Contenu du sommaire : Histoires afropolitaines de l'art

Art Historiographies from Africa
Since the late 1980s, the growing recognition, on the global art scene, of long neglected contemporary artists of African origin went hand in hand with an exaltation of multiculturalism, erasing the borders which divide the art world. The reception granted to these artists, in particular in France, was severed from the reception of the theoretical resources which reframed art from an African perspective. This article introduces a wider project of translation of historiographic discourses and African views on art, documenting the emergence, in the 1990s, of a “New African discourse” on art, carried by a generation of curators, historians and theorists who chose to reevaluate the various trends of modern African art.

Africa's Diasporas of Images
This essay addresses the concept of a history for African art objects by thinking them across space and time as vehicles for “diasporas” of images. John Peffer proposes a consideration of African art from the perspective of diaspora, as objects in motion, and as objects that articulate between and across disparate cultural histories and the cultural zones of others. In the process, John Peffer attempts to bridge the continuum spanning arts otherwise categorized as “traditional” or “contemporary”.

The Art Society and the Making of Postcolonial Modernism in Nigeria
This essay focuses on the work of the Art Society – a group formed by art students at the Nigerian College of Art, Science, and Technology, Zaria (1957-61) – and suggests that the work of its key members in the 1960s was the first significant manifestation of postcolonial modernism in Nigeria. Postcolonial modernism, the essay argues, refers to a set of formal and critical attitudes adopted by African and black artists at the dawn of political independence as a countermeasure against the threat of loss of self in the maelstrom unleashed by Western cultural imperialism and its aftermath. In defining their relationship with European and African artistic heritages, the Art Society and other postcolonial artists emphasized the importance of local and indigenous artistic resources in the making of their decidedly modernist work. The essay details the convening of the postcolonial literary and artistic avant-garde at the Mbari Artists and Writers Club, Ibadan, Nigeria, in the early 1960s and claims that their modernism was directly linked to the practice and rhetoric of political and cultural decolonization and sovereignty.

Authenticity and Its Discontents
In her article, Sandy Prita Meier establishes some of the central theoretical concerns that frame this issue, particularly noting the overlaps and divergences that have shaped “African” and “Middle Eastern” modernisms within the discipline of art history. She rereads the multiple ways in which, curators, critics, and scholars have contended with questions surrounding the “modern” over the last two decades. Meier highlights the “multiple modernities” model as a strategic position for both excising the continued anxiety about “authenticity” and moving beyond the “particularism and universalism” to which art historical inquiry is all too closely wedded to.

Theoretical image or the Artist facing history
This paper attempts to demonstrate the theoretical nature of artwork from Jane Alexander's Butcher boys. The formal indeterminacy of this artwork is related to the ambivalence as mentioned by Homi Bhabha about deconstructionist theory. The author underlines the influence of poststructuralist theory on postcolonial discourse and considers the hypothesis that the problem of ambivalence and the critic of temporality are the main ideas that get Butcher boys in the center of postcolonial deconstructionism. From this point of view, the artwork is analyzed in relation to Time, Memory and History in view of South Africa's historical events. The author demonstrates what he names the corporeity of memory as the support of making history.

“Rooted in, but not restricted by”Blackness was and is still en vogue in the beginning of the 21st century, not only in popular culture but also in the arts, which synchronically reproduces classical stereotypes about the Black body and challenges Black artists and scholars not to fall into already established counter-discourses but rather expand the repertoires of representations. This article thus aims to explore the difficulties and intricacies of the idea of post-black art and its curatorial legacy, which was introduced as a curatorial concept in 2001. Additionally, it examines the option of opening up the debate into a wider discourse of identity politics, their various meanings, limitations and promises for the contemporary. The article is framed by a series of questions that are fundamental to understanding the complexity of the idea of post-black. Nana Adusei-Poku foregrounds the discussion with the general considerations “What is post-black art ?” and “What is meant by'black'in post-black art ?”

Art Criticism and Africa“At the time, I had taken what many saw as a hardline, uncompromising position in arguing that the business of the state of art criticism in Africa should be left with the Africans. It was my opinion, too, that this business is one that ideally should be conducted in Africa. The very idea of discussing art criticism and Africa in London or New York did not seem particularly appropriate to me then. Neither does it now. It is, I believe, a reflection of the sad state of that continent and its leaders that five years on it has fallen on us again to speak about art criticism and Africa outside the continent.” Olu Oguibe. Keynote speech delivered at the International Association of Art Critics Conference, Courtauld Institute, London, November 1996.

A plea for a jurisprudence
Emmanuelle Chérel analyzes the experiment conceived by Olive Martin and Patrick Bernier as a defense speech using intellectual property and the status of creator in order to protect foreigners from extradition. This plea articulated within a very specific inquiry about legal technicalities reframes our construction of the artistic sign and its implication in its social context.

Design and ecosophy
By reading two little-known texts by Felix Guattari this paper aims to show the converging points which exist between the ecosophical paradigm that Guattari was developing at the end of his life and contemporary issues of design. A new kind of “minor” design should aspire to produce resingularized and resingularizing “artefacts-interfaces”, locations of heterogenesis connecting natural and cultural, subjective and technical elements. Once design escapes from its “paleolithic era”, it could therefore become (according to Guattari) a “major art” of ecosophy.

Design and the end of commodities
With the movement of Fab Labs society can mobilize productive forces and scientific and technical knowledge. These open workshops promise emancipation. The objects that we design and produce do not divide up our actions but take increase human perception, producing new forms of sensitivity. This new situation gives design the opportunity to break with the “standard” paradigm.

Ecodesign
If the act “in nature” and “by nature” has been the paradigm allowing the evolution of intelligence on Earth, the paradigm of modernity has introduced exponential development processes, uncontrolled and devastating – radically changing the circular, useful and educational relationship between human beings, objects and nature. The article aims to examine artistic expression and contemporary design in order to understand whether and how ecological thinking may give objects meaning, thus reconciling the compromised relationship between being and nature.

From design to DIY in Senegal
By focusing on Senegalese environment, let's try to understand this capacity that human beings have to show ingenuity in order to adapt to precarious conditions, through recycling, do-it-yourself, diversion or simply how people manage to enhance everyday life with objects.

Superflux in slow motion
Olivier Peyricot calls for a design which chooses poetry and poiesis, instead of reducing works to objects. In order to bring politics back into design, he suggests to occupyy humans, with and without objects, in the vacuum of the existence, so that they can finallu dwell into their life.

Strategies of incorporation
Smells are at the same time hidden, incorporated and produced as perfume. Originally linked to the body's organic life, they condition our life at home, as the rooms'occupation and organization is decided according to smelling matter. Hygienic problematics are very linked to aesthetic ones.

Toward open source design
In parallel with open source software, the author advocates for open source dessign. Plans, models, problems can be accessed for free, hacked, toyed, improved and solved. This practice has already a long history which begins with Luddits.