Programme

Bending Towards Freedom - Conditions and Contradictions of Cultural Production in (Post-) Colonial Societies

Symposium on African Culture 7-8 Sept 1998 in Aula Nordica, Umeå universitet

* Free entrance * All lectures in English

Arranged in conjunction with the exhibition Democracy´s Images: Photography and Visual Art After Apartheid at BildMuseet in Umeå 6/9-8/11 1998, the symposium addresses the conditions and prospects of the visual arts in democratic South Africa, in relation to the specific anti-apartheid tradition of documentary photography in South Africa. Furthermore, the symposium looks at broader issues of the conditions of cultural work in post-colonial or post-apartheid societies in a South African and African context. What implications does the shift from colonial to post-colonial have for the work of culture? What consequences did the fall of apartheid have for cultural production in South Africa? What are the constituents of the work of memory and history? What when (South) African art and culture now re-enters "the international scene"?

Participants:
Rory Bester, art critic, Johannesburg, South Africa
Okwui Enwezor, art critic, curator, editor, New York, USA
Jean Fisher, editor, writer, London, UK
Raoul Granqvist, Department of English, Cultural Studies, Umeå University, Sweden
Michael Godby, arthistorian, University of Western Cape, Cape Town, South Africa
Stefan Helgesson, literary critic, Department of Literature, Uppsala University, Sweden
Jan-Erik Lundström, director, BildMuseet, photography historian, Sweden
Moa Matthis, critic, Stockholm, Sweden
Gordon Metz, writer, curator, cultural activist, Cape Town, South Africa
Tracey Rose, artist, Cape Town, South Africa
Penny Siopis, artist, Johannesburg, South Africa
Dessutom/In addition: The films of William Kentridge, South Africa

Monday 7/9

13.00
Opening the symposium: Jan-Erik Lundström

13.30
Gordon Metz: South African Social Documentary Photography After Apartheid

14.30
Michael Godby: Dismantling the Symbolic Structure of African Nationalism: Gideon Mendel's "Beloofde Land", Photographs 1989

15.00
Coffee break

15.30
Penny Siopis: Home Movies: A Document of a South African Life

16.00
Rory Bester: The Sight of Truth: Body and Performance in Visual Representations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission

16.30
Videoscreening: History of the Main Complaint, UBU Tells the Truth by William Kentridge
Moderator: Jan-Erik Lundström

19.00
Party at BildMuseet

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Tuesday 8/9

9.30
Raoul Granqvist: Postcolonial African City Culture: Its Rules of Chaos and Sites of Memory

10.30
Stefan Helgesson: The Dilemma of Freedom: Predicaments of Literary Production in Democratic South Africa

11.30
Tracey Rose

12.00
Lunch

13.00
Jean Fisher: The Third Text

14.00
Okwui Enwezor: Remembrance of Things Past: Memory and the Archive

15.00
Coffee break

15.15
Moa Matthis: The White Woman's Burden in Colonial Kenya: Construction of Race and Gender in the Writings of Karen Blixen, Elspeth Huxly and Beryl Markham

16.00
Discussion