Visual Culture & Memory 2021

Visual Culture not only represents the world we live(d) in, it also has a great impact on how we remember and construct our pasts, how we perceive our presents and how we see and imagine our futures. In times of worldwide globalization the questions become prevalent of who is „speaking“ through visual artefacts, who can make themselves be heard/seen and who can take part in doing memory while at the same time creating a live worthy present and a  – hopefully – more sustainable future? How can spaces of interrelated, transcultural visual heritage emerge?

Against the background of these questions and assumptions the conference wants to open up a non-hegemonial discourse space to analyze the cultural formation of visual culture artifacts from sub-Saharan Africa and Europe. Lecture and discussion phases will alternate with concrete analysis workshops and three outstanding keynotes. The joint analysis work is intended to show possible potentials of different disciplinary approaches to visual analysis and understanding. A special focus will be placed on the narratives told by and through the analyzed pictures and visual artifacts with regard to “doing memory”.

Thursday – July 15th, 2021

Your time zone: Ghana -2h, Cameroon -1h, Kenya +1, NYC/USA -6h, South Africa +0h, UK -1h

Friday – July 16th, 2021

Your time zone: Ghana -2h, Cameroon -1h, Kenya +1, NYC/USA -6h, South Africa +0h, UK -1h

International Partners

The conference aims to open up a transcultural discourse space in which specific discursive logics and practices can be contrastively described. Therefore we feel very honored to be able to welcome four colleagues from Sub-Saharan African countries, namely:

	Mary Clare Akinyi Kidenda has been a visual arts and visual culture teacher for thirty-four years. After completing her BA in Education and Visual Arts at Kenyatta, she went on to complete her Master of Arts in Design at the University of Nairobi and finally completed her PhD at Coventry University, UK (Double Degree) in 2018. She is currently the Chair of the Department of Design and Creative Media at the School of Creative Arts and Media Technology at the Technical University of Kenya. In 2013, Mary Clare published the book “Cartoon Worship” in which she explores the relationship between cartoons and children to explore the impact of cartoons on children in Nairobi. Throughout her career, Mary Clare has participated in curriculum reform in her country, Kenya, and as a presenter at various conferences. She is also a member of the Design Association of Kenya (DeSK) and the Arts Council of the African Studies (ACASA).
	Paul-Henri Souvenir ASSAKO ASSAKO, Head of the Art History and Fine Arts Section at the University of Yaoundé I in Cameroon, and Director of Libre Academie des Beaux-arts (LABA) Douala, has been working with experts from Munich since 2010 to explore possibilities for cultural and artistic cooperation. Support was provided by the Goethe-Institut in Yaoundé, the Italian Foreign Ministry and the Dutch Mondriaan Stichting. These selective activities should now finally lead to a sustainable result that has the potential to become relevant, for example, in the field of education.
	Patrique deGraft-Yankson is a professionally trained teacher with a background in Arts Education. He is currently a senior lecturer and the Dean of the School of Creative Arts in the University of Education, Winneba (UEW). For over thirty years, he has immersed himself in diverse pedagogical practices at various levels within the Ghanaian Educational setting. His research interest seeks to contrast the argument for the preference of exotic design tenets in contemporary design education in Ghana, with a profound, deconstructive position that seeks to redefine design for cultural relevance. This has been the underlining reasoning for his interest in traditional symbols and iconographs that have deep educational implications. He has played marked initiating roles in the diversification of Graphic Design Education in his mother institution. He has been highly instrumental in the quest for appropriate ICT integration procedures into the teaching and learning of Art in the University of Education, Winneba, and continues to exhibit a lot of interests in the pedagogical implications of ICTs in Visual Arts and Design Education in Ghana.
	Esther Kibuka-Sebitosi, PhD; MSc, BSc (Hon); MBA is based at the Institute for African Renaissance Studies at the University of South Africa (UNISA), Pretoria. She is the Coordinator of the Education for Sustainable Development (ESD) Expert Network (www.esd-expert.net) in South Africa. This is a partnership between Germany, Mexico, India and South Africa. Her research and postgraduate supervision covers various fields such as African Renaissance, Gender, Decoloniality, Climate Change, among others.  Her current research is multidisciplinary covering sustainable development aspects and the transition to sustainable livelihoods.

Keynote Speakers

	Connie Bell is one of the founding members of Decolonising The Archive, as a Consultant, Memory Worker and Cultural Producer her work explores decolonial methodologies, memory as technology and the futurity of diasporic narratives hidden in theatre archives.   Currently she is leading on the overarching project of building a Pan African Archive via digital logging and interface, for the purpose of rematriation and sustainable African/Caribbean Community Development within the diaspora on DTA LIVE RADIO.
	Gayatri Gopinath is Full Professor at the Department of Social and Cultural Analysis, and Director of the Center for the Study of Gender & Sexuality at New York University. Areas of Specialization: Transnational Queer and Feminist Studies; South Asian Diaspora Studies; Visual Culture; Asian/Pacific/American Studies; Postcolonial Literatures and Theory.
	Frederick Njobati is the director for the Inservice-Training Institute ISTP in Cameroon. He is research assistant in the International Master of Educational Quality in Developing countries, led by the University of Bamberg in cooperation with the Protestant University of Rwanda, l’Université Libre des Pays des Grands Lacs, Goma, Democratic Republic of Congo and the Université Evangelique du Cameroon. Frederick has more than 20 years’ experience in North-South encounters, especially in the field of joint music programs.
	Annette Scheunpflug, is a Professor for Foundations of Education at the University of Bamberg in Germany and member of the Bavarian Academy of Science. She works in the field of educational quality, global citizenship education and global learning, Anthropology and the relation between education and religion. She has a broad research and teaching experience in Sub-Saharan Africa.

German Partners

• Representatives of the interdisciplinary joint project “Exploring Visual Culture: Bilder – Weltbilder – Bilderwelten” (https://www.explore-vc.org/en/, 05/26/21), based at the Academy of Fine Arts Munich, which is concerned with the development of a transnational internet portal for “Pictorial/Visual Memory” as well as with the development of “teaching materials for global learning in the subject of art”.
• Representatives of the Institute for African Studies (IAS) of the University of Bayreuth (http://www.ias.uni-bayreuth.de/de/index.php, 11.11.19), which coordinates the African Studies conducted by different subjects at the University of Bayreuth and which is in cooperation with the Afrikazentrum/Iwalewahaus (https://www.iwalewahaus.uni-bayreuth. de/en/about/index.html, 11.11.19) “[d]uring exhibitions, university research and teaching, collections, archives, artist residencies and events […], presents the latest developments in contemporary African culture” (ibid.) “and actively develops them further in collaborations with artists and institutions” (ibid.).
• Representatives of the Institute for Art and Art Theory at the University of Cologne (http://kunst.uni-koeln.de, 5/26/21)
• Representatives of the DFG Netzwerk “Transformative Bildlichkeit: Zum Spannungsfeld von Bild und Gesellschaft” (https://www.visual-history.de/project/netzwerk-transformative-bildlichkeit/, 11/11/2019), which is a “transdisciplinary association of” researchers* from a wide range of disciplines (education, sociology, media and communication studies) and which primarily “deals with (epistemological) theoretical, methodological and methodological aspects of qualitative image research” (ibid.).
• (Junior) researchers of the Chair of Education with a Focus on Culture and Aesthetic Education/UNESCO Chair in Arts and Culture in Education plus approx. 10 students of the MA Pedagogy (focus profile: cultural & aesthetic education) of the FAU Erlangen-Nürnberg.

Dr. Tanja Klepacki

Senior Researcher

UNESCO-Chair in Arts and Culture in Education
Kulturwerkstatt Auf AEG

Fürther Straße 244d
90429 Nürnberg
Germany

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E-Mail: tanja.klepacki (at) fau.de

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