ARTMargins Vol. 13.1 ; Socialism In Contemporary African Art

This introductory essay and accompanying special issue of ARTMargins explore the role of African socialisms in contemporary art. Artists looking at Africa’s radical history face the challenge of responding to a generalized amnesia about the continent’s protagonism on intellectual and political radicalism after 1945. Working with under-researched themes, scarce historical records, and apprehensive oral sources, these artists are often tasked to amplify forgotten pasts while simultaneously critiquing the political contingency of historical investigation in global contemporary art. Global contemporary art—largely shaped by the neoliberal transition that followed the very histories explored by these artists—is often shown in its limitation to engage with socialist history critically. Through the authors’ analyses, many artworks nuance discussion of the erasures, fixed narratives, and nostalgia for Africa’s socialist past. Looking to this past, artists attempt to reorganize contemporaneity and its typical disregard for history beyond romanticization. Talho (2014), a work by Mozambican photographer Filipe Branquinho, is analyzed as a case study raising central questions on contemporary artists’ engagement with Africa’s socialist past.

by Álvaro Luís Lima.

February 2024.

Introduction
Socialism in Contemporary African Art: Butchering the End of Time
Álvaro Luís Lima

Articles
“We Need a Lighthouse Philosopher”: Filipa César and Louis Henderson’s Sunstone (2018) and the Portuguese Genealogy of Lens-Based Media
Delinda Collier

Make Me a Picture of the Future: Massinissa Selmani’s 1000 Socialist Villages (2015)
Natasha Marie Llorens

The Mythography of Socialism in Contemporary Angolan Art
Nadine Siegert

The Politics and Aesthetics of Liberation: Revolution and Its Aftermath in Contemporary Artistic Practice from and about Lusophone Africa
Ana Balona de Oliveira

Abstract States: Modernism in Lebanon, Syria, and Turkey
Gemma Sharpe

Artist Project
As the Nile Flows or the Camel Walks
Dawit L. Petros, Black Athena Collective

Document
Introduction to “Cultural Offensive of the Working Classes”
Polly Savage

Cultural Offensive of the Working Classes
Tempo, Polly Savage

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Auditing Intimacy catalogues the last five years of O.J.A.I.’s postcard correspondence. In addition to over 80 images, the publication contains a specially commissioned essay by curator Alicja Melzacka dealing with self-institutionalization – the performing of the self as an institution – as an approach to artistic research and performance. There is a lexicon disambiguating the invented bureaucratic jargon O.J.A.I. produces and circulates around their practice.

Office for Joint Administrative Intelligence is the collaborative practice of artists Chris Dreier (DE) and Gary Farrelly (IRE/BE) since 2015. The work is fueled by a recurring obsession with architecture, infrastructure, finance, conspiracy theory, institutional power and magic. O.J.A.I. pursues a strategy of self-institutionalization where tools and codified rules of engagement are appropriated from economic and political infrastructures. The work meets the public as performance, sound art, installation, cartography, publications, and a radio show (transmitted on Dublin Digital Radio and Cashmere Radio, Berlin). O.J.A.I. has performed and exhibited work at AAIR Antwerpen, Damien and the Love Guru, ISELP (Brussels), Laura Mars Gallery (Berlin), Grölle Pass Projects, Gold and Beton, University of Texas, Marres Center for Contemporary Culture (Maastricht) and Horst Festival (Villevord).

Author: Gary Farrelly, Chris Dreier

Publisher: Zero Desk

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Join us on Friday September 8 at 7 pm at Motto Berlin for the launch of “Manufacturing Narratives,” the second issue of MAKAN.

MAKAN is a journal of culture and space that is edited and published by Think Tanger, an independent arts organization based in Tangier, Morocco. Its inaugural issue “Informal Utopias” was published in 2020 and established the foundations of MAKAN as a vehicle for critical engagement with contemporary architectural and urban conditions and with academic scholarship emanating from, or focused on exploring, Africa and the Arabic-speaking milieu. 

The second issue “Manufacturing Narratives,” focuses on how interrogating narrativity can provoke fundamental questions about how societies define or choose to accept societal or historical truths in today’s world. Contributors to the issue include: Ala Younis, Ali T. As’ad, Abari Abbassi, A. George Bajalia, Karim Kattan, Karima Kadaoui, Kenza Sefrioui, Lahbib El Moumi, Laila Hida, Maureen Mougin, Mohamed Amer Meziane, Monica Basbous, Nadia Tazi, Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou, Sonia Terrab, Soufiane Hennani, Yto Barrada.

The event will include presentations by the creative director of Think Tanger, Hicham Bouzid, and the editor of MAKAN Issue #2, Ali T. As’ad. The presentations will be followed by a conversation / Q&A moderated by Berlin-based urban researcher and performance artist Nancy Naser Al Deen. 

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Think Tanger

Motto Books

Through the work on a collective publication, differently located artists (Marseille and Frankfurt) meet within the realm of literary expression. The writing of prosaic, autofictional/autobiographic texts, as well as poems with the emphasis of the localization of one’s own identity, feministic and general political themes, is the starting point of the planned publication. 

This writing, that is part of their whole artistic practice, is what connects the four participating artists. Hereby text seems to be a meaningful media of connection. In the context of the release of the publication, two readings have taken place at Voiture 14 in Marseilles and at saasfee*pavillon in Frankfurt am Main between March and June 2023. 

The Publication itself, as well as the readings, aspire to transport the intimate, to share something private, and through that question a private and political reality. The interdisciplinary practice of the participating artists, that combine in performance, sculpture, photography, social artistic practice in public spaces, music-production and more, will show not only in the format of the readings but also in the publication itself. The publication is no classical book, but rather a collection, a personal archive of text, memory and emotion (anger, lust, grief, sorrow, empathy and tenderness). 

The goal of the project is, to balance (geographic) distance, through the confrontation with similar themes from different perspectives. The reality of life stays different, but a speaking tube appears, a connecting aspect – through the constant, careful perceiving of one’s own reality and the digesting through the writing process. 

Handmade in an edition of 80.

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À la mort de son père, Juif d’Oran naturalisé français puis israélien, Ariella Azoulay découvre dans un document que sa grand-mère portait le prénom Aïcha. En deux récits mêlant autobiographie et théorie politique, l’autrice serpente entre les catalogues de bijoux, les photos trouvées et les collections d’objets pillés, pour déployer par fragments l’histoire de sa famille et mettre en parallèle les colonialismes français en Algérie et sioniste en Palestine. Entre ces projets impériaux, elle saisit bien des continuités, à commencer par la volonté obstinée de détruire l’enchevêtrement séculaire des mondes juifs, arabes et berbères, un entrelacs qu’elle revendique pour mieux le restaurer.

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Ariella Aïsha Azoulay est écrivaine, chercheuse, cinéaste expérimentale et commissaire d’archives anticoloniales. Née en 1962 dans la colonie sioniste de Palestine, elle est professeure à l’université Brown où elle enseigne la théorie politique, la résistance aux formations impériales et les imaginaires anticoloniaux réclamant le retour, la restitution et le tikkoun olam, la réparation du monde. Autrice d’une dizaine de livres parus dans de nombreux pays, elle a publié entre autres Potential History: Unlearning Imperialism (Verso, 2019) et From Palestine to Israel: A Photographic Record of Destruction and State Formation (Pluto Press, 2011). Inédit, La Résistance des bijoux est son premier livre traduit en français.

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Dear friends,

We are happy to invite you to Cults and Culture on Thursday, July 13th from 7:00 PM, a talk by Alex Head in which the author will discuss his book Ricochet – Cultural Epigenetics and the Philosophy of Change (Ljå Forlag, Oslo, 2021).

Reflecting on discoveries and debates that have occurred in the two years since its publication, artist Alex Head will read from current works in progress to highlight specific aspects within his ambitious book 
Ricochet to discuss the architecture of power.

It is now well documented that cults have been used to disseminate disinformation. For example the extremist cults of MAGA, The Oath Keepers and Proud Boys who’s recruitment pipeline has been funded by Big Oil and crypto libertarians in an attempt to overthrow the United States and 
crash their and the world’s economy.

But what about the arts more widely, is there a form of culture that is transparent about its ideology, particularly in today’s hyper-accelerate media vortex? Are all cultural institutions not also in some way cultish? The cult of patriarchy being just one obvious example that transcends both religious and cultural institutions.

Focussing on specific evidence of how cults have been used to spread disinformation and other historical data the artist will discuss the central motif to his work Ricochet, – the Sacred Date Palm Tree – as a expression of the anti-rhizome. Are we, the unwitting public being continuously gaslit by Sacred Date Palm tree’s in the form of neoclassical architecture? And if so, what can we do to review and 
refocus personal and political objectives as users navigate the web architecture of the app?

Join us at Motto Berlin on Thursday, 13th of July for an insightful talk where we will explore the profound themes of Ricochet and run across topics like January 6th, Classical Architecture, White Supremacy, BND Building Berlin, Mental Health, Libertarianism, Bitcoin, Gold Standard, Going Offline, Art, Publishing, Design, Cultural Epigenetics, Memory, Witnessing and Social Media.

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Alex Head

Ljå Forlag

“Healing The Museum” is a mid-career monograph looking at Grace Ndiritu’s diverse practice over the last twenty years, which encompasses performance, film, shamanism, social actions, painting, publications, textile work, and collection research. The large selection of artworks included in the publication are in a dialogue with each other, further enriched by in-depth conversations with Brook Andrew, Gareth Bell-Jones, and Philippe Van Cauteren, and written contributions from Ifeanyi Awachie, Ann Hoste, and Hammad Nasar. The monograph’s publication coincides with the eponymous exhibition at S.M.A.K.–Stedelijk Museum voor Actuele Kunst in Ghent.

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Mizna: The Black SWANA Issue, guest-edited by Safia Elhillo and produced by an all-Black takeover team, explores the infinitely varied and kaleidoscopic nature of the Black SWANA experience.

Mizna: The Black SWANA Issue features contributions by Fahad Al-Amoudi, Salma Ali, Shams Alkamil, Ladin Awad, Lameese Badr, Romaissaa Benzizoune, Dina El Dessouky, Atheel Elmalik, k. eltinaé, Samah Fadil, Shawn Frazier, Myronn Hardy, Fatma Hassan, Asmaa Jama, Marlin M. Jenkins, Abigail Mengesha, Suzannah Mirghani, Nihal Mubarak, Umniya Najaer, Sihle Ntuli, Abu Bakr Sadiq, Sagirah Shaheed, Charif Shanahan, Najma Sharif, Faatimah Solomon, Vanessa Taylor, Qutouf Yahia, Thawrah Yousif. Interview with Charif Shanahan. Visual art by Kamala Ibrahim Ishag.

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Chasing the ghost, the traces of oblivion, and the echoes of what was and no longer is, the book “Omen” is a revision and reframing of the fraction of the photographic archive of the Farm Security Administration (1935-1944) hosted at the New York Public Library. That program—perhaps there is no need to add—was one of the milestones of modern documentary photography, instrumental on the constructing an hegemonic narrative; one mainly about triumph against adversity, division, and catastrophe in the recent history of the United States.

But by stressing the gaze over that monumental set of images, and scrutinizing at the corners of the pictures, at the backgrounds and details—in the secondary characters, in what should not be there, that which appears by chance, accident or error— it is possible to discover a different narrative, one that is thicker, murkier, more troubled, complex, contemporary and contradictory. Both a shatter and an apex: a premonition of the genealogical continuity of the many (tumultuous, visible and invisible, thunderous and silent) systemic violence that make up the face of American society.

A book that serves as a mirror of the distressing reality of the United States in our days, and, a the same time, as a device for reflection on the way historical and documentary photography is read and understood, taking the editorial eye to its ultimate consequences.

Photographs by Russell Lee, Dorothea Lange, Ben Shahn, Walker Evans, Carl Mydans, Arthur Rothstein, Gordon Parks, Jack Delano

Excavations at the Miriam and Ira D. Wallach Division of Art, Prints and Photographs of the New York Public Library

Concept and selection by León Muñoz Santini, Jorge Panchoaga
Edition by Pablo Ortiz Monasterio

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