The Audience of Images:
Visual Publics in Africa and Beyond

15 - 17 November 2002

Iwalewa-House, African Studies Centre
University of Bayreuth
Muenzgasse 9
95444 Bayreuth / Germany

Convenor: Peter Probst

While the recent increase of studies in the realm of visual culture has led to new and exiting insights in the role of images as active agents in the political economy of desire and the shaping of social movements in colonial and postcolonial Africa, the issue of the audience of these images remains a vexing question. All too often respective statements with regard to the actual effect of images on a given public are based more on assumptions than on empirically grounded arguments.

Apart from methodological problems, one basic reason for this is the lack of an appropriate visual theory of the public. Steeped deeply in the cultural tradition of Western modernity, our notion of the public is primarily a verbal one. Modern institutional concepts like public law or public sphere for example, are not only a legacy of the enlightenment. They also reflect the exclusive reliance on language only. As such they concede the capacity of constituting a critical rational discourse for the legitimacy of power solely to words, leaving the realm of the visual associated with the stigma of suspicion and mistrust.

With respect to the rapidly changing visual landscape in contemporary Africa the workshop intends to counter this perspective by trying to develop and give substance to the concept of visual publics. Addressing theoretical as well empirical issues, the case studies which will be presented are as heterogeneous as the new visual landscapes in Africa itself. They may thus range from the emergence of video films as a new but already firmly established genre of African popular art, over the spread of charismatic Christianity and its extensive use of visual media, to new architectural forms in the suburbia and the increasing articulations between national art scenes and the global art world.

FRIDAY, 15.11.02

15.15 - 15.30
Peter Probst, Bayreuth
Opening Remarks

15.30 - 16.15
Onookome Okome, Edmonton
Seeing through the Prism of the Popular Public: Reading the Real and the Imagined Images of Nigerian Video Films

16.15 - 17.00
Jean-Francois Werner, Dakar/Paris
The Domestication of Modernity In Africa.
A Case-Study of the Reception and Consumption Of Telenovelas In Dakar (Sénégal)

17.00 - 17.45
Giorgio Miescher & Lorena Rizzo, Basel,
Seeing Posters in Namibia: A Historical Perspective

19.00
Exhibit-Opening, BLUEBOX
Happy Millenium. New Pictures of the Likoni Ferry Photographers
music: www.knagg.net

SATURDAY, 16.11.02

9.30 - 10.15
Afe Adogame, Bayreuth
New Media, Old Audiences? Self-Packaging and Recruitment Strategies in African New Religious Movements

10.15 - 11.00
Asonzeh Ukah, Bayreuth
Roadside Pentecostalism: Religious Advertising in Nigeria and the Marketing of Charisma?

11.00 - 11.15 / coffee break

11.15 - 12.00
Filip De Boeck, Leuven
Sowing the Seed: God's Gift and Commerce in Kinshasa, Kongo

12.00 - 12.45
Werner Graebner, Bayreuth
Mixing all Types of Colours: Perspectives on Visual Culture and its Publics

12.45 - 14.30 / lunch break

14.30 - 15.15
Ikem Stanley Okoye, Delaware
John Uzoka to Kenzo Tange: Nigerian Architectural Desire across an Advertisment Blitz

15.15 - 16.00
Santu Mofokeng, Johannesburg
Beauty, Sex and Cellphones. Township Billboards in South Africa

16.00 - 16.15 / coffee break

16.15 - 17.00
Peter Probst, Bayreuth
Godly Monuments: From Private Vision to Public Space in Osogbo, Nigeria

17.00 -17.45
Rainer Polak, Bayreuth
Notes on Participation in Local Celebrations

17.45 -18.30
Dorothea Schulz, Berlin
Audience, Publics, Public Sphere: A Word of Caution

20.00 / Dinner

SUNDAY, 17.11.02

10.00 - 10.45:
Christine Scherer, Bayreuth
"So many ways to see my work": Artists in Zimbabwe and their Public(s)

10.45 - 11.30
Kristine Roome, New York
Salvaging South Africa: A Look at Group Exhibitions of Contemporary Art from Africa

11.30 - 12.15
Till Förster, Basel
Identifying the International Art World. Local Painters as Actors in a Contested Field