FUCKING GOOD ART#25 Writing about! ~in selfless service to our community~ ~in selfless service to our community~ in selfless ser Editorial first week comprised a hectic Good evening, I’m Patrick Mefang // Public art or art in public spaces? schedule of visits to art insti- Writing about tutions and cultural funding // Never swallow the past // Cultural context of Douala // Editorial: 3 Talking About! bodies. Interspersed amongst Writing About Talking About // Art and gentrification: a problematic these visits were several public infatuation // Interview with Goddy Leye // Wine and smoke on the Lucia Babina and Zoë Gray or semi-public events, which enabled us to broaden the water // Cultural context of Douala // What happens when we conversation to include ad- 4 make time to talk with our ditional interlocutors. For peers from another coun- the second week, each of our try, from another continent, guests worked together with a from another cultural context host, a carefully chosen artist, altogether? For the project collective or institution who Talking About!, we invited six had been “match-made” with artists and cultural practition- our guests. Achille Atina Tah ers from Douala (Cameroon) worked with me [Zoë Gray] to travel to Rotterdam in at Witte de With; Ruth September 2009 to gain Belinga with Annie Fletcher an overview of the Dutch and Charles Esche at the contemporary art scene. Part Van Abbemuseum; Goddy workshop, part tour, Talking Leye and Hervé Youmbi with About! was primarily a peer- Kim Bouvy & Elian Somers to-peer exchange, a sequence at Het Wilde Weten, with of conversations between our David Maroto (Duende), and Cameroonian guests and their me [Lucia Babina] of iStrike; Dutch counterparts. From the Lionel Manga with Emil- outset, we were determined iano Gandolfi & Alexander that we would not predeter- Vollebregt at TU Delft; and mine the topic of conversation Achillekà Komguen worked nor did we want to specify the with Rob Hamelijnck & outcomes of this two-week Nienke Terpsma5 at Fucking trip. Good Art. Our model for this open- This last pairing was made ended approach was an earlier as Achilleka is the found- project in which we had both ing editor of the magazine been involved, one as co-or- DIARTgonale and was look- ganizer, the other as guest. In ing for ways to develop his 2007 the Rotterdam-based publication in new directions. foundation iStrike and the One idea that emerged from organisation doual’art from this pairing was to create a Douala worked together magazine that combines the on the event SUD – Salon formats and readerships of Urbain de Douala, a week- their respective publications. long festival that took place The outcome is the maga- across the city, comprising a zine you hold in your hands. series of performances and This issue of Fucking Good Art – of which we are proud the inauguration of many1 works in public space. iStrike to be the guest editors – is and doual’art invited a group designed to be inserted inside Editorial: DIARTgonale. The format is of Dutch-based artists2 and curators to attend. Beyond adapted to fit the size of its Who’s writing meeting members of the local Cameroonian sister publica- art scene, there were no de- tion, yet it retains its signature fined prior expectations of us, pink paper and design. The no requirements to produce same articles that appear something as a direct result here in English will appear of the trip. Within this open in French in DIARTgonale, framework and rather impro- with certain differences due vised atmosphere, many con- to the differences between our nections were made between editorial decisions and those the Dutch visitors and their of Diartgonale’s editor. Cameroonian homologues, connections based on personal Within the pages of Fuck- affinity, chance, timing. ing Good Art – Writing About! you will find the transcript of One of the people we met an artwork by Libia Castro there, Achille Atina Tah, & Olafur Olafsson, a story a young cultural mediator of one young Cameroonian’s then working for doual’art, attempt to cross the Sahara mentioned one evening that desert and make it to the he would be keen to see how promised land of Fortress Eu- institutions functioned in rope. As a counterpoint, artist the Netherlands. This started Goddy Leye – in conversation a chain of extended con- with Emiliano Gandolfi – versations – with other arts narrates his European training professionals both here and and how he decided to invest there, with funding bodies, his career in a life-long project with artists, with embassies, in the district of Bonendale with visa agencies – which in Douala. Goddy Leye and lasted almost two years. The his frequent collaborator conclusion of those conversa- Ruth Belinga each present tions was Talking About! The a short text ruminating upon the ideas they encoun- fusion with DJ Nemawashi in come to the conclusion relation to itself but in the To this effect, the curator is in museum is a big museum of from one country to another, We were greatly surprised to tered during Talking About!, attendance. Public art or art in public spaces? that no common artistic or political context of its presen- The curator’s role in contemporary direct contact with artists, art contemporary art in a small depending on its socio-cul- notice the massive partici- in relation respectively to art 5 Full biographies of all the aesthetic perspective is being tation? promoters, the general public, Dutch city. It has four cura- tural reality. In some coun- pation of journalists and of guests and hosts can be found art’s new mission and gentrification, and to the together with the detailed Achille Edouard Atina Tah drawn. Here at home, tradi- the local and the international tors in addition to the director tries, the relationship between the public during exhibition professional practice of curat- programme of Talking tional as well as new genres A tara, I should stop now Ruth Afane Belinga art market. This requires cura- Charles Esche, who is also artist and spectator-consumer openings. rotterdAm-douAlA, 2009 ing. Achille Atina also explores About! on the weblog: www. (such as video) are being used. and yet I still have so much tor to have a certain mobility, a curator. According to the are less developed. This is talkingabout-rotterdam. douAlA-YAoiNdé, 2010 certain ideas that came to light 1 Is this a strength or a weak- more to say. You can’t imagine curiosity, a sense of organiza- museum’s head curator, An- largely due to the fact that the With the experience gained in Rotterdam, in his examina- blogspot.com A tara, there in the land of sible to reduce the city to an ness? A tara, it is henceforth how much my last trip was a tion and negotiation skills, but nie Fletcher, a good exhibi- museums and institutions that at the Van Abbemuseum, I tion of public art and what it the white folks, I kept asking external object that is exterior urgent that an artistic logic slap in the face. You should Today, artworks are not and can- creative process. But it is clear above all, a great knowledge tion takes a year or more of function as meeting-points now envision creating an open could mean in a Cameroonian myself why public contempo- to ourselves, observable from is established. Contemporary know that in the universe of not be what they used to be. The that the spectator – should of culture. Curators listen to preparation. Fletcher works still adopt a traditional ap- and independent space for the context. Rob Hamelijnck and rary art – so despised and ne- afar. The phenomenon of the artworks should use their the city, submitted to extreme developments in current artistic he want to assume an artistic society and guide the artist to in close collaboration with proach of looking at artworks presentation of contemporary Nienke Terpsma present the glected here, forever debated city needs to be henceforth physical, plastic strength by conditions (cars, crowds, etc.), practice are irrefutable and have responsibility – needs to act as produce works that are rel- artists. She discusses with and, consequently, remain art in Bonendale, Douala. To transcript of their harbour only in terms of function or presented as a component unifying with their immediate contemporary public artworks produced a decisive change in the a mirror to the artist. In other evant to society’s needs. As for them projects initiated by the very commercial. ArtBakery this effect, the first project tour with Achilleka Komguen beauty – was so highly viewed inherent to human life, as an environment (through a dia- need to indicate that we can meaning of art. words, in order to establish exhibitions, they work with museum. Then, she proposes experienced this two years ago (which is currently underway) and Lionel Manga. Musing on the old continent [Eu- articulation of relationships lectic between in-situ/ex-situ). still create heterogeneity in the Mikel Dufrenne, Paris, 1972 a complementary process of designers to arrange the space artworks to the other curators when it gathered young con- is to gather information on together about what art could rope]. A tara, as artistic and and experiences, whether in However, this should not be midst of the fashion for the creation, the viewer needs to of the museum. Sometimes, who then judge together their temporary artists, young art Cameroon’s contemporary mean in such a massive, indus- cultural projects are supported Rotterdam, Douala, Yaoundé simply a formal relationship, identical, common political Art in a given society is the en- consistently go from theory this arrangement of spaces relevance to the project. Once historians, journalists and gal- artists in order to establish a trial context, their conversation and financed, so the social or even in my native Okola.