Words & Meanings

It has always been the desire for Nairobi Arts Trust / CCAEA to develop a periodic Pan-African publication of contemporary culture, art and politics, that provides an innovative platform for free ideas, cultural and political reflection by Africans about Africa. In line with this wish, and to build on the energy generated by past projects, CCAEA has began work on the Amnesia editions. The publication, which shall be published quarterly, shall work to affirm that the spirit of genuine, independent criticism, unfettered by fears of loss of patronage or of breaching unwritten codes of professional etiquette that mitigate against outspokenness can and does exist in art discourse. This spirit is motivated not by personal position but rather by deeper concerns that art does matter, and that it is through free and open discourse that art can attain its potentially emancipatory character. The vision for this publication is to write, re-write, or re-appraise the theory and practice of art, art history and criticism, and the work of artists hitherto marginalized through racial, gender, religious and cultural differences; to imagine new discourses and radical interdisciplinary scholarships that go beyond the confines of eurocentricity.  The next concern shall then be to reach as wide an audience as possible, and in particular to address the shortage of materials accessible to many Kenyan, and indeed African readers.

Through the Nairobi curatorial program, set to commence in October 2012, critical writing shall be one of the primary focuses in which curatorial students shall engage in, both as individual & group scholarly research, and as writing projects through tutorials with curators, professional art historians, critics, or cultural theorists – employing a pragmatic approach of exploring the relationship between applied linguistics and language pedagogy. The program’s shall arrange tutorials and provide additional advice and guidance. Apart from presenting papers to peers and the general public, and publishing these in online platforms, texts shall be published in the Amnesia editions, with participants playing key roles in directing the editorial orientation, content, layout and the general aesthetic materiality of the ensuing publications. In addition, the ensuing texts or research findings shall also be published in websites, blogs and shared in social media.