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- Convenors:
-
Izuu Nwankwọ
(University of Toronto)
Ifeyinwa Okolo (Federal University Lokoja)
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- Format:
- Panels
- Location:
- KH116
- Start time:
- 30 June, 2017 at
Time zone: Europe/Zurich
- Session slots:
- 1
Short Abstract:
The dominance of the novel and cinema declined with the African economic downturn of the 1980s. Now, more popular emergent genres that are amenable to the resultant paucity of funds, have come with more compelling re/presentations reflective of contemporary rural-urban living on the continent.
Long Abstract:
This panel seeks to discuss the representations of cityscapes in marginal/minority genres of arts in Africa. Rural-urban drift in the continent has reshaped African literature and performances, given that the cities are populated with peoples of diverse socio-economic and cultural backgrounds. Each city thus becomes a container of histories, a celebration of the rich texture of human experience; what Samuel Johnson calls "school for studying life". Mainstream arts - novels, films and the likes have been largely interrogated for their portraiture of Africa's urban/rural realities but marginal arts. These minority genres also re/present the daily encounters, relationships and the numerous complexities of humans versus machines, as well as other innumerable conflicts of identities (of gender, class, belief, social status, location, ethnicity) that form part of everyday living in the continent. They are also concerned with the overwhelming effect of industrialization on individuals; the city as a materialist spectacle and receptacle for the past, hidden lives and passions of its inhabitants, among others.
Arnold Weinstein (2007) identifies several themes that appear in artists' rendering of urban-rural living: orientation (people finding their way in the city); the marketplace (exchanging goods and services); anonymity, experiencing solitude or freedom; encounters (fearing or choosing connections with others); history (maintaining contact with other times); and cultures, entering the cities ever-changing cultural forms. How do any of/all these theme(s) play out within understudied African art genres like stand-up comedy, carnivals, new cinema, contemporary dance, music videos, performance in religion, games - especially followership of foreign club football, etc.
Accepted papers:
Session 1Paper short abstract:
Popular artistic expressions remain largely understudied even when they predominantly represent contemporary urban/rural tastes. By exploring these texts (erotica and stand-up jokes), the paper identifies ways in which they are dominant despite remaining at the periphery within the academy.
Paper long abstract:
Contemporary urban tastes (sometimes, a transmutation of rural trends) has in many ways affected and altered the creation and reception of arts in Africa. While this establishes the symbiotic relationship African arts share with sociology and anthropology, it does not justify the continued marginality of popular genres like stand-up comedy, eroticas and reality shows which rarely get attention even when they have become increasingly more preferred than their mainstream others. By interrogating the deployment of popular narrative styles/subjects in Okey Udenwe's Holy Sex: A Church Erotica, and the stand-up routines of Bright Okpocha (stage name, Basket Mouth); this paper problematizes the understudy of these genres and their likes in the academy, and seeks to re-position them out of peripheral spaces. In its use of potpourri theories, the essay harvests Jacques Derrida's and Judith Butler's deconstructionist idea of iterability in teasing out the grafting of rural traits in urban settlements within the texts; and deploys Homi Bhabha's concepts of hybridity and "third space" in designating how these artistic productions are new in themselves, and continue to create newer urban cultures.
This paper was developed in collaboration with Ifeyinwa Okolo.
Paper short abstract:
This paper examines a popular cultural practice in Eldoret in which football fans appropriate the audience reception experience to engage in performances. These performances are perceived as cultural productions merging the praxis of media consumption and performance.
Paper long abstract:
This paper argues that the audience reception experience of European football in Eldoret is part of the process of cultural production in this part of the world. However, in part, this claim is made as an interrogation of Karin Barber's (1987) view that football should not be considered as part of the productions of popular culture because it neither set out to communicate any specific and meaningful messages. Indeed, there exists scholarship on socio-cultural aspects of football, especially in its location within the global media industry. One of the significant discourses in this context has been the Sub-Saharan fandom of European football. One trajectory has been influences by the premise that African fandom of European football amounts to cultural imperialism, (James Tsaaior 2014, Gerard Akindes 2010, and Ayokunle Omobowale 2009). The other side has argued that this fandom is a significant cultural practice in which the fans engage with immediate socio-cultural realities, (Solomon Waliaula 2015, 2012, Godwin Siundu, 2011, Olaoluwa and Adejayan 2010, Richard Vokes 2010, and Leah Koma Koma 2005). Using an ethnographic approach, and in the context of relevant strands of media practice and performance theories, this paper extends this discourse by arguing that television audience reception is an open space that accommodates creative engagement and thus sustains - cultural production.
Paper short abstract:
The paper analyses Ethiopian music videoclips set in urban spaces and "singing" experiences of urban realities, and aims to understand the representation of the urban space, culture and identity in the context of social chance. Whose and what kind of messages are displayed through these media?
Paper long abstract:
Music videoclips are a flourishing, widely popular industry in Ethiopia like elsewhere in Africa. Popular artists' and special collections' albums are released in VCD format; public and private TV channels broadcast them showcasing cultural diversity, but also as powerful propaganda devices for identity redifinition (and / or) consolidation, in which indeed urbanization and migration play major roles.
Lyrics, musical composition, choreography, setting, video editing constitute a performative ensemble presenting more or less obvious or more or less complex messages, aiming at the public desire by entertaining, moralizing, moving.
This paper is the result of five years of observation and consumption of these multimedia objects, and lately more systematic reflection over their eventual impacts on individuals and society. It will focus on the analysis of videoclips set in cities, and songs on urban spaces, selecting mainly those composed since the Ethiopian millennium (2007) but referring too to classics which are widely known and often replayed by younger generation's artists.
The paper will
a) propose a categorization and topicalization meant to find odds or common points with similar media across the continent;
b) try to understand the ways of representation of the urban - plural? monolithical? steteotypied? modern? ideoligized? - in the context of the urban social change;
c) read the social, cultural urban mosaic displayed by videoclips and songs' lyrics against the grain of Ethiopia's ambiguities over building a national identity;
d) question the "marginality" of these mainstream media objects.
Paper short abstract:
The web series An African City, focused on a group of Ghanaian and Nigerian born women, returned to their home continent, shows the urban space of Accra as a versatile space, capable of tormenting with power cuts and shortages, but also offering new perspectives of what being an African urban woman means.
Paper long abstract:
Nicole Amarteifio, creator of the web series An African City (2014-2016), gives voice and contextualizes the daily experiences of a group of returnees to Ghana, transforming the city of Accra into an exuberant place where five westernized women can choose to live and carry on their professional projects and their relationships.
A traditionally hostile space in literature, the African city emerges here as a suitable place to carry out sexual, religious, economic and social taboos breaking-off. The main characters experience long power cuts, traffic jams in parking lots, failed deliveries in goods bought online, but are still eager of living in their home country, since they are aware of being a part of a deep social and urban revolution.
Each episode's structure presents the lacks and deficiencies of the city, but at the same time it shows the urban space as a place filled with opportunities that enables its inhabitants to rediscover themselves and their essence.
Themes like Orientation, Anonymity, Encounters and Cultures (Weinstein: 2007) play an important role in the series, as all these women are raised in Western countries, and have to face a new life - not as simple as it may seem - finding their way in the city, which means, metaphorically, finding their true Identity.