06 Jan 2009

Call for Participation at The Kumasi Symposium

CALL FOR ARTS PRACTITIONERS - The Kumasi Curio Kiosk Project

One means of Tapping Local Resources for Sustainable Education through Art is by bringing together specialists form diverse parts of the world in a trans-national platform for inter-trading of cultural and knowledge capital in evidence-based society. In the Kumasi Curio Kiosks Project, the trade of intellectual capital from the specialist to the generalist requires both the sharing of existing and onward replication of the modules of knowledge that may accrue. Interestingly, the specialist participant will create a Curio Kiosk of 6 x 6ft for a temporary exhibition/stock of works by the specialist, and relevant other national cultural/intellectual capital for trading with the locals. The 6 x 6ft kiosk can be conceived as a mental space or a constructed physical space with any material, constructed on site or pre-fabricated, and as an individual enterprise or a collaborative one.

In the Kumasi case, we refer to the cluster of curio kiosks as a Trade Commune; a historical allusion be made subtly but we use the term 'curio kiosks' in anticipation that the outward design will invoke curiosity or content will bear special attraction to the locals. The setting for a Trade Commune may be a Kumasi city street, university campus, or a village within the Kumasi metro, as appropriate to the design of the arts participant. The mode of exchange is open in manners of traditional lectures, demonstrations, workshops, dialogical methods, and direct exchanges of material culture; or the post-modernist modalities in the way of performances, slide/new media/film screenings, and a hundred others. A trade may be by barter, cash, gift to the local or what ever is simpler and mutual. The trade is not just an inventory of arts data, cross-cultural process of negotiation and sharing of evidence creation; it is an engagement in a particular kind of commercial enterprise through use of the arts. Relying on collaboration, and free exercise of the arts, we therefore seek to stimulate for intellectual freedom and renewed vision of the arts as economic-cultural capital in the city. Because the process and structure encourages integration/assertion of the participant's institutional knowledge and national cultural capital, the supposition is that the individual or group would attract sponsorship for own costs from home institution or country.

The Kumasi Curio Kiosks Project is a project session of 'The Kumasi Symposium: Tapping Local Resources for Sustainable Education through Art'. The arts-based social experiment is designed to provide a context that will stimulate the artist, scholar and activist participants to place themselves and their practice into question and possibly resolutions through collaboration and cultural/artistic interchange. The pre-symposium session will run from July 31-August 8 2009 and the symposium from July 11-14 2009. About 30 local artists will be selected to work alongside some invited international colleagues.

If interested in participating in the project, send an introductory material on you, and a statement of interest with sketches/description of your proposed 6 x 6 ft Curio Kiosk that should be set up at Kumasi between July 31-August 7 2009 to africoae@gmail.com, -indicate if any local needs will be required (max. one page). Space is limited; all submissions will be reviewed until space is filled. We are also accepting nominations for the Project Co-Curator, Convener, Provocateur and Roundtable Discussants.

CALL FOR PLENARY SESSIONS, DEMONSTRATIONS/WORKSHOPS, EXHIBITIONS/INTERVENTIONS, AND CONTEXT-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCES - Tapping Local Resources For Sustainable Education Through Art

A call is made for contributions addressing one or more of the symposium strands and topics: Art Education Practice, Studio Practice, Curatorial/Museum/Community Arts Practice, Art History/Criticism, Arts Administration/Management/Marketing Practice, and Open Session. The aim of this symposium will be to map a multiplicity of perspectives and initiate conversations which seek to help us navigate and understand our position as individuals and communities in dealing with the issue of sustainability in the 21st century to enable fresh vistas to visual arts education developments in Ghana and perhaps similar settings. Submissions are, therefore, invited from people who would like to present in the symposium plenary sessions or support activities such as demonstrations/workshops, exhibitions/interventions, and site-specific tours of local national resources. Expression of interest and proposals for panels and Exhibitions/Practical Workshops will be reviews until January 17, 2009. We expect about 200 participants from around the world. The working language of the conference will be English. Applications for individual paper presentation and participation will be reviewed until the space is filled. All abstracts and brief biographies should be submitted to africoae@gmail.com. More at

http://afropoets.tripod.com/eta


CONTACT PERSONS:

(1) Barthosa Nkurumeh, AfriCOAE General Secretary, Instructional Leadership & Academic Curriculum Dept, University of Oklahoma, Norman, OK 73070, USA. E-mail: nkurumeh@ou.edu

(2) Nana Afia Opoku-Asare, Head of Department, Department of General Art Studies, College of Arts and Social Sciences, Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology-KNUST, Kumasi, Ghana. E-mail: naopoku-asare.art@knust.edu.gh, afia_asare@yahoo.co.uk Tel: 233 (0)20 816-8598/233 (0)51 634 83.