Work In Progress

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Sub-urban, the Urban Espresso Bar's video-lounge presents:

work in progress

05.04.2011 - 18.04.2011

ALITE THIJSEN : work in progress : 2009 - 2011

The camera is Alite Thijsen's instrument to get a view on social processes. For her the images are
snapshots, inseparable from the context. The author, the subject, the location, the accidental encounters
and the assembly, all those elements determine what is shown.

Over the past twenty years Alite Thijsen has frequently worked and travelled in Africa. Through her
experience she questions the absolute nature of knowledge gathering. The artist's video which is now on
show in Sub urban video lounge is shot in Casamanca (Senegal) during the boukout ceremony. The origin of
the boukout goes way back in the past and seems to be unaffected by evangelisation, conversion,
colonialism and globalization. In an indeterminate moment, once in twenty years, the youngsters in the
village are initiated by the elderly into social practice and tested in their defensibility.

For this important initiation former inhabitants return to their village, coming from all over the world. The fact
that the public part of the ceremonies is now open to an outsider with a camera, proofs that tradition is not a
fixed phenomenon. But what does this mean for this tradition in the future?


coming up :
19.04.2011 - 03.05.2011 : ALITE THIJSEN : CASABLANCA WORKSHOPS


SUB URBAN VIDEO LOUNGE

Screenings: daily from 12h - 17h

Urban Espresso Bar - Botersloot 44A (near Central Library) Rotterdam
sub@urbanespressobar.nl - www.sub.urbanespressobar.nl

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