as an active component of performing citizenship in Nigeria at the meso-level of community and the supra level of faith-based personhood, mitigating 'impaired citizenship'.

Paper long abstract:

In Nigeria, the services of professional photographers are required for any key life stage event or celebration. Even the humblest person on limited means feels the need to avail themselves of the services of professional photographers or to purchase a photograph commemorating an event that they attend. This paper explores this phenomenon to suggest that this goes beyond memorialisation or conspicuous spending, as photographs very materiality and the processes of production, audience reception, circulation are testimony to their enduring efficacy in various modalities. In a country where the struggle for a viable citizenship compact continues, the levels where everyday people claim rights and perform responsibilities are often the meso-level of community and the supra-level of faith-based personhood. These two poles are stratified by different cleavages of ethnicity, indigeneity, political affiliation, temporality and faith within an enduring indigenous cosmology. The paper explores how in various ways and at different points in their 'image-lives' photographs enact and are mobilised to mitigate 'impaired citizenship' (Azoulay) and facilitate agency and aspirations. This paper draws on recent ethnographic fieldwork in Nigeria (Ila Orangun, Ilé-Ifè and Lagos) to trace these intersections of performing citizenship, claiming rights and activating power and allegiance in contemporary Nigeria.