Paul-Henri Souvenir ASSAKO ASSAKO, University of Yaoundé I - Cameroon
Approaches to artistic training and education in Cameroon are built in the immediacy of a wasteland. This context has favorized an understanding of art that is only focused on technical mastery. Artistic education has defined its objectives as the development of manual skills in the construction of forms and have left the suggestive and imaginative dimensions to the margin. The predominance of this essentially formal understanding of art strongly limits art's influence to the development of the society in many ways. But, this exclusion is problematic, as the experience of art is becoming weak. Artistic sources provide insights about what people see, think, imagine, and believe in a society.
Our project explores trajectories of relationship to art and aims to provide opportunities for teachers, students, artists, and researchers to develop their own trajectories of relationship to art practice with a specific focus on collective memory. The project also aims to encourage the development of innovative schemes of artistic education built on the contact zones of these trajectories (in respect to the individual, the society, the nation, the world). Three main aspects characterize our approach:
- develop active critical sensitivity towards the visual experience of collective memory
- develop skills to articulate artistically collective memory
- build theoretical models of understanding collective memory in the practical experience of creating artworks.
Methodology
- Select/finalize a set of images on the theme of collective memory (student researchers/artists/etc.)
- Submit the images to the discussion within a group of art students (seminar/workshop led by the students)
- Subjecting the ideas from the discussions to the experience of artistic creation – in a workshop for a group of student artists
- Production of a journal about the trajectories of relationship to art / exhibition of the artworks produced
