Civil Society,
Protest Arts and Culture: Past, Present and Future in Africa and Beyond’
Sub-Title:
The New and Urgent Necessity of a Creative, relevant and organic form of
Protest Art in Africa and Beyond.
Presentation
to the Protest Art International Festival (PAIF), Monomotapa Crowne Plaza,
Harare, Zimbabwe, October 27 2011.
By Takura Zhangazha, Executive Director,
Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe.
Website address www.vmcz.co.zw; email: director@vmcz.co.zw; facebook username; TakuraZ; personal
email: kuurayiwa@gmail.com;
The Organisers of the 2011 Protest
Art International Festival,
The Board Chairperson of Savanna
Trust,
Representatives of the Ministry
of Education, Sport and Culture,
Representatives from the National
Arts Council,
Artists Groups and Artists
Organisations,
Journalists and Media
Organisations,
Civil Society Representatives,
Members of the Diplomatic Corps,
Ladies and Gentlemen, Artistes,
Comrades and Friends,
Let me begin by expressing my
profound gratitude to the organizers of this important festival for inviting me
to give a presentation despite the fact that I am not a Minister of Government
or a representative of a state body established either by an Act of Parliament
or a statutory instrument. As the programme suggests, I am the Executive
Director of the Voluntary Media Council of Zimbabwe (VMCZ), which is a media
self regulatory body that has been in existence since 2007. Its primary
function is to promote the enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression and
access to information through implementing and promoting media self regulation.
This is done through the VMCZ Media Code of Conduct as well as a Media
Complaints Committee. Since it is the
general trend amongst contemporary artistes to be internet savvy, details of our
work as well as our constitution can be found on our website www.vmcz.co.zw.
In my correspondence with the
organizers of PAIF, I was informed that this year’s theme is ‘Civil Society, Protest Arts and Culture, Past Present and Future in
Africa and Beyond’ I will try to
address the same theme in my presentation, with a deliberate focus on art and
artists in relation to cultural hegemony, democratization and struggles for
identity as well as social and economic justice.
The nature of art is such that it
is generally an enacted, written, drawn and even lyrically composed re-representation
of society and societal issues in a manner that is creative, relevant and organic. The definition of creativity, like that of beauty
generally tends to be in the eye of the beholder, that of relevance is straightforward though at times it can be politicized,
and that of being organic is perhaps
the most important. This is because the term organic, generally derived from a
great Italian thinker, Antonio Gramsci, refers to the sum total of the individual
or social activist who is firmly rooted in democratic ideological grounding and understands the counter-hegemonic
imperative of his or her work. And in this definition, I have added another
fairly complex and often misunderstood term, that of hegemony, which refers to,
if one were to use Gramsci’s poignant
analysis, the maintenance of cultural domination of one group over another
through systematic cultural production of the state and its societal meaning
while inducing continued subservience of the dominated group. Counter hegemony
would therefore refer to a resistance(and in Gramsci's instance, 'socialist' ) cultural struggle against singular dominance of society by a
group that is not there to serve the democratic interests of the entirety of
the society.
Because the name of this festival
is Protest Arts International Festival,
its very name suggests a ‘struggle’ against cultural and other forms of
undemocratic dominance. Based on my interactions with the organizers, I understand that this
struggle is a struggle that is rooted in the pursuit of democracy, human
rights, the rule of law and social and economic justice. It is also safe to
surmise that this festival, is therefore a meeting of minds (from civil
society, the arts, Africa and Beyond) that are conscious of the challenges of a
world in which a contrary hegemonic agendas to a democratic one exists, and a
world in which we must consistently seek to challenge these contrary dictatorial
hegemonic agendas via important artistic forums and festivals such as this
one.
It is therefore important that from
the start we delineate why exactly it is we, or anyone else for that matter,
are engaged in protest art. This is because protest, cannot be protest for its
own sake. It must be grounded in meaning that reflects the aspirations,
realities and contexts of people’s everyday lives. And when I refer to context
I am no limiting my argument to the political contexts alone but the broad
economic, social, gender and youth spectrum of all of our respective societies.
Furthermore, protest art eventually
ends up influencing political processes in so far it is reflective of the
concerns of a population, and in the process influences policy makers, public
opinion as well as collective national, continental or even, in the aftermath
of even the Occupy Wall Street Movements and the demonstrations by our African
colleagues in Tunisia and Eygpt, global futures.
In this sense therefore, we must be
clear in our minds that in seeking to undertake protest art in its various
forms (music, painting, drama, media products, the internet) we must be
representing a creative, relevant and organic art form in order to influence
the arrival of our societies to full democracies that are people centered and
social welfarist.
This is particularly so in Africa,
where the protest art form is not necessarily a new development, but one that
when it has emerged, tends to be hijacked by elitist political processes. I
argue this way in the sense that the evolution of protest art is as old as the
emergence of colonialism on our continent,
via all of the tales told by our forebears’ at the rural fire hearth
through to our urbanization processes where via our burial societies, dancing
clubs, choirs, drama groups we learnt new methods of how to use art as a means
of resistance. This was in terms of either literal, subtle and abstract protest
art.
This protest art was not however purely African, because as you
might be aware, there is no longer, if there ever was, any such thing as purely
African art. Due to the same processes of colonialism and the expansion of
globalization, African art forms have
been borrowed from as much as they have also borrowed from others across the
world. They have negotiated new forms of representation, interacted with new
forms of technology, for example, they have tried to catch up with Hollywood, Bollywood
and dominant genres of music such as the digitalized versions of Rhythms and
Blues. This mutation of the African Art
form was and is as welcome as it is inevitable , but all the same, we now have
to negotiate for the retention of components that are uniquely African from an
informed perspective.
This negotiation must begin from
understanding the three tenets I have outlined in my introduction, creativity,
relevance and organic linkages.
To be specific, by creativity I mean that the art form must
not subject itself to self censorship either by way of fear of controversial
ideas, politics or falling out of favour with business or with donors. This
creativity is that which resides and defines the talent of the artist, that
makes her/him particularly unique in the manner of their work. Sometimes this
creativity comes with its own specific ideological and historical baggage, but
all the same it must reflect the true fulcrum expression of the artists
creative intentions. I can give examples of the creative artists that I have
come across either by way of reading, watching of listening to their works
but it is adequate that we speak as
generally and without passing contested judgment on the works of artistes here present
who have their own role models.
By relevance, please take it to mean that the protest artist must
serve to motivate public knowledge and engagement on any of their particular
artistic concerns and in the broader societal pursuit of freedom of expression
and access to information is in its widest possible democratic definition. This
is to say, whereas relevance is determined by particularly topical issues in
any given society, for example and in Zimbabwe’s case the policy of indigenization
of the economy, the artist must not seek relevance that is inimical to the
enjoyment of freedom of expression by deliberately becoming a part of what can
potentially be a propaganda apparatus intended to stifle further public debate
and knowledge on any particular societal matter or issue.
Whereas art and being an artist
should be recognized as a profession and indeed be duly remunerated at
commercial rates and by professional standards, it is imperative that the artistes
understand that one of the fundamental predication of their work is the public
enjoyment of the right to freedom of expression and access to information. Once
this is understood and a voluntary agreement by artists and for artists on
codes of conduct are established then can there be latitude for the artist to
participate in assisting particular organizations, political or otherwise carry forward their messages for commercial
payment. If we do not recognize the principle that our work in protest art is
based on the need to maximize the public enjoyment of the right to freedom of
expression as well as that of access to information, then we are not relevant
or creative. Without such a premise, the artist is irrelevant to the societal
good, because they begin to serve more the needs of she who pays the piper and
who therefore also calls the tune.
The third and final point, is that
of the organic artist and in part
organic art. This necessary characteristic which must be viewed in Gramscian
terms is that which reflects a necessary consciousness of the unfairness of the
current global media and artistic hegemony that seeks to tell more one side of
the story than a story based on commitment to the truth, recognition of
diversity or to the principle of freedom
of expression as outlined in Article 19 of the Universal Declaration of Human
Rights. To be particular and relevant, I must emphasize that it is increasingly
Africa that is the victim of this hegemonic intention, wherein, the very
welcome expansion of information communication technologies may easily be a
tool to re-invent the African in the image of the other as opposed to sharing a
collective understanding of our equal global humanity.
The organic protest artist must be conscious
of this reality and actively seek to create a counter-hegemony that is characterized by a commitment to universal democratic principle,
a understanding of art as one of the last vestiges of common identity of many
African peoples, an understanding of the utility of the continually expanding
ICTs in promoting African art in all of its forms and the realization that the
art, artist are agents of progressive,
democratic, social and economic justice, cultural diversity and broad
societal transformation. Without these people-centered values, art would cease
to either be creative, relevant or organic.
Ladies and Gentlemen, Comrades and
Friends, Thank you for this time you have afforded me.
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