public spaces egypt / cameroon – African Photography Initiatives

Public spaces as resonating bodies of politics. Egypt / Cameroon. A sound-image installation

22, 24 and 25 May 2019

Old Synagoge, 4, rue d’Alsace, F-68220 Hegenheim, France

The exhibition opens up to the question of how public space in Egypt and Cameroon is used for the proclamation of politics. Politics understood as a mediation and negotiation – peaceful, consensual, violent – of ideas about the current and especially future shape of the state.

The installations are based on two different sound and image sources:

On the one hand on the archive of Joachim Oelsner (Arc Musica, Yaoundé ), who digitized about 2000 historical music recording tapes (1950-2010) from different state radio stations (Garoua, Buea, Douala and Yaoundé) in Cameroon as part of a longer project (2012-2014) financed by the German Foreign Office (AA) within the framework of cultural preservation (Kulturerhalt). On the other hand, on audio documents recorded by Stéphane Montavon (Basel) during the Arab Spring 2011 in Cairo. These are complemented by videos recorded with mobile phones at the same time (e.g. re-implant ).

The diversity of sources, time and geographical-historical spaces (analog film and sound vs. mobile phones and social media; the years shortly before and after independence vs. Arab Spring; MENA region vs. sub-Saharan Africa) as well as the different approaches (artistic, academic) allow an investigation of the question from a variety of perspectives.

The format of the event consists of surround sound documentary film, The Betrayed Square, by Stéphane Montavon and various sound stations with a selection of digitized music pieces from the archive of Joachim Oelsner. In addition, there are historical films from the 1960s from Cameroon. After the visitors have seen and heard the installations, a discussion with Montavon and Oelsner will take place, involving the audience.

The event will be curated and moderated by Jürg Schneider( juerg.schneider@unibas.ch) an affiliated researcher at the Center for African Studies at the University of Basel and co-founder of African Photography Initiatives and supported by SSEA .

The ‘Archiv Arc Musica’ collection was compiled by Joachim Oelsner. Oelsner lived and worked for many years in Yaoundé in Cameroon and returned to Germany in 2022, where he died after a short, serious illness. In Cameroon, Oelsner collected records, music cassettes and other sound carriers with traditional, popular and religious Cameroonian music, with a particular focus on the southern, eastern and western parts of the country. There are also around 150 videos from Cameroonian television, which were recorded from the early 1990s onwards. The collection includes music from the Beti-Bulu-Fang, Majka, Bamileke, Bass, Sawa and many others. The collection includes extensive documentation with press products, dictionaries, descriptions of common musical instruments, photographs, festival documents and many other topics and related materials. The collection is kept at the University of Hildesheim’s Centre for World Music.

« Bana Ba Cameroun – La musique camerounaise en histoires » est un podcast qui revisite la musique dite « moderne » camerounaise à partir des années 60 jusqu’à aujourd’hui. Produit par le Goethe-Institut avec la collaboration de SENS COMME, il est constitué de 21 épisodes. Ce podcast est dédié à la mémoire de l’ethnomusicologue allemand Joachim Oelsner (†2022).

Wednesday 22 May 2019

Public talk with the artists from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., with apéro.

Friday 24 May 2019

Exhibition open from 3 p.m. to 8 p.m.

Saturday 25 May 2019

Public talk with the artists from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m., with apéro.

Hommage a Joachim Oelsner

Tous ces enregistrements ont été réalisés par Joachim Oelsner dans le cadre de son projet de numérisation de la musique camerounaise à travers les stations de radio du pays.