The artists with whom SPARCK is working in the context of the Photographic Journeys project have highly individual and original gazes and styles. The bodies of work they create for the project will be shown individually and collectively. Such showings, initially, will not take place in galleries or museums. This is an essential aspect of the project. Nor, at first, will the photographs be printed. They will be “exhibited” in public, urban spaces as flashes of light: broadcast as massive projections onto the façades of buildings in cities across the world, creating palimpsests – superimpositions in which one city and then another and another, in wall-high blow-up images, will mix it up with still other cities on whose surfaces the images will be projected. At times, these showings will become events accompanied by sound, slam poetry, performance and, if previous SPARCK events are any indication, much impromptu debate.
Showings of the work will be produced like an evening of music is staged by a DJ: a collaborator chosen for her/his knowledge of and interest in the urban issues that are the focus of SPARCK’s first three-year programme will be asked to sample the bodies of work created by the Photographic Journeys artists and, from this sampling, to devise a rollout of images – a visual narrative – for public projection. Several “DJ/curators” will be approached, resulting in several different takes on the Photographic Journeys project. Works from PJ I and II will be shown as a body and in smaller groupings, in multiple cities across the globe, in 2011. In advance of these outdoor showings, more intimate displays have begun, highlighting individual journeys. The first of these took place in May and June 2010, in Africa and Europe. They focused on one journey: the trip that Bill Kouélany and Goddy Leye took to Guangzhou (China), which resulted in a collaborative video installation entitled “Chocolate Banana”. Chocolate Banana explores grey-market transactions, cultures and languages in an off-the-books transnational arena – city streets and corners, dilapidated shopping malls, overcrowded apartments and squats – where African and Chinese traders, and occasionally artists, meet to do business. The set-up for the film – the way the installation is displayed – reflects Chocolate Banana’s thematic focus on the movement of bodies and goods within and between cities and continents. It is shown on small flat-screen LCD screens in the back of taxis. The model for this comes from Guangzhou, where such screens are present at the rear of most taxis, though the story they tell there (happy travelogues about the city) is quite different. Anyone who takes a Chocolate Banana taxi sees the film, in whole or in part depending on the length of the trip and/or the passenger’s interest. The video is ideally shown in five taxis travelling through whatever city Chocolate Banana is in at the time, and a sixth taxi parked at the exhibition venue, showing the film in loops at a standstill. A 4 page, A3 newspaper-style text-and-image flyer produced by the two artists is made available in large numbers, in the taxis and a variety of other points throughout the city. In some cities, specific routes are plied by the taxis, making them easy to locate; in other cities, the taxi drivers’ cell phone numbers are publicised, so people can call for a pickup. Chocolate Banana’s maiden voyage took place in May 2010, at the Dakar Biennale, where the installation was shown as part of the Biennale’s “Off” programme. [Then pictures] Following Dakar, Chocolate Banana moved on to a second international venue, Art Basel, where it was shown as part of the Focus 10 programme, dedicated to works by contemporary African creators.
In advance of these outdoor showings, more intimate displays have begun, highlighting individual journeys. The first of these took place in May and June 2010, in Africa and Europe. They focused on one journey: the trip that Bill Kouélany and Goddy Leye took to Guangzhou (China), which resulted in a collaborative video installation entitled “Chocolate Banana”.
Chocolate Banana explores grey-market transactions, cultures and languages in an off-the-books transnational arena – city streets and corners, dilapidated shopping malls, overcrowded apartments and squats – where African and Chinese traders, and occasionally artists, meet to do business. The set-up for the film – the way the installation is displayed – reflects Chocolate Banana’s thematic focus on the movement of bodies and goods within and between cities and continents. It is shown on small flat-screen LCD screens in the back of taxis. The model for this comes from Guangzhou, where such screens are present at the rear of most taxis, though the story they tell there (happy travelogues about the city) is quite different. Anyone who takes a Chocolate Banana taxi sees the film, in whole or in part depending on the length of the trip and/or the passenger’s interest. The video is ideally shown in five taxis travelling through whatever city Chocolate Banana is in at the time, and a sixth taxi parked at the exhibition venue, showing the film in loops at a standstill. A 4 page, A3 newspaper-style text-and-image flyer produced by the two artists is made available in large numbers (click here to download the flyer), in the taxis and a variety of other points throughout the city. In some cities, specific routes are plied by the taxis, making them easy to locate; in other cities, the taxi drivers’ cell phone numbers are publicised, so people can call for a pickup.
Chocolate Banana’s maiden voyage took place in May 2010, at the Dakar Biennale, where the installation was shown as part of the Biennale’s “Off” programme.
Following Dakar, Chocolate Banana moved on to a second international venue, Art Basel, where it was shown as part of the Focus 10 programme, dedicated to works by contemporary African creators. On 15 July 2010 Chocolate Banana opened at the Centre Culturel Français in Brazzaville. Click this link for more information.
Between 19-25 January 2011, Chocolate Banana is back on the road. This time in at the Centre Culturel Français in Pointe-Noire, Republic of Congo.
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