F.Y.I The Kumasi Symposium- if there are still spaces

CALL FOR ARTISTS


One means of Tapping Local Resources for Sustainable Education through Art is by bringing together specialists from 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.


FIVE-MINUTE VIDEO DOCUMENTARY
The participant will then develop a Five-Minute Video art piece that will document or frame the process and structure of own/others' (Curio Kiosk) practice in context of the largeness of The Kumasi Symposium. The project needs a producer to guide the artists in creating a multi-media documentary of their practice- one who will enable the artists to shoot and edit the video films.


CALL FOR PLENARY SESSIONS, DEMONSTRATIONS/WORKSHOPS, EXHIBITIONS/INTERVENTIONS, AND CONTEXT-SPECIFIC PERFORMANCES

THE KUMASI SYMPOSIUM: Tapping Local Resources for Sustainable Education through Art
Department of General Art Studies, College of Arts and Social Sciences,
Kwame Nkrumah University of Science and Technology (KNUST), Kumasi, Ghana
July 31-August 14, 2009


Our 2009 Kumasi event uses arts-based social practice to bringing together specialists from diverse parts of the world in a trans-national platform for inter-change of cultural and knowledge capital in evidence-based society to strengthen visual arts practice and promote cultural entrepreneurship in Ghana. A call is, thus, made for contributions addressing one or more of the symposium sub-themes: Art Education Practice, Studio Practice, Curatorial/Museum/Community Arts Practice, Art History/Criticism, Arts Administration/Management/Marketing Practice, and Open Session. Specifically, the symposium entails plenary sessions and support activities such as demonstrations/workshops, exhibitions, and site-specific tours of local national resources. Expression of interest and proposals for Plenary Sessions and Exhibitions/Practical Workshops will be reviews until January 17, 2009. Applications for individual presentation and participation will be reviewed until the space is filled. We expect about 200 participants from around the world. The working language of the conference will be English. All abstracts and brief biographies should be submitted to africoae@gmail.com. More at http://afropoets.tripod.com/eta

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