REFERENCE - Africa Centre

Africa Centre

Reference Group

Summary of Conclusions as of 01.01.2006

Introduction

Africa enters the 21^st century without a major, international museum or research institute dedicated to its arts continent-wide. The Africa Centre seeks to remedy this situation. Its aim is to create a space where the visual, performance and intellectual cultures of Africa, south and north, present and past, are celebrated and studied, brought to life for diverse audiences in innovative ways, through a wide range of approaches. Dialogue and engagement are its primary goals. Where art and audience, creation and the experience of daily life come together, where the dreams and beliefs, the frustrations and hopes of those who make art and those who encounter it meet, there is unlimited potential. This belief is the cornerstone of the Africa Centre. Building upon this foundation, the Centre envisions itself as a space of transformation: unusual, surprising, moving – a space that celebrates the creative arts as a force for change in Africa and beyond.

The Africa Centre is both a physical entity and an ongoing process. Meant to grow conceptually and spatially over a period of several years, it will emerge in time as a multi-sited, multiple-usage space, melding exhibition and performance with creation and research. This complex will offer new answers and prompt new questions about creativity in the 21^st century. It will initiate a dialogue in Africa and beyond about the nature, the meaning and the potential of art to change how we think of ourselves, how others look at us and, most importantly, how people everywhere envision their collective tomorrows.

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Some argue that Africa does not need museums. The Africa Centre does not share this view. Africa and the world – the planet’s people, wherever they may live – the Centre believes, need a new kind of museum. Extraordinary though it has proven as a tool for the dissemination of culture, the museum such as it exists today fails in significant ways. Born of a particular time and place, in the capitals of 18^th century Europe, it privileges approaches to culture and ways of seeing and interacting with art that presuppose a specific type of viewer.

For this and other reasons, the traditional museum is often ill-adapted to certain art forms, notably ones of African origin. So too, it can prove intimidating and the rules that govern it – silence, static displays, distance between object and viewer, an emphasis on imparting rather than sharing knowledge – tend to foster a passive approach to the creative process. This approach dissuades rather than encourages visitors to think of themselves as creators, as actors or thinkers in their own right, with talents and ideas worthy of honing and sharing.

Art, the Africa Centre holds, can be made far more accessible and energizing than is the case in many museums. Spaces can be brought into being that allow artists and audiences to participate jointly in the creative process and thereby to take responsibility: to seek actively to understand and build on one another’s ideas. Spaces can be devised that are less about showing and teaching – a top-down approach many find alienating – than about encountering and engaging, spaces that encourage all involved – artist and audience, curator and staff, adults and children, art lovers and newcomers to art – to act in response to and demand more of one another. In such spaces, worlds can meet, ideas can collide that have real relevance to the everyday, communities can emerge and be transformed, questions can be asked and solutions proposed that concern society at large. Art, in other words, can be what the Centre believes that it should be – a laboratory for developing our collective future.

To bring into being a space that allows art to function in this manner, the Africa Centre looks to conceptions, presentations and uses of art which, to date, have been given little attention in the elaboration of museums. As traditionally understood, the museum is a space whose primary purpose is to conserve art: to make it available – intact, unchanged – for generations of viewers. Audiences are not meant to impact the objects they have come to contemplate. There are, however, other ways of thinking the display of art.

Of particular interest to the Centre are models developed in Africa, in a wide range of fields, contexts and periods: approaches to knowledge and the exchange of ideas, to the showcasing of objects, to performance and interaction between creators and their audiences, to space and architecture, and to the role, identity and permanency of art – indeed, to the very nature of art. Consider, for example, the shrines of Edo kings in Benin City, Nigeria or the chambers of Senufo diviners in Côte d’Ivoire. In such spaces art is handled daily, by specialists and laypersons alike. What lessons might such approaches to the display of objects offer for contemporary museum practice? African masquerade traditions (Gelede spectacles of the Yoruba civilisation, creation myths and royal histories enacted at Mushenge, the historical capital of the Kuba people, for instance) call for art to be experienced in motion. Such movement is choreographed, but it is also flexible. A good performer is one who can read his audience’s reactions and inflect his dance, his song, his words accordingly. The same is true of griot historian-storytellers in Mali and concert party comedians in Ghana: the tales they tell are crafted in response to the needs and reactions of patron and public. What might we learn from such approaches to form, movement and words, to the nature of knowledge, its contingency and role in the building of communities? What suggestions do African modes of reception, such as are put in practice in these and other settings, offer for practitioners intent on transforming the concept of the museum?

For key contemporary artists whose roots are in Africa – in the work of choreographer Robin Orlin, for instance, or in the installations of Tracey Rose, Fred Wilson and Georges Adéagbo – these and related questions play a critical role. How can these and other artists’ “takes” on such issues be brought to bear on the creation of new and innovative spaces for the display and the study of art? In Dogon country in Mali, in Sotho communities of South Africa, in the Bamileke highlands of Cameroon and inner cities from Marrakech to Cape Town, women and men create architectural spaces that, unlike their Euro-American counterparts, are mutable. Their size and form can be altered in response to the changing requirements of those who inhabit them. How might such approaches to living environments be adapted in a museum setting, so that the spaces in which art is present can shift to echo the needs of artists, of their audiences and of curators? These are but a few of the many questions the Africa Centre means to address.

Other questions the Centre proposes to ask focus on the relationship between present and past. Most museums which show art from the African continent privilege the past, as if Africa had little to offer in the present. Yet Africa today is a hub of artistic creation, remarkably diverse and innovative. Ties between its contemporary arts and the often extraordinary wealth of its past arts must be explored. How to go about this is a matter of great complexity, which few museums have seriously tackled. The Africa Centre intends to take up that challenge.

The Centre also has the ambition to assist in building bridges between arts practitioners across the African world. In many places, on the continent and in its diasporas, artists, scholars, curators and connoisseurs have created spaces for the exchange of ideas about creativity. Yet the infrastructure is often lacking that would allow for ongoing dialogue between such spaces. What role(s) can an institution like the Africa Centre play in this context, to facilitate dialogue and to create an enduring interface among arts practitioners in the African world?

In attempting to answer these and a host of other questions, the Africa Centre intends to look as well to models outside Africa – in Asia, Oceania, Native America – and to concepts explored in such innovative spaces as the District 6 Museum in Cape Town, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York and the Musée des Arts Derniers in Paris, in movable museums developed in India and art-in-the-streets endeavours launched in Texas, southern France and Bahia (to name but a few examples). The Centre’s purpose, indeed, is not only to create a space for and about Africa, in Africa and based on African approaches to engagement with the arts, but also a space that revolutionizes the very concept of the museum, worldwide.

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The process of establishing the Africa Centre began two and a half years ago. In 2003, a land development policy framework was set up, a spatial planning analysis and a feasibility study were conducted and a financial model was devised to determine possible directions and potential support for the initiative. In 2004, a board of directors was put in place and the Africa Centre was registered with the South African Revenue Service as a Non-Profit Section 21 Corporation. Shortly thereafter, the board appointed a reference group of internationally recognised visual and performance artists, scholars and curators to determine the philosophical goals of the Centre. The members of this group are:

Adegboyega Adefope – Architect

Bongiwe Dhlomo-Mautloa – Artist and Curator

Ntone Edjabe – Cultural Activist

Stanley Hermans – Artist and Curator

Faustin Linyekula – Choreographer

Dominique Malaquais – Architectural Historian

Olu Oguibe – Artist, Art Historian and Curator

Edgar Pieterse – Political Scientist

AbdouMaliq Simone – Sociologist

Over a period of fourteen months, members of the group held several colloquia and workshops in Africa, North America and Europe. These meetings gave rise to a series of position papers focusing on the contextual framework, the potential audiences and the artistic content of the Africa Centre, its architectural form and the programs expected to be developed over the next five years. In the following pages, readers will find a synopsis of the reference group’s findings.

The synopsis is in three parts, each of which reflects key themes explored by the reference group:

Developing Resonant Space: Multiple Voices, Multiple Definitions
Developing Relevant and Inclusive Programmes

Developing a Fluid Approach to Space and Architectural Form

The present document is based on the following meeting précis and position papers produced as a result of the reference group’s deliberations and in response to discussions between the group and the board of directors:

Précis of reference group colloquium 1 (Spier Estate / 10.2004 / 18 pp.)
Précis of reference group colloquium 2 (Douala / 1.2005 / 15 pp.)
Précis of reference group colloquium 3 (New York City / 4.2005 / 11 pp.)
Précis of reference group workshops 1 & 2 (New York City / 12.2004 & Johannesburg / 12.2004 / 28 pp.)
Précis of reference group workshop 3 (Cape Town / 8.2005 / 9 pp.)
Précis of reference group workshop 4 (New York City / 8.2005 / 7 pp.)
Précis of reference group workshop 5 (Paris / 8.2005 / 7 pp.)
Précis of reference group colloquium 4 (Paris / 12.2005 / 25 pp.)
Position paper 1: “New Directions: Thoughts Born of a First Day’s Dialogue” (6.2004 / 8 pp.)
Position paper 2: “Statement of Purpose” (10.2004 / 3 pp.)
Position paper 3: “(Not) Afro-Disney?” (3.2005 / 41 pp.)

The synopsis that follows states a series of principles and conclusions on which the reference group believes the Africa Centre should be founded. As with all synopses, it is only a partial overview. Readers interested in a particular aspect of the reference group’s deliberations addressed in this document are encouraged to consult the précis and position papers listed above.[1]

Part I: Developing Resonant Space:

Multiple Voices, Multiple Definitions[2]

► The Africa Centre must be an entity that resonates with others. The reference group identified five principles to achieve this goal:

The Africa Centre must be capable of speaking with and to multiple constituencies.

The Africa Centre must respond as well as call.

The Africa Centre must be willing to reinvent itself in response to needs, ideas and technologies that emerge over time.

The Africa Centre must be willing to question itself, its relationship to the place and the time in which it exists, the history that formed it and the present and future(s) it hopes to participate in shaping.

The Africa Centre must embrace multiple and at times contradictory or discordant approaches of key concepts and identities.

► Multiple constituencies: The Africa Centre must devote close and ongoing attention to relationships with a wide range of interconnected communities and interest groups. These include, but are not limited to:

The Spier Estate, where the principal structures of the Africa Centre will be located

Communities located in the immediate vicinity of the Spier Estate, notably:

■ Kayelitsha

■ Stellenbosch

Cape Town and the broader Cape Town metropolitan area

Communities across South Africa

Communities of the broader southern African region

Communities across the African continent as a whole

Communities of the African diaspora

► Respond as well as call: To engage in fruitful and innovative ways with publics across such a vast geographical and cultural span, the Africa Centre must be a decentralized entity. The reference group envisions the Africa Centre as a cluster of interconnected nodes. The Centre’s heart will be located on the Spier Estate and contain key architectural structures and program development offices. This heart, however, should be viewed not as a nucleus around which all other components revolve, but as one element in a network of places and people privileging the exchange of ideas and practices. What this means in practical terms is that:

The Africa Centre should actively support, foster and engage in long-term exchanges with entities across the African world that are dedicated to the arts and, more generally, to culture.

In doing so, it should focus on creators functioning outside formal or official networks of cultural production: individuals, collectives and spaces for which access to funds and, more importantly, to infrastructural support too often depends on creative and/or philosophical compromise.

The Africa Centre should actively help develop undertakings initiated by such persons or entities even where the activities it supports take place away from the Centre itself.

In the long term, an essential focus of the Africa Centre should be to support and foster an expanding network of partner nodes. In this respect, two considerations are fundamental:

■ The Africa Centre should seek less to create networks than to find a place for itself within networks already active on the continent and beyond.

■ The Africa Centre should be willing to support initiatives and networks in which it does not itself have a visible role.

► Reinvent and question itself: The foregoing requires that the Africa Centre be an entity open to ongoing transformation. It must be willing and able to change in response to the needs and interests of diverse, growing and shifting constituencies.

Change of this kind should impact the Centre’s philosophy (its short- and long-term goals; the programmes it initiates and supports) as well as its structures (organization; staffing; spatial design).

Such openness to change demands introspection and engagement with complex and potentially contentious ideas and themes. The Africa Centre should not shy away from tackling difficult issues, notably as relates to the history of the region in which it is located.

► Discordant approaches: A primary purpose of such introspection and engagement should be to make room for, and where possible to foster, catharsis, healing and, as a result, transformation. Creating consensus should not be a main aspiration. The Africa Centre should strive to be a place where divergent identities and world views can be explored and negotiated. Its structure and programmes should make room for differing and possibly wholly contradictory views of what is to be understood by the terms “art,” “culture” and, most importantly, “Africa”

Part II: Developing Relevant and Inclusive Programmes[3]

► In order to fulfil the goals outlined in Part I, the Africa Centre must develop programmes that serve a range of different constituencies simultaneously. The reference group identified three fundamental requirements in this regard:

The Africa Centre must build significant outreach initiatives involving a wide spectrum of public and private, local and state organisations.

The Africa Centre must deploy several scales of planning, allowing for the articulation of simultaneously-running and complementary short-, mid- and long-range programmes.

The Africa Centre must develop tactics to render art and its appreciation entertaining for connoisseurs and newcomers to the arts alike.

►Significant outreach initiatives: The Africa Centre will prove to be relevant only if it develops carefully targeted outreach programmes involving communities, organisations and interest groups that have not previously built ties with major arts and culture institutions. As noted in Part I, decentralisation must be an essential feature of such programmes:

Some such programmes will be structured and overseen directly by the Africa Centre and will sponsor activities taking place on the Spier Estate. Many, however, should be designed, sited and run outside the Centre proper.

In the latter case, every effort should be made to:

■ Develop programs that respond to the needs, requirements and aspirations of their users, and that bear a direct relation to their daily lives and concerns

■ Develop long-term programmes, allowing for significant independent growth and capacity building over time

■ Assist in developing local infrastructures

■ Foster links and build bridges between communities.

In planning outreach initiatives, the Africa Centre should look to the experience of, and seek expertise from, already extant programmes. In doing so, it should not focus on arts-related institutions exclusively.

►Several scales of planning: In order to serve diverse communities of users, the Africa Centre should sponsor a range of different types of programs, meant to run simultaneously, to be articulated with one another, and to build incrementally on one another. Among (but not restricted to) these should be:

Residencies for visual and performance artists, intellectuals, scholars, instructors and activists:

■ Residencies should be of three types: short- (1 week-1 month); mid- (1-3 months); and long-term (3-6 months).

■ Residencies should take place on the Spier Estate, in dedicated studio, performance, research and meditation spaces, and in nearby communities.

■ The Centre should encourage joint endeavours among residents and maximize interaction between residents and the Centre’s users. To this end, the Centre should sponsor a wide variety of related activities. Among these should be:

Conferences, workshops, classes, discussion groups and open studio sessions led by residents and open to the public, on the Spier Estate and in nearby communities

An ongoing series of temporary exhibitions and performances showcasing works in progress and finished pieces by residents, most, but not all, taking place in dedicated exhibition and performance spaces on the Spier Estate

Residencies outside the Spier Estate, in South Africa and beyond, sponsored by the Africa Centre as part of the decentralisation process outlined above. In this context,

■ Every effort should be made to foster dialogue between (1) residents staying on the Estate and residents at work outside the Estate; (2) the latter and members of the Centre’s community of users.

■ To this end, the Centre should develop a system of live video or other telecommunication feeds, allowing residents at work outside Spier to showcase their work and participate in and/or lead conferences, workshops, classes, discussion groups and open studios sessions in which Centre users can participate as well.

Provision of low-cost spaces/equipment for locally-based creators:

■ Access to recording studios, sound stages and editing suites, dark rooms, forges, kilns and rehearsal studios can prove exceedingly difficult for emerging artists in South Africa today. Prohibitive costs are a significant issue in this regard. The Africa Centre will seek to remedy this situation by making such spaces available for hourly or daily rental at a reasonable cost.

■ In addition to providing emerging artists with the space and equipment needed to undertake and/or complete projects, the foregoing will allow locally-based creators to meet and, potentially, to develop working relationships with creators in residence at the Centre.

An active publications program. Central goals of this program should be to:

■ Document and expand on programs and activities sponsored by the Africa Centre

■ Support young writers/artists and writers/artists developing innovative and/or alternative approaches to the written word

An online, living archive documenting emergent cultural movements and practitioners across the African world

The reference group recommends that programs sponsored by the Africa Centre be structured as follows: The basis for program articulation should be a three year period dedicated to one overarching theme, ideally a subject of urgent concern across borders and cultures. This type of approach, increasingly common in scientific institutions but rare in arts and culture organisations, offers several advantages:

It allows practitioners in a range of fields to come together over varying lengths of time, not only to consider a specific issue, but also to foster an ongoing, evolving dialogue.

It allows practitioners and administrators to open up processes underway to people not initially invited to participate in them and whose expertise can be called on to enhance programs and take them in new directions.

It allows time for a dedicated public to form around given issues and possibly to become actively involved in specific programs.

It makes possible well thought-out, engaging and aesthetically pleasing events and publications, and long-term outreach initiatives.

It facilitates long-range planning, key in seeking funding from international donors.

The reference group has identified a core set of themes around which it recommends that programs be structured during the Africa Centre’s first three years of activity. Appendix A (below) provides:

An overview of these themes

An overview of the first public event to be held at the Centre focusing on these themes

►Render art and its appreciation entertaining for connoisseurs and newcomers to the arts alike: In order to make the aforementioned program attractive to multiple constituencies and to adequately serve the needs of diverse publics, the Africa Centre must:

Do away with dichotomies commonly deployed by museums and related institutions to structure the experience of art and, more generally, of culture. Among these dichotomies are:

■ Art vs Craft ■ High tech vs Low tech

■ High vs Low ■ Specialist vs Neophyte

■ Urban vs Rural ■ Centre vs Periphery

■ Present vs Past ■ Us vs Them

■ Tradition vs Modernity ■ Here vs There

■ Viewer vs Viewed ■ Learning vs Recreation

■ Theory vs Practice ■ Adult vs Child

■ Process vs End product

Develop a more inclusive approach to the arts than is typically encountered in museums and related institutions. The term “art,” here, is taken to include (but not to be restricted to):

■ Forms of visual expression (painting, drawing and printing/etching, collage, sculpture and ceramics, installation art, photography, video, film, digital and web-based art forms)

■ Forms of performative expression (theatre, dance/choreography, music, oral and spoken word arts)

■ Forms of written expression (ranging from poetry and fiction to philosophical inquiry and scholarly research on any/all of the above)

Privilege approaches to art that relate it directly to the social, political and economic contexts in which it is created and, in so doing, to the everyday life of Africa Centre users

Look to humour and irony to underscore the contingent and mutable nature of artistic expression and to encourage viewers to question ways in which it intersects with their daily lives

Explore approaches to artistic expression derived from sources other than the traditional European museum. Such approaches might, notably:

■ Allow for direct interaction between practitioners and viewers

■ Encourage users of the Africa Centre to become active participants in exhibitions and performances by engaging all of their senses: not only sight and sound, but also touch, smell and taste

■ Encourage users to take an active part in planning and transforming exhibitions and performances and, thereby,

■ Foster a sense of the unexpected and the unplanned

■ Privilege spaces and, within these, displays and performances meant to undergo rapid and unscripted transformation

Explore approaches to display and performance derived from sources bearing no direct relation to artistic expression as it is commonly perceived in traditional museums and related institutions. Such sources include, but are not limited to:

■ Marketplaces

■ Long-distance trade networks and so-called “parallel” economies

■ The leisure industry

■The World Wide Web

■ DJ and Dancehall cultures

Part III: Developing a Fluid Approach

to Space and Architectural Form[4]

► In order to fulfil the goals outlined in Parts I and II, the Africa Centre must develop an innovative approach to space and architectural form. Above all, this approach must privilege fluidity. The reference group has identified two broad areas in which this aim should be most actively pursued:

Fluidity of movement
Fluidity of form and meaning

►Fluidity of movement: If multiple publics are to use the Africa Centre simultaneously, it is essential that users be offered as wide a range of options as possible to move through its spaces. The Centre should eschew planned routes and directions. Every effort should be made to avoid creating hierarchies suggesting that certain entrances/exits, buildings or open areas and the activities that take place there are more important than others. In other words, spatially the Africa Centre should not have one centre; it should, rather, be comprised of multiple, complimentary arenas that, like its contents and programs, build on one another incrementally.

Among (but not restricted to) the spaces and structures the Africa Centre is expected to include are the following two entities:

A reasoning centre: Drawing on the Jamaican verb “to reason” – broadly, to debate so as to understand and, where possible, act – the reference group proposes the creation of a multivalent “reasoning centre.” Here, a wide range of activities can take place. These activities, in turn, can play a key role in defining concurrent and future initiatives of the Africa Centre.

The reasoning centre is envisaged as one or several linked buildings bringing together:

■ Work studios for persons invited to undertake residencies at the Africa Centre

■ One or more common areas for informal meetings between residents

■ Seminar rooms of different sizes dedicated to: formal and semi-formal meetings among residents; workshops, classes and discussion groups led by residents and open to the Africa Centre’s users

■ A documentation space/living online archive

An overview of activities taking place in the reasoning centre might include (but not be limited to) the following:

■ The Centre’s activities in any given year might be structured in terms of two seasons – two periods of six months each. The first would prepare the second, the latter being a time of exhibitions, installations, performances, concerts, conferences, readings, etc. Preparation for the second season would take place in the reasoning center.

■ In the reasoning center, creators invited to spend periods of various lengths in residence would find a common space to engage in dialogue, experimentation and joint endeavour, while working on projects of their own as well as collaborating in the production of works to be highlighted by the Centre in the second season.

■ Arts practitioners living in and/or visiting South Africa during the time of this residence, as well as thinkers and activists, might be invited to the reasoning centre, at various points throughout the first six months, to meet with the creators in residence, whether informally or in the context of debates and roundtables, some open to the public, others of a more private nature.

■ The reasoning centre might offer a platform for developing new and ongoing links and programs with schools across the Africa Centre’s network of partner nodes, proposing a series of classes, workshops and discussions, throughout the first six months, between students and the creators in residence at the centre, both in person and (for more distant partners) via live feed. In broader terms, the reasoning centre might serve as a platform for the types of exchanges with and across networks outlined in Part I (above).

■ Activities and discussions taking place in the reasoning centre throughout the first six months, as well as activities born of this preparatory period and highlighted during the second six months, might be documented at the reasoning centre, this leading to the construction of a living archive available online. Such an archive, dedicated to contemporary arts practice in the African world, would be a first as well as a unique resource. As classical methods of documentation might prove inapposite, a rotating staff of creators in residence might be envisaged, whose brief would be to record initiatives sponsored by the Africa Centre in the media of their choice (painting, writing, video, choreography, etc.). From this would emerge an innovative vision of the archive not only as a source of information but also as a work of art in and of itself, constantly evolving and itself a subject of potential inquiry.

A space for public interface with the arts: In order to foster a fluid and inclusive approach to the arts, based on programs that seek to build bridges between creators, audiences and interest groups across space and time (see notably Part II, above), the Africa Centre must devise public spaces that actively combat traditional hierarchies and definitions of form as well as meaning. To this end, the reference group recommends the creation of a structure hosting a wide range of short-, middle- and long-range, scripted and unscripted exhibitions and performances. This structure should be either a single, multiple usage edifice or (and this may be more likely) several physically distinct but spatially and conceptually linked buildings. All events taking place therein should be related to and spring from programs sponsored by the Centre in a given three-year period. In this structure, the reference group recommends, there should be no hard and fast distinctions between genres of artistic expression:

■ Individual spaces should be prepared to host several types of events (exhibitions of art objects such as might be seen in a traditional museum; installations encouraging physical engagement between artists, objects and members of the public; choreographed events resulting in the transformation of given exhibits; solo performances by dancers or musicians; master classes; poetry slams; and dance parties, to cite but a few examples).

■ In order for the foregoing to be possible, individual spaces should be designed for maximum malleability. Walls should be moveable, stages (where present) adjustable, lighting adaptable to multiple circumstances. In devising such malleable spaces, the Africa Centre’s focus should not be exclusively or even primarily on high-tech solutions. As suggested in the Introduction (above), inspiration should be sought in a wide range of social, geographical and temporal contexts.

■ As this suggests, in its design as in its content, the Africa Centre should explore a multiplicity of languages. Formally – that is, architecturally and aesthetically – as well as conceptually and in the activities that it sponsors, the Centre should engage and experiment with ideas and influences spanning a wide range of sources. This is (emphatically) not to say that, architecturally, the Centre should be a Postmodern hodge-podge; again, however (see Part I), consensus or unicity of vision should not be a main aspiration.

The final section of Part III (immediately below) addresses conclusions of the reference group as to how such a multiplicity of formal languages might be brought to bear on the design of the Africa Centre and what relation this has more generally to the production of a multivocal space.

►Fluidity of form and meaning: Arts and culture institutions expecting to interact with sizeable audiences typically look to large iconic architectural structures as a means of anchoring their activities and expressing their philosophical approach. Such structures, however, often prove to be cumbersome: they lack flexibility of use, form and meaning. The design of the structures tends to dictate, or in any event to actively shape, who visits them, what types of works are shown there, what manner of performances are privileged, and how these are viewed by audiences. In response to these and related concerns, in recent decades, forward-looking arts and culture organizations have been looking to such solutions as recycled domestic and industrial spaces and to the construction of temporary locales. Most institutions under development today choose one or the other of these approaches and tend, in the process, to brand themselves as “mainstream/classical” on the one hand or “experimental” on the other. Where efforts are made to meld the two approaches, the result is often a matter of appearances more than substance.

The reference group recommends that the Africa Centre take up as a substantive and long-range project the challenge of developing itself as a hybrid entity, actively linking to one another fundamentally different types of spaces. Among these types of spaces should be:

Permanent iconic spaces: Bearing in mind conclusions outlined in Parts I and II (above), spaces of this kind should be designed in such a manner as to:

■ Respect and actively engage with the social, historical, political and economic specificities of the region in which they appear

■ Privilege proportions, formal languages, orientations and relationships to the human body, to space and to the landscape that (1) reflect key goals of the Africa Centre project; (2) are inspired by and resonate in more than simply symbolic ways with approaches to architecture, and to space more generally, developed in the African world

These spaces should be:

■ Structured internally so as to offer maximum flexibility

■ Structured internally and externally to articulate in practical and effective ways with other types of spaces, notably:

Temporary, movable and partially or wholly morphable spaces: If we hold ourselves to classical definitions of what constitutes architecture, we find ourselves, for the most part, before structures that are meant to be unchanging. Once it has been inaugurated, it is expected that a building will remain as-is. Alterations to its layout or ornamental program are to be avoided. Although they are commonly presented as normative, such “takes” on building structure and form are, in fact, the exception. They are hallmarks of the Euro-American architectural tradition and have a relatively shallow, post 17^th century history. In other parts of the world, at different points in time, very different approaches have, and continue to be, adopted. Flexibility of structure and form are foregrounded: they are built into the building process. They are expected to occur as a result of usage and they are viewed as an integral part of the building’s life and identity. Put simply, a building is expected to grow and change over time. It is meant to have a life that intersects with, reflects and acts upon the lives of those who bring it into being.

The reference group recommends that this type of approach inform the design of the Africa Centre and its growth over time. In practical terms, this signifies the inclusion in the Centre’s design of:

■ Impermanent, highly malleable and/or movable structures for exhibition, performance, research, discussion and leisure.

Structures of this kind should be conceived as dock-able entities. It should be possible to link them in effective and aesthetically pleasing ways to permanent structures and the latter should be designed with this specifically in mind.

The dock-able structures should, moreover, be re-usable. They should be designed in such a manner that they can be employed at different times and to different ends by a variety of creators and audiences on the Spier Estate and/or in one of the Africa Centre’s partner nodes.

■ Unbuilt, open spaces meant to be used and/or transformed through transient means.

Such means might include (but not be limited to): light; sound; plant growth; temporary installations; techniques for experimenting with virtual realities.

In the design of both types of spaces/structures, partnerships should be actively encouraged between resident creators, users involved in programs sponsored by the Africa Centre, and architects and landscape designers.

All such transient spaces/structures should be designed in the context of, and should reflect and build on, the themes of specific programmes sponsored by the Centre, ensuring a direct link between content and form.

Concluding Words

Broadly, the Africa Centre’s goals can be defined as follows. The Africa Centre seeks to be a multi-vocal, multi-site and multi-usage space dedicated to showcasing and fostering the arts of the African world. This space is expected to question and transgress definitional boundaries. “Art,” here, will include but not be limited to the visual arts, such as these are defined in most Euro-American settings; works that hang on walls, stand on pedestals and are projected onto screens will be joined by performance pieces, aural experiences, written words and events both scripted and not, produced by a direct, physical exchange between works, their makers and their viewers. Viewing, reflection, dialogue and creation will happen simultaneously. “Art,” here, will be understood as both process and end product. Wherever possible, it will be a result of interaction; always, it will seek to prompt interchange and to bear a direct relation to the lives of those who interface with it.

The guiding force behind this project is the staging ground for its elaboration: the African continent. With the decision to develop the Africa Centre in Africa – rather than in Europe or North America, where the majority of international institutions focusing on Africa’s cultural production are located – come unique challenges and opportunities. First among these is the possibility of redefining what art is or is understood to be in a museum setting and what kinds of architectural stage sets might best bring it to life. In order to actualize this possibility, The Africa Centre proposes to draw on models for the display and reception of art developed by African practitioners past and present. The goal in doing so shall not be to reproduce these models – the point here is not to essentialise, to produce an “African” experience of art (whatever that might be) – but to seek inspiration from them. Other templates will be explored as well. The majority, in all likelihood, will not be Euro-American. This will be so not in opposition to the world’s Louvres or Guggenheim Bilbaos, or to the exclusion of approaches they might offer, a number of which may prove quite fruitful: the entity the Africa Centre hopes to develop is not an answer to or a rebuke of “Northern” models. What the Africa Centre proposes to be, rather, is a means and a locus to explore a vast history and heritage of approaches to the appreciation of art that have gone largely untapped, even by the most forward-thinking “Northern” institutions.

The Africa Centre envisions itself as a laboratory: a site positioned in Africa that looks to Africa and, in broader terms, to the world beyond Europe and contemporary North America, as a point of departure to articulate innovative ways of thinking, doing and feeling art, worldwide.

Appendix A: Overview of Recommended

Thematic Structure for Years 1, 2 & 3

A General Note on Programming at the Africa Centre

Institutions whose work focuses on culture and the arts are increasingly turning to programming approaches commonly associated with the world of science. Projects and events planned as discrete happenings scheduled to take place sequentially, over a period of months, and bearing little relation to one another are giving way to webs of closely linked undertakings programmed to take place both simultaneously and in sequence over an extended period of time. Seasonal planning, typically associated with arts and performance arenas, is notorious for its scattershot “feel”: events come and go, each of which may be successful in its own right, but for outsiders (and often insiders too) a sense of continuity and cumulative growth is lacking. Programs articulated over years rather than months, focusing on common themes and the need for projects to build on one another – common in scientific institutions – prove more productive and satisfying. They encourage in-depth reflection, maximum creativity and the production of polished end products centered on well defined issues and sets of ideas.

In the latter context, events typically unfold as follows. A given theme, ideally a subject of interest and urgent concern across borders and cultures, becomes the focus of most activities underway at the institution for a period of two or more years. Generally speaking, it is agreed that three years is an appropriate time span. This allows practitioners in a range of fields to come together over varying lengths of time, not only to consider an issue, but also to enter into an ongoing dialogue with one another, which evolves over time. It also allows practitioners and administrators to open up processes underway at the institution to persons whom they may not have initially invited to join in discussions – persons whose expertise and vision can be called on to enhance reflection and take it in new directions. As news of activities underway at the institution spreads, others still may make their interest in the proceedings known, adding yet another layer of complexity and productivity to the process. The results are often remarkable. This is so, notably, as regards end products. The lapse of time involved allows for serious, well thought-out, engaging and aesthetically pleasing events and publications, as well as long-term community outreach programs. It also facilitates long-term planning, increasingly a key issue in seeking funding from international donors for research and activities.

The reference group recommends that this type of approach to programming be adopted at the Africa Centre. The group feels that it offers an array of opportunities to bring into being successful and noteworthy exhibitions, conferences, workshops and publications. Focused on the longer term, on dialogue over time and space and on cumulative processes, it fits in well with the Africa Centre’s interest in fostering and sustaining networks of information and production across the African world and offers a solid platform to begin articulating long range community outreach programs. Thinking the Africa Centre in terms such as those outlined here, the reference group believes, will play a significant role in developing the Centre as a locus dedicated to in-depth reflection on creativity and the central roles that it plays in the construction of the African world.

Theme Recommended for the Development of

Programmes at the Africa Centre – Years 1, 2 and 3

(A) Title:

“En / Tangled Nations”

(B) Description

The title “En / Tangle Nations” reflects a theme chosen in response to concerns, movements and ideas central to dialogue in a number of different arenas:

(a) South Africa today (c) The African diaspora

(b) The African continent more broadly (d) Communities across the globe

In each of these arenas, the theme outlined hereafter is a subject of discourse among specialists as well as real people living real, everyday lives.

The concept of the nation has been at the center of discourse in and about the African world for well over fifty years. South Africa’s very recent history, as well as contemporary events in many parts of Africa and its diasporas – in Ethiopia, Somalia, Sudan and Haiti, to cite but a few examples – underscore how salient the concept remains and how complex the questions are that it raises. Some would argue that enough has been said on the subject. The reference group disagrees. Many fundamental queries, the group holds, have yet to be answered and many questions that have been asked are in need of rethinking.

The nation has been and remains a subject of such interest and contention in the African world for a number of familiar reasons. At the heart of the matter is the colonial project. Had colonization not taken place, the nation would not be the issue that it is in Africa today or, in any event, the questions that it poses would be couched in significantly different terms. The nation state in its current iteration is an invention of the “North.” It is a building block of Euro-American hegemony and of capitalist systems of production and exchange that are its driving force. Absent these, in all likelihood different approaches to sovereignty and citizenship would have been developed in Africa and beyond. Without a doubt, some of the most vexing problems nations and their citizenries face on the African continent and in the Caribbean today would not exist. Arbitrarily drawn borders resulting in ethnic strife and xenophobia; political instability caused by competition for scarce resources; systematic looting of the land and its geological wealth by “Northern” interests working in tandem with elites they themselves installed; corrupt bureaucracies and armed forces that descend in direct line from systems of control implemented during the colonial era: some of the most intractable difficulties Africa and its diasporas face today are indubitably ills born of the colonial period.

Not all of the African world’s difficulties can be attributed to colonialism, however. Such reductionism is of little use. It oversimplifies, forecloses dialogue and paints a picture of African peoples as victims rather than actors able to shape their own destinies. So too, it fails to take into consideration a vast gamut of ways in which ideas of the nation have been developed, put in practice and instrumentalised in the African world. Focus on the colonial period and its aftermath also poses a temporal problem: it limits discussion to the last 150 years; in the process concepts of statehood and sovereignty developed in Africa prior to the 1850s fall by the wayside.

The intimate ties that bind the African world’s national landscape to its colonial past have had a powerful effect on ways in which the former is conceptualized and discussed. Discourses on the question have tended to take one of two forms:

Celebrations of the nation as an ideal to be attained and defended at all costs
Indictments of the direction particular nations have taken since independence

This, in turn, has resulted in what can be described as Manichean stances, an either-or pattern that leaves no room for other, more complex and nuanced approaches and questions. Two fields of inquiry in particular have been sidelined by this state of affairs:

Criticism of the nation as concept, goal and ideal, of nationalism as sentiment and practice, and of nation-building projects
Alternative definitions of, approaches to and lived experiences of the nation

Creators in a wide range of fields have had a great deal to say about these concerns. Their statements – in word, in image and three-dimensional form, in sound, movement, fashion and self-stylization – however, have been given little attention. In some cases this is so because the statements disturb: they are not considered politically or socially productive, do not fit in with the day’s political, intellectual or artistic currents. Others are shunted aside because the actors involved are deemed marginal. Age, class and geography are important factors in this respect, as are questions of professional status (or the perceived absence thereof). Equally significant, and of particular interest to the reference group, is still another issue. Many actors whose identities and approaches are considered marginal, and whose “takes” therefore attract little attention, are engaged in forms of cultural production that undercut and/or radically re-work accepted definitions of the term “nation.” Their practices articulate wholly alternative approaches and imaginaries of the nation, bring into being other nations that cut across and destabilize the bases of the nation state as it is normatively conceived.

Much has been said by political scientists, historians and philosophers in recent years about the death of the nation … and just as much about the emergence worldwide of new nations, new nationalisms and nation-building projects. This is not the ground the reference group proposes to tread. The group proposes to focus instead on new ways in which nations are being thought and enacted by actors too often considered immaterial in such processes. Via a series of programs to be implemented over the Africa Centre’s first three years of activity, the reference group seeks to foster an understanding of how cultural, religious and spiritual boundaries, and boundaries of language, symbol, exchange and value, are being reworked and rearticulated daily across the African world, creating fault lines and thoroughfares (of people, ideas and objects) that undermine official narratives and projects developed by established nations and national elites. The nation, the group holds, is no longer the structuring device that it was, unique in its ability or quest to supersede others (allegiances, belief systems, ways of doing and being), a destination to be sought and imposed. It has become, instead, an instrument: one among many tools selectively constructed and deployed – used as needed, in multiple forms and to multiple, simultaneous ends – by actors for whom “home,” “place,” “citizenship” and “identity” are increasingly malleable, overlapping and shifting terms of reference.

From such shifts, practices, deployments and redeployments as are outlined above, a complex web arises of multiple, contradictory, yet mutually interdependent social, political and economic fields, an entanglement of heterogeneous and complimentary nations. This results in an alternative cartography of the nation as both concept and physical entity, which has yet to be seriously examined. Mapping this geography – thinking it in terms other than purely allegorical – requires concrete engagement with the cultural, formal and symbolic forces that structure and give it expression. The first three years of programs and activities developed by the Africa Centre, the reference group believes, should center on precisely this form of engagement.

Pundits and poets, journalists and journeymen speak of a “Hip Hop nation,” of “Black nations,” “transatlantic nations” and “Afrofuturist nations,” call for a “supra-national consciousness” spanning the African world, invoke “borderless nations,” “stateless nations” and “extra-national spaces,” posit “transnational flows,” “emergent nations” and “migrant nations,” “imagined” and “invented nations”… How, the Africa Centre’s programs and activities will ask, are these confluent and contradictory, simultaneous and overlapping nations constructed? What are their cultural bases? What types of creativities do they call for and bring into being? What manner of practices and tactics? What languages, of words, signs and symbols? To what types of standards do they give rise and what ways of judging and attributing value? How do their cultural products travel? How are they disseminated, appropriated and re-appropriated? How are they marketed? According to what manner of rules? What are the mechanics and the modalities of their exchange? What transformations do cultural products and the manner in which they move across and through space undergo as they intersect with other forms of expression and exchange, long-standing as well as emergent? What happens to notions of territory, border, national culture, identity and intellectual property in contexts as fluid and malleable as these? What impact do such culture flows as the reference group proposes to examine have on conceptions of citizenship, belonging and place? On perceptions of self and other? On the figure of the stranger? On local readings of global spaces? How do they participate tangibly in the construction of trans-border and trans-continental communities? Of diasporas? What role do they play, and how, in the making of such interstitial yet increasingly prevalent and heterogeneous spaces as refugee camps, trans-border marketplaces and construction sites, oil rigs, army recruitment camps and contemporary art museums? How do they shape approaches to migration? To the concept of home and the terms in which it is told? How do they impact ways in which information travels and the forms in which it does so? What roles do they play in articulating increasingly tenuous distinctions between “urban” and “rural,” “modernity” and “tradition,” “inside” and “outside,” “present” and “past”? How are they integrated into (or, conversely, evacuated from) official narratives of the nation, national culture and belonging? How do they link up with other factors and forces, such as historical constructs of “race,” “ethnicity” and “class,” and with age, gender and identity politics, in the elaboration of new imaginings of the nation, in the making and breaking of hopes these foster and the destinations they chart? What dreams do the creative practices to be fostered, studied, celebrated and critiqued at the Centre during its first three years of activity conjure for African centuries to come? These are some of the questions the “En / Tangled Nations” project intends to ask.

(3) First Program to be Developed in the Context

of the “En / Tangled Nations” Project: Overview of Recommendations

The “En / Tangled Nations” project will open with an event by the same title, to be held in early 2007. What follows is an overview of the event’s structure. As planning for the event is still in progress, changes and updates are likely.

(A) General Statement

Rather than a discrete, self-referential happening – a one-off gathering – the opening event of the “En / Tangled Nations” project is envisaged as the first in a series of closely linked moments, projects and performances. As such, it is meant to function as a laboratory to begin putting into practice core ideas underlying the Africa Centre project as whole. The event will also mark the public launch of the Africa Centre.

Most participants at gatherings celebrating the birth of an institution play a passive role. They are onlookers invited after the fact to witness what others have done. The event outlined below is meant to be a gathering of a different kind. Those present will play an active role in all aspects of the undertaking. They will shape the event as well as the future of the institution whose launch it celebrates. The Africa Centre will not only be asking for their imprimatur, or for their opinions on its plans for the future. Instead, it will be convening them to a hands-on engagement with ideas and practices. The point will not be to speak of the Africa Centre, but to see it in action: to participate in the elaboration of a platform bringing together thinkers and practitioners in a wide range of fields around a set of issues of import to Africa and the world at large. The event is conceived as a gateway, a door wide open onto a sustained, varied and open-ended process of reflection, creation and transnational dialogue.

(B) Overview of the Event’s Structure

In order to set the stage for such a dialogue, a structure for the gathering has been devised that differs from the norm. Rather than a series of papers presented by specialists to an audience of mostly silent onlookers – a typical (and often less than engaging) approach in conference settings – the following is expected to take place:

(a) The event will center on working sessions, in which creators and thinkers in a wide range of fields come together for in-depth reflection around a core set of questions related to the theme “En/Tangled Nations.”

(b) The set of questions to be addressed by all of the working sessions is as follows:

What kinds of knowledges and practices might strengthen the diverse collective experiences of African peoples today?

The colonial imposition of the nation rent much of Africa’s social, political, and economic life. Yet the idea of nation remains a powerful aspiration as a vehicle for people to live together beyond the frameworks of ethnicity, race, region, and kinship to which they have been historically consigned. This aspiration is acted upon in hundreds of small ways, gestures and experiments on a daily basis across the continent – a literal cacophony of nation-building. Despite the more well-known and vociferous arguments about how territories, resources and even bodies are to be used, divergent spaces, identities, goods, and histories are put together that enable collaborations that exceed expectations, even if only momentarily.

These efforts are obscured by the vagaries of official politics and the use of the state as a mechanism of private enrichment, and flounder unsupported in a context of economic injustice and structural impoverishment. Yet, they exist, beyond the words and institutions conventionally associated with notions of national development. They seek to work out critical questions about how people are to live and work together, and where they might be able to make a viable life. Given the urgency individuals face to do something in order to ensure their livelihood, it is increasingly impossible for them to remain in place or even to consider possibilities available to them while remaining only within familiar walks of life. Increasingly, people are thrown together; strangers become neighbors, neighbors become strangers, and individuals are implicated in a wide range of relations both near and far. As a result, there are few maps and institutions sufficient to provide clear guidelines for how people are to manage their everyday lives together, giving rise to a highly volatile mix of generosity and violence, certainty and uncertainty.

The working sessions entitled “En/Tangled Nations” are intended to explore existent and prospective cultural practices capable of enhancing recognition of these everyday practices of nation-building, and how they might attain greater resonance with and support of each other.

(d) Each working session will last three 3 days.

(e) Each working session will include a total of 15 participants:

(i) 1 leader/catalyst chosen by the Reference Group.

(ii) 5 participants chosen by the Reference Group.

If the leader/catalyst is unable to attend, s/he will be replaced by the first person in the list of 5 participants chosen by the Reference Group.

(iii) 4-5 participants chosen by the Board of the Africa Centre.

(iv) 2 members of the Reference Group.

(f) For each of the 4 working sessions, the Reference Group has chosen: the following leader/catalyst; the following 5 participants; and the following 2 Reference Group members[5]:

Working Session #1

Leader/Catalyst: Ngone Fall

Participants: Tunde Kelani

Francis Nyamnjoh

Sami Tchak

Robin Orlin

Joyce Nyairo

R.G. members: Stanley Hermans

Olu Oguibe

Working Session #2

Leader/Catalyst: Boyzi Cekwana

Participants: Leila Sebbar

Zim Nqawana

Ray Lema

Okwui Enwezor

Abdullah Ibrahim

R.G. members: Domnique Malaquais

Edgar Pieterse

Working Session #3

Leader/Catalyst: Were Were Liking

Participants: Kodwo Eshun

Goddy Leye

Nurudin Farrah

Judy Kibingue

Balufu Bakupu Kayinde

R.G. members: AbdouMaliq Simone

Ntone Edjabe

Working Session #4

Leader/Catalyst: John Akromfah

Participants: Dread Scott

Zoe Wicomb

Patrice Nganang

Sandrine Bessora

Ngantsi Towo

R.G. members: Bongi Dhlomo-Mautloa

Faustin Linyekula

(g) All leader/catalysts and participants will be asked to guarantee that, if they accept the invitation to take part in the event, they will be present throughout the three days of the gathering.

(h) Each of the 4 leader/catalysts will be asked to provide a one paragraph description of approaches s/he proposes to develop in the working session s/he is being asked to lead.

(i) Each working session will take place in its own architectural structure/space, separate from the other 3.

(j) The working sessions will take place during the day, from circa 10:00 AM to 5:00 PM, with a 1 ½ hour catered lunch break.

(k) In the evenings, the following will take place:

(i) All participants in all working sessions will gather in one central, multi-usage space.

(ii) In this space, 8 video consoles will be present, each provided with a bank of 5 earphones. On these video consoles, participants will be able to watch uncut footage of all working sessions filmed earlier in the day.

(iii) 2 video projectors and 2 large projection screens will be present in the space as well, accompanied by a state of the art sound system. These screens/systems will serve the following purposes:

- Video open mike session:

On each day of the event, following the end of working sessions for that day, participants in the event will be invited to record a 5 minute videotaped statement focusing on the “En/Tangled Nations” theme.

Taping will take place in a pre-arranged location and will be overseen by a V-Jay. Said V-Jay will be South Africa based and will be appointed on the advice of members of the Reference Group currently living in South Africa.

On all three evenings, at a pre-appointed time, the videotaped commentaries will be shown in the central space, as mixed, live, by the V-Jay. The commentaries will also be included in the set of events described immediately below, in items 14c ii and iii.

- Live installations by 3 new media artists:

On 2 of the 3 evenings of the event, media artists will have been invited to showcase live installations centering on the theme of “En/Tangled Nations,” mixing images and sounds of their choice with footage from the working sessions and the commentaries filmed earlier that day.

These installation will be executed using Max/MSP/Jitter software.[6]

The artists invited in this context are as follows:

1 practitioner whose work focuses on sound, image and texture distortion and explores issues relevant to the “En/Tangled Nations” theme:

Joachim Montessuis, Noise poet

2 emerging Cape Town based practitioners interested in voice, image and texture distortion, to collaborate with Montessuis.

These two practitioners shall be identified by members of the Reference Group currently living in Cape Town.

Montessuis will be invited to spend 7 days in Cape Town prior to the event, preparing with the Cape Town based practitioners and working with them to develop familiarity with the Max/MSP/Jitter software.

- Dance performance in Johannesburg linked by live feed to events taking place on the Spier Estate:

On both evenings during which a live sound/image/texture installation will be taking place at Spier (as described above), a simultaneous event will take place in Johannesburg, linked to the Spier installation by live feed.

Images/sounds/textures being shown at Spier will be shown simultaneously at the Bus Factory in Johannesburg.

They will be incorporated into a dance piece performed by 5 dancers.

Two dance pieces will be staged, one on each of the two evenings, each involving 5 dancers. Both will focus on the “En/Tangled Nations” theme.

2 choreographers will be invited to create the pieces, each with 5 dancers of his choice:

Evening 1: Greg Maqoma

Evening 2: George Kumalo

Within 16 months of the event, a publication will appear, centered on the “En/Tangled Nations” theme and analysing the event. This will be the Africa Centre’s first publication. The publication will be coordinated/edited by Dominique Malaquais and AbdouMaliq Simone.

[1] At the beginning of each part of the synopsis, readers will find a footnote listing the précis and position papers on which that part is based.

[2] Part I draws on findings discussed in the précis of Colloquia 1 and 2 and in Position Papers 1 and 3.

[3] Part II draws on findings discussed in the précis of Colloquia 1, 2, 3 and 4, in the précis of Workshop 3, and in Position Papers 1, 2 and 3.

[4] Part III draws on findings discussed in the précis of Colloquia 1, 2 and 3, in the précis of Workshops 3 and 4, and in Position Papers 1, 2 and 3.

[5] The following list of leader/catalysts and participants is not final.

[6] MAX/MSP is a visual programming environment for building real-time musical and interactive applications. Jitter is a set of 133 new video, matrix, and 3D graphics objects for the Max graphical programming environment.

Description: Max/MSP is currently the world’s leading software for interactive sound installations. Max/MSP is a bundling of Max (IRCAM/Cycling’74) for real-time control of interactive musical and multimedia applications through MIDI and MSP (Cycling’74), a large set of Max objects for real-time analysis, synthesis and processing of audio signals. Max/MSP is designed for musicians, sound designers, teachers and researchers who want to develop interactive performance oriented programs. Max/MSP is developed by Cycling ’74 (USA) with an exclusive license from IRCAM. The Jitter objects extend the functionality of Max4/MSP2 with flexible means to generate and manipulate matrix data, any data that can be expressed in rows and columns, such as video and still images, 3D geometry, as well as text, spreadsheet data, particle systems, voxels, or audio. Jitter is useful to anyone interested in real-time video processing, custom effects, 2D/3D graphics, audio/visual interaction, data visualization, and analysis.

Uses/Main Features: (1) Composition: Generation of musical structures with more or less complex objects using mathematical or random models. (2) Live Performance: Production of pieces that react to instrumental performance (either from incoming audio or MIDI) or using incoming audio as the source material. Triggering sounds and audio files in different ways makes Max/MSP the ultimate sampler. Dynamic control of complex programs combining not only musical signals but also video, lighting effects, etc. (3) Audio Post Production and Device Driving: Virtual control of several external devices like mixing console, direct to disk system, synthesizers. (4) Education: Pedagogical tool widely used in universities, music schools and conservatories. Documentation with over 20 interactive tutorials can be used for learning the fundamentals of MIDI and audio. (5) Research: Max/MSP is used in research for prototyping synthesis or DSP algorithms and real-time control. New objects can easily be written in C and dynamically linked as externs.

Technical Features: Several hundred objects for synthesis, control, processing, sampling, analysis. Support of several audio cards such as: Digidesign Audiomedia III, Digi 001, Project II, ProTools IV & Protools Mix, Korg 1212, Lucid PCI24, Sonorus StudI/O, OTU 2408, Emagic AudioWerk 8. Low latencies with most audio cards (6.5 ms to 47 ms).

Configuration: Macintosh with a minimum of 96 MB of RAM, color screen with Mac OS8 and beyond, including OSX. Windows version available (Max/MSP is a cross-platform application).

Design and Development: IRCAM Original MAX development: Miller Puckette. Cycling’74 MAX/MSP development: David Zicarelli. MSP is developed by Cycling’74 and is based on ideas implemented in IRCAM’s previous real-time DSP environment, FTS.

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