DIVAN 1. Taoufiq meets Jaime

Taoufiq speaks French. Jaime speaks English. Taoufiq wears black t-shirt and lies on the black and furry divan. Jaime wears white t-shirt and lies on the white divan. A small black table separates them. Taoufiq faces the garden. Jaime faces Graner building. People walk around. Jaime talks to Taoufiq through Inma’s words.

What is the point of using the word “Africa” nowadays? What does it mean? “Africa” refers to a vast territory and to an extreme diversity of cultures and societies dwelling it. But, somehow, if I say “Africa” all that complexity disappears and collapses into one single word. It is one of those magic words produced inside Western bourgeois modern colonial cultures that have the power of making uncertainty vanish. Therefore, maybe, rather than naming endless realities and intricate cultural layers, it names a way of imposing a hegemonic order to the world, of silencing anything that may challenge language’s appellative powers.   “Africa” is one of the fantasies that conforms “the exotic” (far in space, far in time). And as a consequence it fails referring to reality.  So, how is that we keep saying “African art”/ “African artist”?

Internet, computers, i-phones, airlines, etc. have created the biggest network in the history of human life. Artists are part of that network. They move constantly. They are part of that continuous movement that defines late capitalistic and globalized societies. Why do we keep characterizing artists with local references? Case 1: “Born in Johannesburg, educated in Brussels, working in Paris, working in Berlin, working in x, visiting Barcelona, back home for Christmas”. Case 2:  “Born in Madrid, educated in New York, working in Brussels, working in Vienna, working in x, visiting Barcelona, back home for Christmas”. Living in-between. Not a big difference.

Western cultures have created the idea of the individual subject. The Subject, that lonely figure representing our characteristic self-consciousness. The Author and the Artist are just versions of the Subject. On the other hand, some cultures located in “África” still maintain some kind of community based structure that somehow avoids the appearance of the Western individual subject. We could imagine an ideal future where the Subject could lose his colonial hegemony living in a community based society.