CATEGORY
Diversity/ Inclusion | ParticipationYEAR
2016 - present DURATION
Seven weeks LOCATION
OnsiteFORMAT
WEBSITE
TARGET
Emerging art practitioners RAW Académie is an experimental residential programme for the research and study of artistic and curatorial practice and thought, for emerging artistic practitioners. The programme takes place over seven to eight weeks in Dakar. It is dedicated to a dynamic reflection on artistic research, curatorial practice and critical writing. The Académie is held during two distinct sessions per year; around October–December and March-May. Each session is directed by a lead faculty who has displayed an off-the-beaten-track practice in regard to art, curating and art criticism. Past lead faculty are Lebanese independent film and visual arts curator Rasha Salti, Cape Town-based pan-African editorial platform Chimurenga, Senegalese hip-hop artists and newscasters Journal Rappé, South African performance artist Tracey Rose, Nigerian artist Otobong Nkanga, RAW’s founding artistic director Koyo Kouoh and French-American filmmaker and artist Eric Baudelaire. The upcoming RAW Académie session will be directed by activist and filmmaker Linda Goode Bryant and developed in collaboration with the Institute of Contemporary Art Philadelphia.
Seven sessions have brought together over 70 participants, known as fellows, and as many faculty members, from across the globe. Their time at the Académie is unique; hierarchies of learning are challenged, subject matter that escapes the grasp of classical higher education institutes is brought to the fore, engagement with the local context of Dakar is prioritized and criticality, radicality and process are privileged. Interdisciplinary collaborations born from the Académie continue to grow and cross continents, with new alliances and opportunities flourishing even after the end of each session. Through public talks, visits and participation as fellows and faculty, actors from a range of disciplines who are based in Dakar are ever-more inclined to forge new ties and incorporate the arts into their practice with a critical and radical attention that is so fruitful to the health of our society. What’s more, the Académie programme is helping to reinforce Dakar’s position as a central site for artistic praxis and in particular as a space for the emergence of new forms of arts education, an attention that is beneficial to initiatives beyond RAW Material Company itself.
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