Paper short abstract:

This paper contributes empirical reflections on the visual production of policy makers in Europe and Africa, aiming at ending ‘irregular migration’ through ‘economic stirr-ups’. The visualised Kankurang Festival deals as a focal point for questioning paradox and multi-faceted spatiotemporal notions of this heritage.

Paper long abstract:

This paper focussed on an empirical case from Gambia, interrogating implicit knowledge-productions through visualisation. Secrecy and Invisibility being understood as co-constitutive of Knowledge-gaps. In 2018 the Kankurang Festival was revived in Janjanbureh, The Gambia, in cooperation with european development agencies. Financed by the EU Emergency Trust Fund for Africa (EUTF) and executed by the International Trade Center (ITC) and the Youth Development programme (YEP), the Festival aims at “ending irregular migration” (YEP, 2018) and producing “economic stirr-ups” for The Gambia. Since then, online visualisations depict the success-story of initating the Festival, supported by imagery of individual home-comers. Likewise, the associated gambian institutions partake in the imagery about the heritagisation as a success-story on social media. Since the Kankurang was also inscribed as Intangible Cultural Heritage (UNESCO) by Senegal and The Gambia in 2008, the measures of safeguarding the Initiatory Rite and the museal displays in Janjanbureh are now in feasible confrontation with the Festivals aims. Delicately, the Rite should not be seen by outsiders, namely women, and its safeguarding was a measure to reinstall the Rites’ secrecy. Hence, this paper raises questions about the ethical implications of two eurocentric agencies (1), the paradox created by them both individually and in comparison (2) by clarifying on how their visualisations’ spatiotemporal notions oppose eachother. In conclusion, the paper can add to a theorisation on knowledge-production and gaps through the entangled concepts of return-migration and heritagisation, their visual practices and limitations.