Condition Report 5: A Sense of Place/Displacement

RAW Material Company is pleased to announce its upcoming symposium Condition Report 5: A Sense of Place/Displacement, an international gathering conceived in collaboration with writer, Senegalese academic and Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University, Felwine Sarr, to be held in Dakar from December 18 to 21, 2024 at Musée Théodore Monod d'Arts africain. 

As part of our constant negotiation and play with different scales of relationality, being at once deeply rooted in the local context of Dakar and involved in trans-regional and continental networks, RAW Material Company has organized four symposia reflecting on the status of artistic and curatorial practice in Africa. Condition Report contributes to the emergence of new discourses and awareness in relation to the dynamics of the contemporary art landscape. In 2012, the Symposium on Building Art Institutions in Africa focused on how independent art institutions contributed to shaping the field. This was followed by the Symposium on Artistic Education in Africa (2014). The Condition Report 3 took place at the Museum of Black Civilizations with a focus on Art History in Africa (2018), in collaboration with art historian Ugochukwu-Smooth Nzewi. The fourth edition of the symposia took place in Bangladesh as part of the renowned Dhaka Art Summit, under the title Stepping Out of Line: Artists collectives and translocal parallelism (2020).

“A Sense of Place” can be literally translated in French as ‘le sens d'un lieu/la relation avec un lieu’, although it can also refer to a sense of belonging to a place. It is a complex, multidimensional construct at the intersection of social, material and symbolic meanings that characterizes the relationship between people and spatial environments. It refers to the emotional bonds and attachments that people experience in places, on scales ranging from the home to the nation. It can also play an important role in the construction of identity, community and the understanding of cultural heritage. It encompasses the full range of lived experiences in forms of expression that are imagined, desired, conserved, preserved, remembered, contested and advocated.

The main aim of this fifth international symposium is to provide a platform for reflection on our relationship with the world through the following 5 axes: the city, the living, the intangible and the cosmopolitics of hospitality. How do we inhabit the place and the world in which we live? How have actors—active in our local contexts and from across the creative disciplines— responded to and shaped their—our—environment? How do they create sites of possibility? Evoking questions as a way of framing our commitment to what Felwine Sarr describes as “epistemologies of the sensitive”.

These questions will be explored by a range of scholars, philosophers, creative practitioners, including architects, artists, filmmakers, curators, and extraordinary collectives of innovative practices: inaugural keynote given by writer and Senegalese academic Professor Felwine Sarr, confirmed participants will include Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou, Eyumane Assengone, Mouhamadou El Hady Ba, Lesego Bantsheng, Alyssa Barry, Ana Pi & Dj Firmeza, Rokia Bamba, Hicham Bouzid, Nora Chipaumire, Alice Diop, Carole Diop & Nzinga Mboup, Elizabeth Gallon Droste, yasmine eid-sabbagh, Ola Hassanain, Nadia Kopogo, El hadj Malick Ndiaye, Mame Fatou Niang, Ernesto Oroza, Marie-Hélène Pereira, Aliou Sall,  Fatou Seydi Singhiam Sarr, César Cardoso Schofield, Maboula Soumahoro, with more to be announced. 

The symposium is open to the public and free of charge. A limited number of public spaces will be available. RVSP at info@rawmaterialcompany.org by November 18, 2024.

Please note
International attendees are kindly requested to arrange their own accommodation and travel to Senegal and notify the travel coordinator of their attendance.

Coordination
Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy: lecture@rawmaterialcompany.org
Delphine Buysse: programmes@rawmaterialcompany.org

Travel coordination
Mame-Farma Fall: admin@rawmaterialcompany.org

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RAW Partners
RAW Material Company wishes to acknowledge the valuable support of Arts Collaboratory, Mellon Foundation, Little Sun.