in the framework of
ROSES DES VENTS DIGITAL
Digital Diffusion Project Africa/Caribbean
EU/ACP Programme supporting cultural industries in ACPM countries

Art, Technologies and Societal Transformation in Africa

In 2008, Kër Thiosssane organized the first edition of the Afropixel Festival, which encouraged the public to envisage art and technology as a means of citizens' action in the countries of the South, and to understand the opportunities afforded by open source tools and technology for African artistic creation.
Following on from this first edition, Afropixel 2010 invites artists, computer scientists, researchers, thinkers, actors in civil society and entrepreneurs to exchange and express their points of view on the place and the impact of new technologies in present-day African societies.
Through exhibitions, installations, performances, conferences, public debates and workshops, the Festival will enable the examination of issues, and also the limits of new technologies for development in Africa, in fields as diverse as urban transformation, ecology, education, citizenship and democracy.
Workshops will present different alternatives made available through new technologies, in open source forms, an aiming at real and sustainable African development.
This year, Afropixel is participating in the dynamic of the Mobile A2K and WikiAfrica Art projects proposed by the Lettera 27 Foundation, concerning new educational opportunities offered by the mobile telephone, Internet platforms, open source licences and social networks in Africa.
On the other hand, Afropixel has become enriched by collaboration with Ce Qui Vient, project of the Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rennes 2010, which focuses attention on what tomorrow means and on the way in which we think about the future in our societies. Thus, Kër Thiossane will welcome the "Laboratoire des Perspectives Singulières" (Laboratory of Singular Prospects - Thinking About the Future) during the Afropixel Festival.
The Afropixel Festival is in keeping with the international co-operation project Rose des Vents Digital, carried by Kër Thiossane. This project of the setting-up of a network of African and Caribbean structures active in the field of digital art benefits from a support programme for cultural industries set up by the European Union and the Office for African/Caribbean/ Pacific States.

Afropixel Themes

Afropixel 2010 aims to generate a debate on the place of new technologies in today's society and to envisage its active use.
Around artistic digital creation projects there are questions of ecology, town development, democracy and citizenship, and education. The propositions developed serve as a basis for reflection about our societies, thinking about our collective future, and being inventive and innovative.
The question of the creation of specific digital tools and contents on the African continent will be at the centre of the project, in particular through workshops on open source software and DIY (Do It Yourself) and making available tools for the sharing and diffusion of knowledge. Training in open source software, creation residences, working meetings and the setting up of a network of artists and actors in the digital world will enable the participants to work concretely together.
Afropixel 2010 will take place over one month, in the framework of the Biennale of Dakar OFF, and will be composed of different actions :
- Artistic Residences
- Exhibitions, performances concerts, film shows...
- Public Debates/Colloquies
- Public training - workshops
- A Laboratory of Thinking About the Future: "Le Laboratoire de Prospectives Singulières"

Afropixel in detail

Residences for Malian, Caribbean and French Artists
April - Mai 2010
Before the Festival, Audry Liseron Monfils (Guyane / Belgique) - Jean KATAMBAYI MUKENDI (RDC) will each spend 3 weeks in a residence at Kër Thiossane, in order to develop a local project. These artistic projects will focus on problems linked to the state of our societies and their future (ecology, democracy and citizenship).
During the residences, Kër Thiossane will provide space and material, as well as logistical and technical accompaniment for each team in the venue.


Exhibitions, Performances, Concerts, Public Events
10 - 12 May 2010
The fruit of research and work developed by these artists in residence at Kër Thiossane will be presented at the opening of the Afropixel Festival - from 10 - 12 May 2010 - in the framework of the Biennale of Dakar OFF, in the form of exhibitions and installations at Kër Thiossane but also in other spaces taken over for the occasion (art galleries, cultural venues, public space).
During the festival, other free public events will be presented, such as film shows, exhibitions, installations, performances, concerts, and individual or collective artists' "cartes blanches", which use multimedia in their execution. The work put on show will interest at the same time the public, inhabitants, art amateurs, and regular visitors.

The future in question : The Laboratory de Prospectives Singulières, in partnership with Les Ateliers - Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rennes, France
10/11 May 2010
In collaboration with Les Ateliers - Biennale of Contemporary Art, Rennes, France, which will be held from 30 April to 19 July 2010, a Laboratory of Thought entitled "Laboratoire de Prospectives Singulières" will bring together African and European artists, thinkers, scientists and economists to exchange, artistically and intellectually, on thinking about the future. This laboratory is an African prolongation of the reflections carried out during the second edition of the Biennale of Rennes, entitled Ce qui vient and which focuses on ways of envisaging the future in our societies.

Seminar-exchanges centred on the question "Urban Transformations and New Technologies in Africa".
11 May 2010
According to Carlo Ratti of Senseable City Lab, Massachusetts Institute Technology, digital technologies will change towns in a more profound way than did the Industrial Revolution ; not so much their physical aspects but in lifestyles, use in the town, and behaviour.
What of the large and over-crowded African cities, often near to explosion with insufficient and dilapidated infrastructures, subject to the anarchical growth of the town ? How can digital technology help African communities, civil society and the private sector to participate more in the urban management of their towns? Artists, thinkers, sociologists, and actors in the civil society of Africa and elsewhere will exchange on this subject.
In the West, the potential of the wave of new technology produced by exchange of information via mobile telephones and other communicant objects (cameras, pollution or traffic sensors, radio frequency identification chips...) is just beginning to be explored by researchers. What about this potential in African towns?

Mobile A2K
www.interdisciplines.org
Afropixel is participating in the dynamic of the Mobile A2K and WikiAfrica Art projects proposed by the Lettera 27 Foundation, which focuses on new educational opportunities offered by mobile telephones, Internet platforms, open source licences and social networks in Africa.
In October 2009, experts, cultural operators and artists from Africa, America and Europe met at the Rockefeller Foundation Bellagio Centre for an international symposium centred on questions of mobile technologies and their uses for educational purposes. Afropixel ties in with the follow-up to this event; the themes examined by the Festival - namely, the relationships between technologies and urban and societal transformations - will be the object of an interactive exhibition, presented in the OFF of Dak'Art, Biennale of Contemporary Art of Dakar. Following this, the exhibition will also be presented in Douala, (Cameroon), Cape Town (South Africa), Milan (Italy), New York (USA) and Paris (France), and will gradually be enriched by new content along its journey.

Workshops-Training
1 to 9 May 2010/12 to 22 May 2010
In partnership with the Multimedia Laboratory Art Sensitif (France) and the South African co-operative Trinity Session, two Workshops will be offered to African and Caribbean artists and computer scientists. These Workshops will provide the opportunity for exchange and training-transmission.
Each training course will welcome a dozen participants selected by dossier, following a wide-ranging Call for Candidature. Amongst the participants will in particular be students from the National School of Arts or the Computer Science Department of the University of Dakar.
- The first Workshop presented by Trinity Session will focus on urban public space, formal or virtual. Its theme will be of the use of technology in public space in the large cities of the South (Dakar, Bombay, and Johannesburg).
- The second, with two participants from the Art Sensitif Resource Centre will be a workshop on open source software and tools, focused on neophyte public: artists, teachers, students, managers, amateurs, hackers, multimedia enthusiasts... This workshop will enable them to discover the culture of open source material, Do It Yourself, and basic notions in physical computing.
The result of these workshops will be publicly presented at Kër Thiossane in the form of an exhibition/performances. Several concrete applications of these open source and renewable technologies will be studied and presented: computers, peripheral; washing machines, open source de-fibrillators, solar ovens...

Speakers and Participants
- Artists
- Thinkers, intellectuals, actors in the cultural world civil society
- Scientists and economists
- Professionals in the Cultural, Artistic and Multimedia Sectorsau Pixel).

The Public
- Artists, public of the Biennale, amateurs of art, professionals of art and culture (gallery owners, collectors, programmers, exhibition organizers...) Africans and Westerners who go to every edition of the Biennale and make thorough visits of the parallel OFF events.
- The Dakar people, the public of proximity (larger public), too often on the outside of the Biennale and not concerned with it, yet who can discover digital art during the events; exhibitions, concerts, performances, film shows.
- Young people, for whom training and initiation models will specifically be set up in order to provide them with a creative approach to new technologies;
- The students and teachers of University level schools of art, multimedia and computer studies who wish to specialize in open source software as at the Polytechnic School of the University Cheik Anta Diop and the National School of Art
- Professionals in the creative economy and communication sectors because the contribution of competences in digital creation will benefit the development and the improvement of productions of industries linked to new technologies.




ANNEXES

Afropixel and the Rose des Vents Digital Project
Afropixel is an event of the "Roses des Vents Digital" project, created by Kër Thiossane. This project receives financial support from the Support Programme for Cultural Industries set up by the European Union and the Unions of African/Caribbean/Pacific States.
The objective of Rose des Vents Digital is to enable digital co-operation between multimedia cultural spaces in Africa and in the Caribbean. This project aims at the development of digital artistic co-operation, the sharing of technical, cultural and artistic knowledge, between Senegal, Mali, South Africa and the Caribbean, countries and regions rich in experiences and different cultural universes.
The Rose des Vents Digital project will provide visibility for venues, projects and artistic and digital contents in Africa and the Caribbean. It will enable a better understanding of venues, actors, projects, as well as a better comprehension of specific issues for the African continent. It will enable the development of a network of actors and the creation of tools and contents particular to Africa and the Caribbean.

Kër Thiossane
Kër Thiossane began its activities in 2002 in Dakar. In 2003, with the participation of the Canadian Daniel Langlois Foundation for Art, Science and New Technologies, the association opened a digital public space, with the aim of offering to the Senegalese activities other than simple consumption - the fascination of the Internet, diffused by the numerous cybercafés in the country.
A venue for research, residence, creation and training, Kër Thiossane encourages the integration of multimedia in traditional artistic and creative practices, and seeks to support the mixing of disciplines.
Kër Thiossane focuses its activities on research into art and new technologies and what they imply in our societies through residences, training, meetings and workshops. In 2008 it set up the first Afropixel Festival that focused on open source software linked with citizens' practices in Africa and in Southern countries.
Kër Thiossane develops its exchanges and collaboration with structures in the African continent, but develops links with other continents, in particular in a South-South perspective (without intervention from a Western country). To achieve this, Kër Thiossane sets up projects of international co-operation, such as the Rose des Vents Digital project.
Kër Thiossane seeks to link the development of artistic digital practices to other domains of society; education and training, creative industries, citizenship, ecology and town development.

Context and Issues
During the last few years, the use of technologies - mobile telephone, computer, Internet - has known a development without precedent in Africa. The Africans have adopted these technologies with spectacular rapidity. Some people see the entry of Africa into the planetary village as an obvious fact, and new technologies as a means of getting the Black Continent out of marginalization and poverty. Now, in the main, Africans remain passive recipients and consumers of technological products manufactured elsewhere.
What is the reality of transformations linked to new technologies in Africa in society? What relationship is there between new technologies and questions of ecology, town development, education, citizenship and democracy? Today, technologies question our project for society with great acuity; their use reveals the faults of our collective functioning at the same time as it opens up potential for thinking about the future and taking things in hand.
Digital Technologies, Ecology, Environment and Town Planning in Africa: What Issues?
In Africa, questions of ecology and the environment are very little taken into account by citizens, or by the public authorities; when rapid development of towns generates important problems of pollution and living environment, the contribution of technologies in this context to the environment is ambivalent.
On the one hand, the inflation of the need for information brings with it the proliferation of technological tools and their consequences; heavy requirements in energy resources, exploitation of toxic matter, and accumulation of computer waste. This data is not taken into consideration when the technological development of the African continent is envisaged. Thus, in Africa, imports of computer material are developing in an amazingly rapid manner, without any thought being given to its use, it recycling, or its impact on the environment.
On the other hand, digital tools bring high quality, new and original knowledge of our environment (measuring pollution, resources cartography) and are powerful tools for analysis and development. Digital technologies can also help to reveal situations in the field of pollution, ecology, and resources both to citizens and public authorities, and thus provide tools in the field of town development.


What Production of Technologies and Contents in Africa in the Context of Economy of Knowledge?
The rapid emergence of a globalized society, founded on the exchange of information and knowledge through information and communication technologies, tends to widen the gap between countries having committed to this mutation towards an economy of knowledge, and the others. The difficulty that African countries have in acceding to new technologies of information and communication puts a brake on the economic and social development, and also artistic and cultural development, of these countries, by excluding them from the world movement of exchanges.
If numerous cybercafés have opened in the large towns of Africa during the past few years, this means a simple consumption-fascination with the Internet, limited to navigation on the Web, messages, games, or downloading music. The use of digital tools has hardly been developed at all. The African countries produce very little content and very little technology, and find themselves in a position of being passive consumers of products (contents, software) manufactured elsewhere.