Emeka Okereke

Name: Exploring a void
Start: 2018-07-16T00:00:00+02:00
End: 2018-07-28T23:59:59+02:00
Location: Hohensalzburg Fortress

Exploring a void

16–28 July 2018

Hohensalzburg Fortress

Emeka Okereke, Dilemma of a New Age II, (from the series: Exploring a Void), 2016, Copyright: Emeka Okereke

Medium
Photography

Location
Hohensalzburg Fortress

Languages
English, French

What to bring
Laptops, cameras, sound and video materials, relevant books

Requirements
Basic technical knowledge of photography and video. Good writing skills if applicable

Maximum number of participants
15

Co-teacher
Btihal Remli

Participation fee
€ 700,– (€ 540,–)

This course looks at how we might reconsider mutual relationships in a world encumbered with rapidly growing sentiments toward nationalism and reinforcement of borders, while it continuously fights back the indispensability of an interconnected world.

I will attempt, as much as possible, to open the horizon beyond the enclosure of European, Western thinking and to draw attention to some of the post-colonial perspectives. The aim of the course will be to encourage students to use photography as a tool of inquiry in the exploration of selfhood at the cross-point between the subjective and the collective. It is expected that the programme would initiate a frame that allows for the intersection of different cultural realities. The two-week course will kick off with the reading of selected texts. This will encourage a thought-frame within which all learning and work will take place. Students should envisage collaborative activities that allow for substantial interaction and intersection of subjectivities. Although this is a photography class, students are encouraged to explore the possibilities of a multi-media approach involving text, video and sound. The programme will culminate in the production of one or more bodies of work which will be the subject of discussion during a wrapping-up portfolio review session.

Nigerian visual artist and writer Emeka Okereke, born in 1980, lives and works in Lagos and Berlin, frequently moving between them. He came into contact with photography in 2001, and was a member of the renowned Nigerian photography collective, Depth of Field (DOF). He has a Bachelors/Masters degree from the National Fine Art School of Paris. His work currently oscillates among diverse media. He employs mainly photography, time-based medium of video, poetry and performative interventions in the exploration of the central theme of “borders”. His works grapple with questions of exchange and co-existence in the context of various socio-cultural confluences. He is the founder and artistic director of Invisible Borders: The Trans-African Project. In 2003, he won the Photographer Award of the AFAA “Afrique en Création” in the 5th edition of the Bamako Photo Festival of photography. His work was exhibited at the 56th Biennale di Venezia under the Invisible Borders space-installation: A Trans-African Worldspace, which he also curated. Emeka Okereke has been guest lecturer in several art platforms and learning institutions, the most recent being the MFA Photography of Hartford University, Connecticut, CT (US).

Exhibitions
2017 A Trans-African World Space, Centre Georges Pompidou, Paris. A Trans-African Worldspace, Amsterdam Photography Museum (FOAM), Amsterdam. History ASAP, Kunstraum, Düsseldorf (DE). Collective Thinking, For Freedom, Aperture Foundation Gallery, New York, NY (US). 2016 No Borders, Gallery Dominique Fiat, Paris. Unseen Art Photo Fair, with Invisible Borders Trans-African Project, Amsterdam. 2015 All the Worlds Futures, 56th Biennale di Venezia, Venice (IT). 2012 New Museum of New York, exhibition with Invisible Borders Trans-African Project, New York, NY. 2011 ATOPIA – Art and City in 21st Century, CCCB, Barcelona (ES).

Publications
Emeka Okereke: As We Recede, Musee Elysee Lausanne, Editions Photosynthèses, Arles, 2017.
Sean O’Toole: „Open Roads & Invisible Borders“, in: Aperture Magazine 222, Spring 2016.
Emeka Okereke: „Transcending Africa“ in: The Ungovernables, exh. cat., The New Museum, New York, 2012.
Emeka Okereke: Unspoken Hero, Afriphoto/Filigranes Édition, Paris 2007.

www.emekaokereke.com

Portrait photo: Ayotola