The long march towards artist participation in South Africa

On a landmark conference taking aim at the prevailing indifference of South African artists towards the mayor challenges of their country, the Rotterdam Task Force for Artist Participation will present some effective and innovative policy measures concerning artist participation tailor made to the contemporary South African situation

The conference is entitled 'CULTure of (IN)difference' and will take at the University of Pretoria on Friday 30 September and Saturday 1 October 2011. For more information on the conference click here.

The starting point of the presentation of the Task Force is the sorry fact that for too long now, the African art world's potential has been subdued due to the colonial and post-colonial imposition of the ultimately Western concept of artistic autonomy and the accompanying endemic indifference of artists to the larger challenges of their working contexts.

The latter is completely alien to the African indigenous tradition of ubuntu. This is the idea that we are all connected and that who and what we are, as well as what we can achieve, is ultimately the result of our relationships with other people.

The native African artistic tradition can thus be said to have predated the recent relational and post-relational paradigm in Western art for many thousands of years. However, due to certain imported colonial misconceptions it has been alienated from its very roots.

Now is the time for Africa to reconnect to its indigenous traditions and steal the relational paradigm back from Western artists, curators and theorists. Artists in Africa should again take up its natural and world leadership with regards to art practices that fundamentally and constitutively participate in society. In short, instead of African artists having to catch up with their Western counterparts, it is actually the other way around!

The Task Force will play an intermediary, consultancy and coaching role in this turn around process. It will link up with key players and local stakeholders throughout South Africa.

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