Seventh Cadbury Fellows Workshop

Seventh Cadbury Fellows Workshop

1 March 2010 - 8 May 2010

The Centre of West African Studies at the University of Birmingham (www.cwas.bham.ac.uk) invites applications to contribute to the 2010 Cadbury Fellows’ Workshop, which will focus on popular culture in contemporary urban Africa.

Three visiting fellows from Africa will be appointed to participate in a ten-week schedule of seminars, discussion groups, and other activities. The workshop will culminate in an international conference, 6-8 May 2010 jointly organised with Institute of Anthropological Research in Africa (IARA), University of Leuven, within the framework of AEGIS.

One aim of the Fellowship scheme is to assist new scholars to develop a research paper and bring it to publication, and the conference papers will form the basis of a special issue of Africa, the journal of the International African Institute.

Fellowships will cover return air-fare, accommodation and living costs for a period of ten weeks. The deadline for applications for fellowships is 1 November 2009.

Themes

We welcome contributions that explore the material and symbolic dimensions of urban forms of popular culture. Our central questions for the workshop are:

· How do music and broadcasting media in their material, embodied and symbolic forms participate in the constitution of African urban experience?

· How do urban public spaces and infrastructure in Africa generate specific kinds of practices, discourses and expressions in urban popular culture?

We understand ‘popular culture’ as a zone of ambiguity, constituting a cacophony of sounds and images, and producing variegated narratives, icons and realities. We take 'urban' to be a shifting and relative term, which can include small towns as well as major cities. Against this background, the workshop will explore the following themes:

Space, infrastructure and zones of entertainment

· How do zones of entertainment shape urban life worlds?

· How do music and media events fashion cityscapes in temporary or permanent ways?

· How do local, transnational and international celebrities move around African cities, towns and villages, whether physically or in the imagination?

· Where and when do people flock to witness musicians and media celebrities? How are these events controlled by state officials, ethnic and religious leaders and other social authorities?

Power and popular culture

· What is the place of music and broadcasting in actions of resistance, propaganda and censorship programmes? And how do producers, brokers and audiences adapt to it?

· How and when do politicians and religious leaders become celebrities?

· Where are musicians and media producers (actors, hosts, journalists) positioned on the various axes of power and authority?

· What kind of new social categories emerge in the margins of music and media? We can think of journalists, dubbers and translators, shop keepers, etc. Which social categories make a livelihood out of music and media production and events? And how can they achieve this?

Time and music/media

· Do music and media genres structure the rhythms of city life?

· What do songs and media productions reveal about memory, nostalgia and hope? How are past, present, and future imagined, expressed and brought about via popular culture?

· How do genres, content and celebrities produce a rift between the generations? And, conversely, in what ways do young and old collectively engage with music and media?

Visceral aesthetics and the city

· How does popular culture contribute to ‘the urban feel’ and the imagination of urbanism?

· How ‘urban’ are the aesthetics of music and media that we find in African cities and towns? Do certain music and media productions produce an ‘African urban style’?

· How do the visceral aesthetics of certain music and media genres tie in with larger, more encompassing symbolic worlds such as religion, politics, and/or the market?

· What kind of embodied experiences do music and media producers and audiences yearn for, appreciate, or jettison?

Structure

The Cadbury Fellows’ Workshop and conference will be led by Karin Barber, Katrien Pype and David Kerr. The 10-week programme runs from 1 March 2010 to 8 May 2010. A range of events is planned, among them:

- seminars in which participants present their on-going research

- meetings including reading group, film screenings and visiting speakers

- a three day visit to the Institute of Anthropological Research in Africa (Catholic University of Leuven, Belgium), where the Fellows will interact with anthropologists working on urbanism in sub-Saharan Africa- a three day working party exploring popular texts, with visitors from IARA

- the international conference (6-8 May 2010), in which the three Cadbury Fellows and other researchers will present their work.

How to apply to participate in the conference (6-8 May 2010)

Enquiries and applications are very welcome.

If you wish to present a paper, send a 250-word abstract to David Kerr (d.kerr@bham.ac.uk ) by 1 February 2010. An additional, more detailed call for papers will be circulated in due course. Participants will normally be expected to cover their own travel and accommodation costs. However, funds will be available to support a small number of invited speakers.

More information:

Structure

Who is eligible for a Cadbury Fellowship?

How to apply for a Cadbury Fellowship

How to participate in the Conference

Indian Religious Arts at Large

Its not Nigerian not even African at all ... I've just been reading about Indian popular chromolithographs to get some background for the potential spectrum of practices of visual piety involving mass produced religious imagery for my chapter on the posters ... and this is just amazingly pretty and raises exciting question regarding visual piety, the article I found that in does not address at all: What where the students' motivations behind this? Or, more concretely: Were they purely artistic/academic/etc? Or do they have to be understood against the background of local regimes of visual piety? And if yes, what are implications of the size, media of execution, the location, etc. of these images? Are they at all relevant? What is the iconographic tradition these illustrations stand in? On which basis were the dieties depicted choses? ... ... ...

Now, here's the link to the article this picture illustrated: Larger Than Life, an article in the English-speaking online edition of the German news journal Spiegel.

Posters, Popular Painting and Animation: The Inkale Theme

Quite a while ago I was chatting to my friend Paula who is conducting her doctoral research on African animation. Reading through the draft for an article and discussing a work by Jean Michel Kibushi of the Democratic Republic of Congo I was struck by an illustration: I was hundred percent sure I had seen the same or an iconographically closely related painting at Sabon Kwakwaci Garage in Kano. How exciting I thought. And a few weeks ago, flicking through a volume on African Posters I just happened to come across an illustration of a very similar scene by R. Nwonta of CAS Creation, Janual Caeli Marketing, Onitsha in 2001.

When it comes to my research I seem to react like a toddler who first discovers the world around herself – so yes, I still think that is exciting and, hence, will bother you not only with the illustrations (not of Paula’s article though, sorry) but also with the little information I have been able to find about the so-called Inkale theme.

Wendelin Schmidt, one of the editors of the volume Plakate in Afrika that accompanied a 2005 exhibition at the Museum der Weltkulturen, Frankfurt a.M., and later the same year at the Iwalewa House, Bayreuth, writes with regard to the motif (my quick translation):

‘ … Many calendars draw upon the tradition of sign painters. These don’t conceive of themselves as commercial painters only but also as artist who, in addition to the business, paint pictures in order to articulate their fantasies as well as to visualize discourses about political, social and religious themes. Popular is the Inkale theme which is widespread in Africa (e.g. Congo-Zaire and Senegal). Here a man is shown in a desperate situation hanging on to a tree branch extending over some water. On the banks a tiger and a lion (symbols of influence and power) approach. In the water a hippo and a crocodile (the last a symbol of traditional-religious spirits) wait to seize him. A huge snake moving dangerously close blocks the only escape route. This desperate scene is accompanied by Bible quotes promising salvation and redemption through God. This Inkale theme communicates two different messages: Primarily it suggest that trust in God is required to master desperate situations. Another, political interpretation might consider Inkale a metaphor of an exploitative and corrupt state deceiving its citizens. In that case, the poster’s message in Nigeria were diametrically opposed to the first one. Here, the lion were to represent the state power, the snake to symbolise the Christian evil, and, in a trans-African mindscape [Vorstellungswelt], the crocodile is considered a pagan god playing an important role in witchcraft and magic. The crocodile then represents the impact of occult practices in political and socio-economic aspects of everyday life. The mighty employ such practices to protect themselves against spiritual and worldly attacks by opponents as well as to accumulate riches and influence through intransparent and immoral means. …’

(Schmidt 2005: ‘Populaerkultur und visuelle Kommunikation: Plakat-“Kunst” in Ghana und Nigeria. In: Schmidt & Kramer, eds.: Plakate in Afrika. Frankfurt a.M.: Museum der Weltkulturen. 32-35)

This is what Bogumil Jewsiewicki had to say with regard to the Inkale theme.

Un autre tableau [de Tshibumba] utilise l’icône d’inkale pour faire dialoguer l’événement et le sens partagé du monde. L’inkale, qui signifie l’impasse, est une icône représentant une personne prise en étau entre la sorcellerie (le crocodile), l’État (un prédateur, lion ou léopard selon la version) et le péché chrétien (le serpent). Dans le tableau en question, Tshibumba place les exploitants de diamants dans la position du personnage, les soldats dans celle du lion, et un hélicoptère est substituéau serpent.

(Bogumil Jewsiewicki, 2001: ‘Pour un Pluralisme Epistemologique en Sciences Sociales.’ In: Annales. Histoire, Sciences Sociales. Vol. 2001/3. 634)

As this is kind of a digressionf rom the actual focus of my research, I haven't yet dug anyt deeper for further information on this particular theme - so if anybody can contribute anything, I'd be very grateful. But for now, let's leave it here and ... well, you enjoy the illustrations I go back writing on my PhD.

Some more Illustrations of Religious Chromolithographs Online

I found a few more illustrations of religious posters, this time in the collection of the Tropenmuseum Amsterdam. They are all in the West-Asia & North Africa collection and since I'have not figured how to copy those images (I guess, they've done that on purpose) let me give you the motif and link to the image (hoping that this will still work in a few weeks time or whenever you happen to come across this entry). So, in terms of motifs, there are represented: the Garden of Eden (?, I don't read Arabic and the image is pretty small anyway, but check it out here), Ishamel's sacrifice at the hands of Ibrahim (here), Solomon (here), al-Buraq (here) and the Ka'ba (click here). Hope you enjoy them ...

On Procrastination and the Occasional Online Illustration Gem

I’m still writing on my chapter about the religious chromolithographs I collected in Kano in 2008 – yes, no further comment pls. I already now that I’m being terribly slow here and horribly behind schedule. Let’s just hope the results will make up for the embarrassment I’m feeling about this … But hey, I’m actually writing because I wanted to post a link here that might be of interest to those of you out there who share my excitement about popular religious prints:

I haven’t yet checked out that site in any detail but looks like somebody at Bergen University is actually conducting research into popular Muslim iconography … at first sight, I’d think with particular regard to Shiite iconography. There is a little online exhibition you might want to check out ...

And then, just for reference, there is a beautiful glass painting depicting Sheikh Ahmad Tijani (and bearing a close resemblance to the print I have collected in Kano, thus, probably going back to some shared prototype), Sheikh Ibrahim Niasse and the Prophet Muhammad documented on the site of Joseph Hill of the American University in Cairo.

Alright, for me its now: do I write another page or better go to bed and get some rest …

I have just come back from a day that started at Kurmi Market talking to sellers of religious posters. Personally I'm particularly interested in the older ones that have reportedly been imported from Cairo some fifty years ago as well as their locally produced reprints. They show portraits of sufi sheikhs, scenes from the old testament as well as from Muslim history.

I wonder to which extent they have informed a contemporary local discourse on visuals arts in which portraits of sheikhs (and to some extend politicians) can be found all over the town on posters, murals and stickers. But in order to make any such argument I need to know more about the history of these posters, the context in which they were produced, their original audience/consumers, the origin of their iconography etc.

In addition to my own interest I have also met a really nice and assisting local researcher, Nura Ibrahim from the Department of Mass Communication at Bayero University, who is interested in the history of these posters for his MA own research into contemporary posters and their semiotics.

Unfortunately we have not been able to learn to much about the history of these posters from the traders. They inherited their business from their fathers and all they know is what they've been told and that the posters were already available here in Kano before they took over.

Hence, if anybody out there might be able to advice us as to where to look for information on these posters or whom to talk to (probably via email/internet for the moment being) we'd be really grateful!!!

D Lorry Painters in Sabon Kwakwaci

During the last two or three weeks I finally got around to approaching lorry painters – don’t get me wrong I have tried before. Then my point of departure was the address on the back of a lorry I saw and photographed right during my second day in town. However, it took forever to figure out where exactly the place mentioned there was. My local friends, I have to say, were not of great help either. ‘Kwakinachi, D/Tofa, Kano’ it read.

First time around, nobody had heard of the place at all. Then Ibrahim came up with the suggestion that the place might be misspelled and actually referring to Kwakwaci. Alright, so where then is Kwakwaci? Sabon Gari I was told, not far away from where I lodge, I was told. By more then one person. So, I got onto a bike and went there. And, I really found one guy who claimed to paint lorries. But then, for some reason I couldn’t help it but suspect he didn’t really know what I was talking about – paintings on lorries? Well, he’s doing signs, so this must be what I’m talking about. Something along those lines. However, even my helpful achaba driver was irritated by the guy’s lack of comprehension of my (admittedly basic) Hausa. (He understood me alright.) So, I chose to get a translator.

Getting Ibrahim to actually turn out somebody took another week or two. (see Salisu below to the right, on the left is Garba who assisted us a lot, himself a lorry painter) During which I developed major doubts about the guy I met at the Kwakwaci in Sabon Gari. I kept on asking people what D/Tofa could actually mean. Nobody came up with anything. Until, by chance, I myself came about a mention of Dawakin Tofa Local Government in some article. And there it clicked. The moment I mentioned this to Ibrahim he remembered that there are actually three Kwakwaci in Kano and one of them Sabon or New Kwakwaci in Dawakin Tofa local government, 30 mins – 1 hrs journey on a minibus (depending on traffic and how often they stop for passengers to get on and of).

Turns out this was the right track, finally after almost 6 weeks. In fact, as we discovered this week after three unsuccessful journeys there to meet whom we thought to be the third of two masters residing there we found out that there are about 20 or so workshops at the place. In addition the guys down there pointed us towards three other workshops, two of them on the town’s ring road, one at yet another Kwakwaci further in town. And, as most of the painters were actually were willing to answer a few questions I think I got quite a bit of information to go through and summarise during the weekend. And lots of pictures, some of which I’ll upload.
(Impression of Sabon Kwakwaci)
The only disappointment were two painters who didn’t talk to me. One of them had us come three times to see him and me wasting a whole eve to translate my questions into Hausa and neatly write them down for him. All this just to tell us the third time around (after we spent over an hour waiting for him to turn up for our appointment) that he couldn’t talk to me. – Supposedly, because I didn’t have a permanent office in Kano! A researcher at BUK suggested that might be a lie to cover up something else. It might well be that somebody told him I was a spy or reminded him not to trust a white person or something like that. It’s only too sad, in fact, very annoying: we were referred to him as one of the oldest painters at the location and one of the trainees of the guy who originally introduced the craft in Kano. The other one of the two, I don’t really know what happened. Twice he had just left when we arrived to see him (in one case to still find the open paint tins in front of an unfinished work) and was not to be expected back any time soon. Now it appears he resettled with his workshop in Jos, a few hours drive southeast. Well, as the town’s home to one of the oldest and most famous workshops in the northern region I will have to go there anyway and then we’ll see whether he ‘just’ miraculously resettled in Kano or what!

(a Christian motif, on a lorry probably coming from the south ... even with reference to the particular psalm in the bible, unfortunately they don't state the workshop where it was done ...)