REVIEW - BRIEF - VISION - PROGRAMME - DELEGATES - MINILABS

Sessions eKapa 2005 took place at the Cape Town International Convention Centre from 4 - 6 December 2005.

The rapid acceleration of globalism, with its ever expanding circulation of communications and growing awareness of regionality and difference, has led to a recent explosion of international exhibitions and conferences focused on contemporary African art.

While these exhibitions and conferences have fundamentally altered the kinds of visibility afforded African artists by turning the global eye onto the continent, they have also, ironically, increasingly drawn the African gaze towards the global.

Significantly, this global eye has also often tended to simply reinforced preconceived ideas about central and peripheral modernity by offering a view of Africa that is at best romantic (the notion that there is an "exteriority" to modernity, under the guise of the exotic, archaic, or even anti-modern, etc.), and worst neo-colonial (that the non-West could offer pre-modern rationalities).

It was precisely in order to trace the contours of such shifts in focus, and to challenge and explore the current interface between local art practices and the international art circuit, that the CAPE Africa Platform invited more 30 speakers and almost 300 delegates from South Africa, Africa, and its Diaspora to converge at Sessions eKapa 2005, its first international discussion session held at the international Convention Centre on 4-6 December 2005.

The results of their dialogue were hardly conclusive. But then, conclusiveness was not the intent. Rather, Sessions punctuated one moment in an ongoing discussion, encouraging diverse insights and dynamic debate from regional and local perspectives; offering a gathering space for thought and networking for all those united in their interest in African cultural practice; and a rare occasion for reflection before facing the challenges that lay ahead.

Framing Africa

Under the theme "Mzantsi: (Re)Locating Contemporary African Art Practice", the Sessions began with an interrogation of the power relations between the global art circuits and local art practice. Most importantly in this regard, Sessions called for African practitioners to take responsibility for their own position within this global power structure by proactively bypassing the central control system, abandoning the old centre-first model and creating direct links between diverse positions on the continent.

The need to reorientate our gaze back towards the continent became a central theme. This need extends beyond merely showing the work of artists practising on the continent: we also need to create our own history, theory and discourse surrounding that work. As N'Goné Fall said in Session 1: "We need an in depth analysis of contemporary African art by Africans. We need to be able to define our art practices because the absence or silence of Africa might let the world believe that the continent has nothing to say or that its voice doesn't count."

Inside the out-side

Sessions eKapa also urged contemporary African practitioners to explore where we locate our art in the literal sense, looking at how new spaces and places for art can be activated. Minister Pallo Jordan contextualised this argument by noting that most young people in Cape Town think that galleries are court houses. As the Minister said, "if you know the experience of black South African's of court buildings you can measure the extent of alienation."

The need to rethink our institutions and relocate ourselves - as artist, curators and administrators was foreground with many of the speakers providing inspiring concrete examples of how traditional spaces could be radically re-imagined and public space actively engaged with.

Lab rats vs scientists

The minilaboratories held on Day 2 were also central in exploring art in the public arena. They broke with the conventional conference format to provide a series of independently convened, site-specific excursions into the city of Cape Town itself.

These excursions offered a genuine experiential engagement with public space that provoked delegates to explore how the urban fabric could be used to think through the kinds of inequities, the jammings, the raptures of modernity at large.

As Noëleen Murray, who chaired the discussion after the minilabs noted: "What excited me about the minilabs was that they seem to offer a space for exploration, a space in which to be a 'lab rat' instead of just a scientist."

Khoisan kuisine & kwaai eKapa sounds

"Cape Town is born of creolisation, a place for the carnivalesque, a space where contemporary culture is spoken of in the same breath as 'coon-ification', 'cultural tourism' and the 'creative economy'." Julian Jonker, Sessions Brief

Significantly, the "lab rats" attending Sessions weren't the only one's who had an opportunity to brew something up in the Sessions laboratory. A small, previously inexperienced catering company, called Khoisan Kuisine, had the gig of their lives catering to the 300+ Sessions delegates. Following the experience they gained at the conference, they are now in a position to create a more sustainable, profitable catering business.

Sessions also impacted on the economy in other spheres. Some 30 musicians were employed during the course of the conference, which made for a dramatic stimulation of the musical economy of the city.

The Professional Conference Organiser, a young, self-empowered African company called Tribal Meetings also had the opportunity to gain new experience.

This was where real empowerment took place and it was one of the key successes of the event: it created the spaces for people to evolve their skills to a higher level and generated income.

Relocating ourselves

"With all our experiences of forced removals, of the flows of colonialism and creolisation, why should we 'relocate' anything? Because perhaps, even in the face of globalisation, we can reorient the gaze, relocate our selves, without moving from where we are." - Julian Jonker, Sessions Brief

Not all the narratives that emerged for Sessions eKapa were this overridingly positive, however. Sessions was one of the first national meetings of the South African artworld since the demise of the Johannesburg biennale in 1997, making for an intense and sometimes volatile atmosphere and a heated outpouring of issues and emotions.

This highlighted the need for CAPE, as an organisation to instigate ongoing discussions that can further interrogate the issues that were raised. It also stressed the need for CAPE to maintain radical openness, humility and generosity of spirit even in the face of the viciousness and the difficult politics of the contemporary milieu.

At the same time, the astute interdisciplinary engagements of speakers like Noeleen Murray, Premesh Lalu and Edgar Pieterse highlighted a need for local artworld to relocate its practice outside its sealed off, "policed" borders by actively engaging and collaborating with other disciplines.

The theme of "relocation" also extended into the debates about what it means be to an African artist. While many of the speakers from other African countries stressed the need for South African practitioners to "move on" and "get beyond" arguments about who is an African artist, the emotive response to the topic by many of the local delegates made it clear that any movement would have to be one based on mutual discussion and debate and not a "forced removal" that ignores our history. In this regard transformation in the visual arts sector was highlighted as one of the prerequisites before any meaningful relocation can take place.

This need for transformation was most urgently expressed in the Session on art and activism, which, as the chair Graham Falken pointed out, functioned more as an "art installation" than a theoretical discussion. This however does not mean that this Session should be ignored. As an installation it gave voice to the often unspoken and even the unspeakable: the pain, distrust and suspicion that still haunt the South African artworld as a legacy of apartheid. On a practical level it voiced not only the legitimate concerns of the artworld regarding the lack of transformation in the sector, but also highlighting the need to rethink arts activism outside the often surprisingly conservative and formal definitions of avant-garde as presented within Westernism discourses. Most importantly perhaps it provided a very literal example of the power of art to expose and challenge social and political issues in a way that's provocative, emotive and even beautiful. Yes, this Session was often self-indulgent and frustrating and uncomfortable and sometimes insulting to its audience.... but isn't that ultimately part of the function of art?

A different concept of difference

"To preface something with "Mzantsi" makes it ours, and it makes it now: it makes it ours because it is of the now. "Mzantsi" marks a modernity, a contemporaneity, that is not expressed in anyone else's language but our own." Julian Jonker, Sessions Brief

Finally, and most importantly perhaps, Sessions eKapa called for us to re-look and relocate the very discourse and the language we use to explore and discuss these issues, highlighting the need to create a new, multidisciplinary language that speaks to the here and the now; a language that is our own and empowers us to explore not only our past but also our futures in new and meaningful ways.

This was best articulated by Premesh Lalu who called for us to look beyond the pre-defined rhetoric of the South African art and political worlds, urging delegates to rather situate their practice and debates in the interstices, the politics of the middle, of the outsider: "One of the difficulties I have is that I think we don't necessarily have a language to deal with the problem or problematic of apartheid," said Lalu.

"I want to argue that it is that marginal subject position that must somehow provoke a response to the state of emergency - that must be the point or the site of emergence. In other words what I'm asking for is a radicalised concept of the critique of apartheid, a radicalisation of that critique; a different concept of difference, one that differs from that which it repeats. In that sense I think a set of exchanges across disciplines that begin to unfold the problematic of apartheid in a different direction."

States of Emergence

"From Fela's sessions at Kalakuta to the montuno sessions of old Havana, the jam session has come to mean a state of orchestrated chaos, of resolved untidiness. Jamming, we can sing out of tune, out of time, and bring it back together. It's a matter of timing." Julian Jonker, Sessions Brief

For CAPE, Premesh Lalu's call amplified the programme's core priorities and objectives by stressing the urgent need for new ideas, radical paradigm shifts and different approaches.

One speaker, Ngone Fall articulated this urgency as a "state of emergency". Julian Jonker reframed her call to action as "a state of emergence" - and it's from this state and site of emergence/y that CAPE needs to move forward. Certainly CAPE cannot be the only solution to many of the problems raised within the context of this forum, but we can become a medium catalyst and facilitator for moving forward. An activator? And site of activity & creativity.

In the media

In this regard it seems that the media was in full agreement. Sessions eKapa was extensively covered in most major national newspapers, in a variety of magazines and in multiple online publications. It also received in-depth radio coverage and even made it onto TV.

In total, the Advertising Value equivalent generated for the conference was over R600 000. This was generated over the period of a month and is significant for a visual arts event where publicity is usually sidelined to the arts pages or given very little or no attention by editors who perceive the readership to be very small.

The Cape Times called the project "an exciting challenge", the Bag Factory called Sessions a "wonderful platform", the M&G noted that despite the volatile atmosphere Sessions was "strong to finish" and Artthrob called the event "Cape Town's most important art event of the year."

The one through-line intersecting all the media responses though was an acknowledgement of the huge value of Sessions eKapa and a salute to the CAPE Africa Platform for having the guts to actually go ahead and do it.

An open platform

"This is an open platform, a jam session. It is a space for YOU to show the way forward." Julian Jonker, Sessions Brief

Ultimately however, the success of Sessions lay in the hands of all those who took the leap with CAPE: the task team, comprising Emma Bedford, Julian Jonker, Mirjam Asmal-Dijk, Mokena Makeka, Mustafa Maluka, Ntone Edjabe, Susan Glanville-Zini and Zayd Minty that developed the programme; Session's brillian young, talented co-ordinator Julian Jonker, all the delegates and provocateurs who participated; as well as the CAPE's sponsors and partners who invested more than R 2, 5million to support this delivery and prepare the road forward for CAPE 2006.