The Africa 2020 Season remains combative ... and no opening date

One of the official posters (detail) of the Africa 2020 Season, projected during the presentation of the program by General Commissioner N'Goné Fall.

© Season Africa 2020

Text by: Siegfried Forster Follow

6 min

First scheduled for June, then postponed to December 1, the Africa 2020 Season is determined to start before the end of the year.

As part of this extraordinary project, more than 450 events throughout France remain suspended from changes in the health situation.

Interview with the general commissioner N'Goné Fall who unveiled the program this Wednesday, November 4. 

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The Africa 2020 Season has nothing to do with a simple cultural season.

More than 200 planned events aim to make the voices of civil society from 54 African countries heard in France.

The program aims to make major issues of the 21st century visible in all fields, from the economy to the sciences, including education.

And culture occupies an important place there. 

RFI

N'Goné Fall

 We have not announced that the Africa 2020 Season will start on December 1, which was planned before the new lockdown.

There are projects which are being edited and which will continue to be edited.

So the Season will open in December, and as announced, from December 2020 to July 2021. 

Do you already know what will be the event (s) that will open the Africa 2020 Season "

Given the current situation, we are in the process of taking stock with all the partners who had a project in December.

And we are in discussion with the Conciergerie, since the opening of the Season should be with the monographic exhibition of El Anatsui [

], the Ghanaian artist who has lived in Nigeria for several years.

The exhibition is currently being assembled.

Depending on the moment of deconfinement in France, we will decide when we can open this project.  

Among the stated ambitions of the Africa 2020 Season are, among others, the decisions to “

Through the projects.

Young French people, in any case, I hope, are a little more polyglot than their grandparents.

And through social media, people are already connected across a continent.

Today, there is software that allows simultaneous translation of what we say and what we write.

The continent's French-speaking, Portuguese-speaking, Arabic-speaking and English-speaking networks have been linked and collaborating at a distance for a long time.

The issue is precisely that young people in France have access to these networks and can exchange views.

All the projects carried out by the Ministry of National Education, Youth and Sport, through educational projects, are linked with classes and students on the African continent, and not only with French-speaking countries.

There are English teachers or Portuguese teachers in France who have set up an educational project with an English-speaking country or a Portuguese-speaking country.  

You have designed Africa 2020 as a “

It wouldn't make sense.

The Season has over 450 projects.

Each project is Pan-African by nature.

If we take the example of a dance performance or a play, we have dancers and actors who come from different African countries and who are currently in different African countries.

So I don't see how a play with actors from six or seven countries, or even three or four regions of the continent, can remotely play this play or play this dance performance.

The challenge of this entire Season was to promote meetings and mobility.

Ask all the partners - 183 in France, more than 200 in Africa - to switch all the projects that would have been conceived as moments of meetings - I am also thinking of the 15 HQs, these Headquarters, sort of temporary cultural centers - in digital, it is not possible.  

Among the projects mentioned is a photography incubator in Johannesburg. 

It is photography by Africans.

If we think of all the imaginaries and all the iconography of colonial propaganda which described the African as a child or even as a savage to whom it was necessary to bring light and civilization ... Photography as a medium exists on the continent since the end of the 19th century.

Precisely, this factory of stories: Who speaks?

Who speaks for whom?

Who represents who?

To say what ?

This is where photography has a crucial role to play.

More and more young people are training in photography and showing an image of themselves, their own identity and their own culture through an African prism and not through a Western prism marred by clichés.  

We are in the midst of a coronavirus pandemic.

The health situation in Africa remains much better than in Europe.

What economic situation are the African artists and operators with whom you work today

No, precisely, the objective is not to cancel projects.

During the first confinement, we had to cancel a project, but we still wanted to pay the artists the fees provided.

It was a gesture of solidarity.

We will not let anyone down. 

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