Arts and community: What next?

Opening: 25.06.2015 @6:30pm Location: Hoa Sen University Marie Curie Room – 6th Floor Hoa Sen University 8 Nguyen Van Trang, District 1     Communities provide materials, inspirations, reasons and worthy audience.  Over the last few decades, from rural to urban contexts, artistic experiments with communities have been intensifying and spreading. The artists’ engagement in a community can be as simple as serving the community members. Environmental concerns are often important reasons for artists’ interaction in the community. How can we evaluate these concerns, and what lessons are to be...

Community as an alternative way of life

Opening: 23.06.2015 @6:30pm Location: Hoa Sen University Marie Curie Room – 6th Floor Hoa Sen University 8 Nguyen Van Trang, District 1       Can community be a viable alternative way of life, economy and desire? A community is where certain commons are truly shared. Its advantage is in providing bounds that can be immediately and concretely felt by the individual and sensed by the state. But modern states and economies treat people as individual citizens and consumers: they call forth the modern idea of individual freedom, through a...

Pan African Dreams

Opening: 27.08.2015 @6:30pm Location: Hoa Sen University Marie Curie Room – 6th Floor Hoa Sen University 8 Nguyen Van Trang, District 1     In her first talk, curator N’Goné Fall will describe the culture and contemporary art of Africa through the dream of an integrated continent – ‘a site of negotiation’ for various, complex cultures. Africa has 54 countries, all but Ethiopia have suffered from colonial domination. After multiple annexations by the colonial powers, Africa has undergone geographical fragmentation, its countries using arts and culture as a tool for...

The Beats of Africa

Opening: 10.04.2015 @11:30pm Location: Observatory 5 Nguyen Tat Thanh, District 4       The Observatory is very excited to announce its first collaboration with SAN ART for this unique event, which will feature a bonanza of African sounds brought to the dance floor by one of the highest specialists in the field – NTONE EDJABE. Ntone Edjabe is the founder and editor of the world-renowned Chimurenga magazine, and is also a fantastic DJ that specializes in African music in all of its vastly divergent inflections – from traditional percussion-focused...

Diagnosing the Chimurenga Chronic

Opening: 09.04.2015 @6:30pm Location: Hoa Sen University Marie Curie Room – 6th Floor Hoa Sen University 8 Nguyen Van Trang, District 1     ‘Encounter’ lecture series welcomes Ntone Edjabe, writer, journalist and musician of Cameroon origin, now based in Cape Town, South Africa. He will give a lecture about his role in establishing and directing the print and online pan-African platform called ‘Chimurenga’, which showcases art, society and culture. His presentation will focus on Chimurenga’s latest editorial project, The Chimurenga Chronic, which began as the once-off edition of a...