My learning is affected by the condition of my life

We are pleased to announce the project My learning is affected by the condition of my life by Aude Christel Mgba, an independent curator and art historian and co-curator of sonsbeek20->24 exhibition. My learning is affected by the condition of my life is a project that is intended as a constellation, a symposium spread over time, centred around a critical reflection on the future of art school. The title comes from a lecture by Professor Kopani Ratelo given in 2017 about Decolonising research, teaching & learning: Situating Africa.The title wants to acknowledge the importance of taking the learner into account as an active participant of knowledge production and transmission but also the context as an element that influences the learning.

The programme of the symposium will be developed through an analysis of some current and past forms of school (artist collectives, art studios, l'ecole sous l'arbre, etc) by discussing its actual role of current structures of art schools and how it serves new liberal structures. We will be looking at forms of art schools that can think of the society as a whole, where mutual support could be a common feature, looking at structures that more keenly encourage collective and collaborative thinking rather than individual auteurism and that is organically allowing intersection between disciplines and spaces.

This is an attempt at an epistemic reconstruction that leads towards experimenting with various forms of learning, listening, touching, transmitting and producing knowledge. A reconstruction that experiments with the values of collectivity and multidisciplinarity, and of openness versus enclosure. A reconstruction that uses the body as an entity in itself, as an element of knowledge, and that allows plurality and transversality.

My learning is affected by the condition of my life is not an invention but rather an inquiry into pre-existing places, spaces and events. Artists, curators, researchers, writers etc. who already engage with these topics in their practice were invited to participate in the making of a common tool through different formats such as workshops, conversations, performances, screening and writing. This common tool in the making will be a very small-scale edition of a new syllabus for
educators and for students.

The undoubted disconnection between the current system of art and the public, makes art a "white’s thing'' and this idea is increasingly attached to the social life of this activity. How? Dr. Tchandeu Narcisse Santores writes about this in his essay: From 'Collective Anonymity' to 'Individual Mark': Rediscovering African Art as a Model for Participatory, Interactive and Environmentalist Education.

The film La coquille features a conversation between filmmaker Antje Majewski and Issa Nsamb (*1945-2017), a Senegalese artist, actor, philosopher, author, critic, and co-founder of the interdisciplinary initiative, Laboratoire Agit-Art.

In a pre-recorded online conversation Antje Majewski, Annette Schemmel and Aude Christel Mgba talk about systems of transmission and making of art, spaces of learning and making. The discussion investigates ideas around Annette Schemmel's research of the major actors, discourses and paradigm that shaped the history of visual arts in Cameroon during the second part of the 20th century and Antje Majewski's experience on working and collaborating with Issa Samb around the film La coquille.

Système de Grands-Frères is a 9’36’’ audio visual material by Annette Schemmel about her book on ways to become a visual artist in Cameroon.

An interview made in 1969 in which Malian writer, historian and ethnologist Amadou Hampâté Bâ shows how colonization, literacy, and at a different level, ethnological work, have broken the springs which allowed this culture to perpetuate and develop. And a pre-recorded talk with Aude Mgba, Karima Boudou and Renée Mboya.

The tree is a movie about a man that remembers his life and the stages of his training as a human being made by Tally Mbok who lives and works in Douala Cameroon. He is an experimental artist and founder of the concept "ancestral future", project of research into the archives of African belief systems.