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Paper short abstract:

The spread of camera-equipped mobile phones among the Samburu of Kenya enables the creation of fake videos and audio recordings. Their sharing within this pastoral community politicized the notion of fakery and contributed to the emergence of an art scene that now challenges the local power system.

Paper long abstract:

The widespread use of camera-equipped mobile phones among the Samburu of northern Kenya from the early 2010s has opened unprecedented possibilities for these semi-nomadic pastoralists to record and store images of their daily practices. Scenes of cattle theft, audio recordings of marital infidelity, or armed conflicts between pastoral communities spread virally from one mobile phone to another through the exchange of files via Bluetooth or SD cards. According to the Samburu, a part of these audio and video recordings are outright fakes inspired by the classic cultural topoi of their society (the young wife cheating on her elderly husband with a warrior, the circumcised young men stealing cattle from neighboring communities). Sometimes the set-up is evident. Other times the indeterminacy of the boundaries between staging and reality generates endless discussions about the veracity of a given recorded event. The goal of this presentation is to show how mobile phones have transformed and politicized the notions of fakery and fiction among the Samburu. The production of fake recordings was the first step toward the emergence of a semi-professional art scene consisting of Samburu actors and content creators whose shows, shared via mobile phone, take a critical stance against the power of the elders and the regional government. The ambiguity of their performances, perceived as “reality” by some of their viewers, allows these artists to question the local political and gender hierarchies and to introduce within their community new cultural and social categories embedded in a fictional “traditional” framework.