“Shores of Sahara-Sahel: Waves, Forms, Futures,” the autumn symposium of Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW @hgkbasel_institutkunst, held in collaboration with the #culturescapes2023sahara festival, was a wealth of knowledge and visions. It was devoted to the artistic and cultural productions, lines of political and aesthetic thought, and epistemologies of the Sahara and the accompanying Sahel. Now, all its performative lectures, readings, and discussions are available online. Do not miss an opportunity to review or discover for the first time the multiple stories of the Sahara/Sahel, seen as both an ancient space of connection, circulation, and trade—from its northern to its southern shores, its dunes and volcanic mountains to its lusher savannahs—and as a contemporary site of exchange between strikingly singular societies and communities on all sides of the desert. With contributions by Phoenix Atala, Kateryna Botanova, Binta Diaw, Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi (crazinisT artisT), Yarri Kamara, Mohamed Sleiman Labat, Benaouda Lebdai, Rania Mamoun, Yara Mekawei, Kettly Noël, and Temitayo Ogunbiyi, among others. Moderated by Chus Martínez @the_chus_martinez and Quinn Latimer @ql_ql_ql_ql. Link in the bio ☝🏼 📸 Temitayo Ogunbiyi by Gerta Xhaferaj / Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW #culturescapes #sahara #art #festival #music #performance

Do you any trees here? No? Just wait because they are coming! The European Festivals Forest, an initiative that #culturescapes is a part of, and the Icelandic Forestry Office planted 3,000 Alaskan aspen and stick pine seedlings at the end of last year. Another 6,000 trees are coming up later this year. Among them is a Culturescapes hectare with 2,500 trees! 🌲🌲🌲 The trees are planted in the land of Kollabær in Fljótshlíð, Iceland. The annual average sequestration in the field is expected to be around 20.6 tons of carbon dioxide. The Festivals Forest is a carbon sequestration project. It celebrates the power and creativity of the festivals industry coming together to lead a progressive call to climate action. In 2023, the project grew to fourteen festivals plus three touring companies, which will plant over two hectares in 2024. 📸 Valgerður Erlingsdóttir @festivalsforest #culturescapes2023sahara #iceland🇮🇸 #forest #carbonfootprint #climatechange #trees

What a wonderful surprise!🎉 “Sahara. A Thousand Paths Into the Future” and its brilliant designer, Gaile Pranckūnaitė, got a diploma from the 32nd Lithuanian Book Art Competition, held during Vilnius Book Fair, in the category of Art Publications. The last two #culturescapes anthologies, the Saharan and the Amazonian, were designed by Gailea Pranckūnaitė @buster0friendly and printed by Petro ofsetas @petroofsetas in Vilnius. We could not be happier with this collaboration! 👏 “Sahara: A Thousand Paths Into the Future,” edited by Kateryna Botanova @katya_botanova , Yarri Kamara, and Quinn Latimer @ql_ql_ql_ql , is devoted to the ideas, images, poetics, politics, fictions, and movements of this vast desert and its myriad voices. The thinkers, artists, poets, choreographers, composers, activists, elders, novelists, historians, and translators whose voices and sensibilities score and structure this anthology create a more full-spectrum and polyphonic sense of what the Sahara means, in all its waves and forms. If you still don’t have a copy, it is never too late to get one from @sternbergpress_official! Follow the link in the bio ☝️ #culturescapes2023sahara #sahara #reading #book #artbook #vilnius #vilniusbookfair

Taita Hernando Chindoy, a governor of the Inga nation in Colombia and a participant of Culturescapes 2023 Amazonia, is back in Switzerland. Years ago, Chindoy set the stage for the emergence of Wuasikamas—Guardians of the Earth 🌎. Wuasikamas is a practice centered on a profound respect for human and nonhuman life, which allowed Inga to initiate a process of territorial defense, conservation practices, and autonomous governance. The principles of Wuasikamas helped to reestablish traditional Inga chagras, or Indigenous gardens filled with medicinal and edible plants, in which conservation, learning, and spirituality are practiced within each family. 🌱 Chindoy is a great advocate and enabler for “pluriversities”—educational initiatives that question Western ideas of the world and promote multi-perspective Indigenous and other knowledge systems. He is a representative of the international pluriversity initiative Ëconeêrã. Last weekend at the Engadin Art Talks, he spoke about the harmonization of knowledge, biospirituality, and the Indigenous work to heal the damages done to Earth in the last 500 years. Next week, February 7 at 18:00, he will discuss pluriversities at the Museum der Kulturen Basel (in Spanish with German translation). You can always listen to him speaking with an artist, Felipe Castelblanco, and a cultural promoter, filmmaker, and musician of the Kamënstá nation, Ayênan Quinchoa Juajibioy, during Culturescapes 2021 Amazonia on our website. Link in bio ☝️ And our amazing book “Amazonia. Anthology as Cosmology” which contains his interview is still available at Sternberg Press. @hernandochindoyinga @museumderkulturenbasel @engadinarttalks @felipecastel #culturescapes #culturescapes2021amazonia #amazonia #amazonas #colombia🇨🇴 #inga #biodiversity #indigenous

Whether you saw or missed the concert by amazing Keziah Jones last year with #culturescapes2023sahara, this podcast 🎙️ is not to be missed! You can hear the famous Nigerian musician speaking about the very beginning of the “Blufunk,” his now legendary sound, a mix of blues, funk, and Yoruba rhythms. 🎸 He also recalls his early days playing music on the streets of London and Paris, his melancholia of being an emigrant that became a base for his music, and the fact that he was a visual artist first. For him, the images are sonic, and the music is visual. And much more. Recorded by Safiya Omar @groovy_she during Jones’ talk in collaboration with the Center For African Studies at the University of Basel, this interview is a unique insight into the great musician’s philosophy and life. Many thanks to Henri Michel Yéré for leading and supporting this collaboration! Listen through the link in the bio! ☝️ @keziahjonesofficiel @zasb.unibasel #culturescapes #culturescapes20years #keziahjones #music #blufunk #nigeria #lagos

Speculative fiction wins! 📚🎉 Wole Talabi, a Nigerian writer and a contributor to the Culturescapes anthology “Sahara. A Thousand Paths Into the Future,” has won the 2022 Sidewise Award for Alternate History in the category of best short-form alternate history. The award was announced at the end of 2023. Talabi won the 2022 Best Short-Form Alternate History award for “A Dream of Electric Mothers” published in “Africa Risen: A New Era of Speculative Fiction” and reprinted in the Culturescapes anthology. This piece draws us into a world of African artificial intelligence, in which an artificial memrionic supercitizen speaking with the multiple yet unified voices of electronic ancestors has been created to advise a country’s government. “Sahara. A Thousand Paths Into the Future” is still available through @sternbergpress_official 📸 Ola-Tokunbo Aworinde, 2018 @katya_botanova @ql_ql_ql_ql @yarrikamara #culturescapes #culturescapes2023sahara #africa #speculativefiction #fiction #nigeria #literature #sidewiseaward

The year started with the wonderful news! 💫 Two of Culturescapes 2023 Sahara artists—Yasmine El Meleegy and Nolan Oswald Dennis—are shortlisted for the Future Generation art Prize. Congratulations! 🎉 The biannual event is the only prize for the young generation of artists with a global dimension and guided by an open, free, and democratic application process. Supported by an eminent board, distinguished jury, and outstanding selection committee, the Prize brings together the best of the art world to champion a new generation of artists. The exhibition with all twenty-one shortlisted artists will open in August 2024 in Pinchuk Art Center in Kyiv, Ukraine. And the winner will be announced by the end of the year. 📸 Yasmine El Meleegy. Nolan Oswald Dennis. @yasmineelmeleegy @data_body @forspacech @kunsthallebasel @futuregenerationartprize #culturescapes #culturescapes2023sahara #arts #futuregenerationartprize

Culturescapes 2023 Sahara, a volcano of artistic works and experiences, is over after eight weeks of diverse exhibitions, performances, concerts, readings, and conversations. We still cannot quite get our heads around it ourselves! In this festival, we looked together into the topics of borders, resilience, and possible sustainable futures. Thank you for being with us in Basel, Bern, Zug, Bellinzona, Chur, Lausanne, Zürich, Baden, Dornach, as well as Bielefeld, Mulhouse, Dresden, Kortrijk, Valenciennes, and Roubaix! We had the honor to work with 129 artists, who created 127 events at 39 partner institutions and brought together some 42,000 visitors. Take a look at some highlights! And stay tuned for more stories about the upcoming Culturescapes 2025! 1 Serge Aimé Coulibaly & Faso Danse Théâtre, C La Vie, Culturescapes 2023 Sahara Opening, Theater Basel. Photo: Matthew Lee / Roche 2 Nolan Oswald Dennis, a recurse 4 [3] worlds, Kunsthalle Basel back wall. Photo: Philipp Hänger / Kunsthalle Basel 3 Temitayo Ogunbiyi. You will follow the Rhein and compose play, performance with Sonic Space Basel, Museum Tinguely. Photo: Culturescapes 4 Mohamed Sleiman Labat, Saharawi Tea Ceremony, Atelier Mondial. Photo: Culturescapes 5 Culturescapes 20 Years. Flags on Mittlere Brücke, Basel, by Hauser, Schwarz. Photo: Culturescapes 6 Basel Kolonial City Tour. Photo: Culturescapes 7 Book launch of “Sahara: A Thousand Paths into the Future,” Master Symposium “Shores of Sahara-Sahel: Waves, Forms, Futures,” Yarri Kamara, Kateryna Botanova, Quinn Latimer, Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW. Photo: Gerta Xhaferaj 8 Va-Bene Elikem Fiatsi [crazinisT artisT], The Dust in Bed, Institute Art Gender Nature HGK Basel FHNW. Photo: Gerta Xhaferaj 9 Keziah Jones, Kaserne Basel. Photo: Culturescapes 10 Nadia Beugré, Prophétique, Kaserne Basel. Photo: Werner Strouven @data_body @kunsthallebasel @theaterbasel @temitayostudio @museumtinguely @mohamed.sleiman.labat @ateliermondialart @hauser_schwarz @hgkbasel_institutkunst @ql_ql_ql_ql @crazinist_artist @keziahjonesofficiel @kasernebasel #culturescapes2023sahara #culturescapes #culturescapes20years #sahara

Our co-curator, Kateryna Botanova, traveled to London to be a part of the International Cultural Policy Forum and moderate a discussion on cultural diplomacy and cultural relations outside of the Global North. Together with Siphindile Hlongwa, a curator at the Center for Creative Arts of the University of KwaZulu-Natal (South Africa) and a curator for the Time of the Writer Festival and Poetry Africa Festival; Adam Jayme Muniz, the Head of Public Diplomacy at the Embassy of Brazil in London; and Mridula Ghosh, a Board Chair, East European Development Institute; they talked about the urgencies of transforming cultural diplomacy into cultural relations. Of building trustful two-way communication channels between various interlocutors rather than engaging in the act of representation and promotion of one’s interests that diplomacy is all about. The discussion on the British Library stage concerned the need to build solidarities around shared values, focus on arts as a space to heal social and historical traumas, and overcome the colonial past by aiming at a more just and sustainable future. 📸 Ukrainian Institute @katya_botanova #culturescapes #culturalrelations #diplomacy #solidarity #arts #policy #culturaldiplomacy