Huit Facettes-Interaction is an artistic and cultural project conducted by a group of contemporary artists living in Senegal: Abdoulaye Ndoye, El Hadji Sy, Fodé Camara, Cheikh Niass, Jean Marie Bruce, Muhsana Ali and Kan-si, as well as an administrative assistant (Mor Lissa Ba). Founded in 1995, Huit Facettes aims to free itself of the more haphazard and vulgar aspects of artistic means of expression as they are defined from the traditional western perspective.

From the very beginning, Huit Facettes-Interaction has delved into possible »other« forms of expression for artistic urges, including an exploration of interrelationships with other social fields, in particular with regard to everyday activities in urban settings. This has been the background for many of the group's events, such as a performance/concert in Dakar in 1997 called »Carrément pour la Paix« (»Directly for Peace«), the event »Téléfood Dakar« 1998 or the performance/exhibition »National Summit on Africa DC 2000«. In 1998, Huit Facettes put on an international workshop for fine arts in suburban Joal-Fadiouth, with the title »Ici et maintenant« (»Here and Now«). In 1996 a more rural area was the setting for »Les ateliers d’Hamdallaye« (»The Workshops of Hamdallaye«).

»Les ateliers d’Hamdallaye« took place in a Senegalese village, Hamdallaye Samba Mbaye, 500 kilometers south of Dakar and located in the region of Kolda, two kilometers from the Gambian border. The artists who took part came from Senegal, Belgium and Rwanda, and a Flemish nongovernmental organization (Vredeseilanden) financed parts of the project.

The relationships Huit Facettes-Interaction was able to form with various social groups have been maintained even after the conclusion of the workshop, sometimes sponsored by a series of partners. In the beginning, the program was conceived as a way of bringing together contemporary urban artists, a village community and a nongovernmental organization. The issues faced in the project could be traced to relationships and ties within a precisely demarcated social territory – a rural one – since the workshops fostered interaction between spheres that are traditionally alien to one another.

The whole project was designed to establish interaction by setting up an art center as a meeting place for the pursuit of artistic and crafts activities. This interaction would benefit the various social groups, in particular women and youth (both of which are in a weak position socially). With this goal in mind, workshops were set up for dyeing, glass painting, embroidery, sewing, sculpture, traditional design, the manufacture and conversion of soap, as well as pokerwork.

It was not a matter of making artists out of the inhabitants of Hamdallaye, but rather simply of putting them in a position to exercise their creative energy using the means available to them, showing them how it is possible to have a positive formative influence on one's environment (especially by acquiring new ways of seeing things).

In other words, the project was simply about creativity in its most elementary sense: inventiveness, or the ability to make something out of nothing. Whether in the city or the country – when initiatives become concrete projects that attempt to explore and implement alternative solutions in the face of economic, political or social problems, all those participating have to come to terms with the conditions and dynamics of artistic processes. It is a question of setting into motion or stimulating the creative energy that is potentially present in every one of us, and that expresses itself in a variety of forms. The expression of deep truths on an artistic or handicraft (concrete) level is often beneficial for people who feel lost, who have not much personal dignity left. This is not least due to the widespread attitude that persists in treating certain population groups as helpless or structurally needy, an attitude maintained for example in certain forms of developmental aid.

The project did not initially concern itself with aesthetics – even if the purpose of the development process might be the production of cultural objects – nor with honorable intentions and behaviors that endeavor to free people from any kind of tutelage or from their expectant attitude. Nor was it associated with the politics of »holding out a hand«, espoused by organizations who have made it their mission (which is often not clearly defined) to »develop« poverty zones. They often do so based on visions, models and theories that have nothing to do with the realities and aims of the various population groups themselves!

The objective of all artistic activity, no matter its kind or origin, is always the same: to create opportunities to experience the boundlessness of the self by transforming the world, and thus to confront to some extent our countless dissatisfactions. The conventional value of art – which is usually tied to its commercial value and to various interactions with social, economic and political views, as well as to geographic zones, trends and decision-making power – rests on an intellectual basis that assumes its justifications to be »well-known«. This seems simple, but at the same time other qualifications – such as »not well-known enough« or simply »unrecognized« – could end up being crowded out of the field that provides legitimization for the various contemporary arts, all of which emerge out of completely different contexts and draw on totally different resources.

We are by no means social workers!

The most important question for Huit Facettes-Interaction is: How does one provide access to a medium or human activity that is not immediately quantifiable, outside of the conventional commercial routes, but instead in the form of a conceptualization and implementation of solutions in respect of questions a society poses itself in accordance with quite disparate moorings?

In this case our contribution consists in getting the processes and supporting measures underway. The sphere of activity is the social realm. The input is experience, but the forms in which problems are faced and answers are proposed make this experience into something special. By contrast with everything else that is experienced in time and space, this experience could contribute to creating an overall picture, which, against all constraints, one might wish to become a »global« one.

 

Translated by Jennifer Taylor-Gaida

 

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