Incubator for a Pan-African Roaming Biennial, 2010

Enhancing the pragmatic approach of Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum, Incubator invites three Africa-based collectives and a coordinator to collaborate with the Manifesta Foundation in a project regarding the notion of a pan-African, roaming art biennial. The Incubator will avoid assumptions or simple assessments of what a biennial looks like, what is its context, what effect it has, and whether it can even be done. The Incubator will identify and bring together perspectives from curators, artists, cultural producers and active sponsors, whose current activities give evidence of autonomy and progressive experimentation within their respective contexts. These articulations should bring together a set of historically and politically informed perspectives and arguments, which also demonstrate a clear infrastructure. The research will take several forms: the symposium at the opening of Manifesta 8; developing a website; organising a workshop in April 2011 in an African city yet to be identified; the appointment of key voices as planners, and the production of a publication in September 2011. The Incubator and its platforms should register these positions as an (uneven) landscape upon which others may imagine a biennial, a roaming biennial, an alternative structure, or a model responding to a different set of priorities entirely.

The Incubator for a Pan-African Roaming Biennial is a year-long task force consisting of Khadija El Bennaoui, Art Moves Africa (AMA), Mia Jankowicz, of Contemporary Image Collective (CIC), Cairo; Gabi Ngcobo, of the Center for Historical Reenactments (CHR) Johannesburg and Jimmy Ogonga, of the Center for Contemporary Art of East Africa (CCAEA) Nairobi. The Incubator is formed in response to a proposal by two of Manifesta 8 curators, Bassam El Baroni and Jeremy Beaudry of Alexandria Contemporary Arts Forum (ACAF), as an extension to the intellectual and political issues raised by OVERSCORE, their curatorial contribution to Manifesta 8. The concept of the Incubator comes primarily as a response to the Region of Murcia¿s framing of Manifesta 8 as a project in dialogue with northern Africa. More information about the Incubator can be found at: www.panafricannial.org