Annansi Chronicles

Here’s a good opportunity for African creatives to get some real world projects under their belt:
The African Leadership Academy, a world-class boarding school opening outside Johannesburg, South Africa on September 2008, has launched a pan-African design competition to solicit designs for the Academy’s inaugural school uniform. The competition is open to individual students or groups of students between the ages of 12 and 20 all across Africa. The best design will be decided by an international panel which will include world-renowned African fashion designers, and the winner will be commemorated with a plaque at the Academy. The first round runs until the 15th of November.

For more information about the competition visit the ALA website.

YG points to a new exhibit by UK-based Ghanaian star architect David Adjaye opening today at the Studio Museum of Harlem in New York City. The exhibit, Making Public Buildings, introduces Adjaye’s architecture to American audiences by carrying viewers through his working process-from inspiration to completion-through ten projects, both built and uncompleted. Having been awarded an Order of the British Empire by the queen for services to architecture, following several public works including his Idea Stores, which have shaken up the notion of the library, and his Nobel Peace Center in Oslo, Mr. Adjaye is set to take on America. With both a New York office for his company Adjaye/Associates and his Museum of Contemporary Art in Denver opening this fall the star architect has his American debut all lined up. About his current work Mr. Adjaye tells New York Magazine:

We are building a house for an amazing art collector [Adam Lindemann and his wife, gallerist Amalia Dayan] on the Upper East Side. It is quite hermetic. In ten years, 50 percent of the world will live in cities; they are becoming massive. The home is something that becomes an emotional incubator and resuscitator. It is not about tricks but about the way in which you reorient a person’s perceptions by focusing on water or on a tree or on a texture of a wall, making the home a meditative space. For this house, the thing the house reflects on will also be art.

The June issue of Modern Painters magazine features a cover story on the first African Pavilion to ever open at the 112 year old Venice Biennale. The Biennale, arguably the most prestigious contemporary arts festival in the world, has been around since 1895 with little or no African representation, until now. Curated by Fernando Alvim and Simon Njami (Africa Remix), the Check List Luanda POP show at the Africa Pavilion features 30 artists’ works from the Sindika Dokolo African Collection of Contemporary Art in Luanda, Angola. The exhibition which opened on June 10 was selected by a panel of experts composed of Meskerem Assegued, Ekow Eshun, Lyle Ashton Harris, Kellie Jones, Bisi Silva and chaired by Robert Storr to represent the African continent at the 52nd International Art Exhibition.

Last Saturday I attended the 5th Annual Hip-Hop Odyssey (H2O) Awards, held at BB Kings in New York City. Organized by the Hip-Hop Association, the awards ceremony recognized today’s hottest Hip-Hop filmmakers, industry professionals and pioneers. The event always features appearances and performances by Hip-Hop heavyweights. This year’s event, as usual, was packed with many of the individuals who have played a major part in shaping the hip-hop landscape including, artist/entrepreneur/hip-hop personality Fab 5 Freddy (that’s him in the picture standing in front of me as we listen to DJ Beverly Bond speak about YO! MTV Raps’ late producer Ted Demme), Ice-T (who gave an excellent acceptance speech about staying true to oneself), Dana Dane, Grand Wizard Theodore, (Dr.) Roxanne Shante, Ralph McDaniels (Video Music Box), The Cold Crush Brothers, Chubb Rock and much more.

Renowned fashion photographer Nick Knight is at it again with another fashion/art/multimedia project. His seminal SHOWstudio site - through which I had the honor of participating on the iD Magazine/London Fashion Week “Bring and Buy” project some years ago - now features a commercial project that “rethinks traditional advertising using motion image”. The project features 10 models from a range of mixed ethnic backgrounds -five male and five female- filmed wearing pieces from adidas’s new ‘Materials of the World’ line, “a collection influenced by the indigenous fabrics of different world cultures”. If you’d like to see the latest release of the Adidas Materials of the World Africa jackets in action on live models head over to the SHOWstudio Skin project site.

Skin is an undertaking by the company &Son, the creative consultancy run by stylists Simon Foxton and Nick Griffiths; a commercial project that rethinks traditional advertising using motion image. Ten models from a range of mixed ethnic backgrounds -five male and five female- are filmed wearing pieces from adidas’s new ‘Materials of the World’ line, a collection influenced by the indigenous fabrics of different world cultures. Over a period of ten days beginning on May 10, the living portraits will be also be displayed in the windows of a Curtain Road shop front in London’s Shoreditch where the attention of passers by will be tested to register that it is film and not stills that they are seeing. In this sense, Skin is a subtle development out of Simon Foxton’s previous Sittings: Thirty Men project of 2005 and a handsome addition to SHOWstudio’s ongoing study of living fashion portraiture.

One of the most important events for Africa’s technology, entertainment, and design industry development, TEDGlobal 2007, is in full swing in Arusha, Tanzania. Coming from vacation I have been reinvigorated by all the developments coming out of this seminal event. Now in it’s 3rd day, the conference has already given me more than enough insight into innovative ideas behind Africa’s next chapter. With all the information and idea sharing at this event, the African blogosphere is sure to be fueled for a long time to come. Below are some important resources for keeping up to date with the happenings in Tanzania. I’ll be watching and listening closely as I hope you all are.

Live updates:
Soyapi Mumba is Twittering TEDGlobal
Ethan Zuckerman of My Heart’s in Accra is live-blogging

Other bloggers at TEDGlobal 2007:
TEDFellow Erik Hersman, of White African
TEDFellow Rafiq Phillips at WebAddiCT
DNA
David McQueen
Africa Beat, by Jennifer Brea
Bankalele
Mental Acrobatics
AfroMusing
TEDFellow Mweshi
TEDFellow Fran Osseo-Asare, of Betumi: The African Food Network
TEDFellow Soyapi Mumba
TEDFellow Ramon Thomas, of NETucation
Ndesanjo Macha, who writes Digital Africa, in English, and Jikomboe, in Swahili
Fifthculture
Ellen Horne at Radio Lab in Tanzania
ClassV
Sam Ritchie
Harinjaka (in French)
Kenyan Pundit, by TED Conference speaker and blogger Ory Okolloh
Timbuktu Chronicles, by TEDGlobal conference director Emeka Okafor
and of course you can get official updates at the TED blog site

Here’s an exciting special event for all my London folks. Ghanaian designer Tina Atiemo is bringing her Avante Garde fashions to a show at the Victoria and Albert Museum in South Kensington - London on the 1st of June 2007. The Ghana 50 Fashion Show is part of the Victoria and Albert Museum’s event series celebrating 50 years of Ghanaian art and design. I’m sure Tina will bring some great designs as she did when she joined Ozwald Boateng, Deola Segoe and other African designers in the CatWALK the World event in Ghana last year. If you’re in London on June 1st check out the show and the exhibit.

Details
SPECIAL EVENT: Ghana 50 Fashion Show at the V&A Museum
Show Times: 16.00pm and 18.30–22.00
Location: Raphael, Room 48a
Price: Free entry to the show, but tickets must be collected for this event outside the Raphael, Room 48a between 15.30 - 19.00.

Join us for the Ghana 50 launch party with celebratory speeches by leading Ghanaian’s, be amazed by the dazzling fashion showcase of the best in rising Ghanaian talent, discover what’s on the Ghana, Gold and Slaves trail, view the special commemorative display of Asante Goldweights, and meet British Ghanaian visual artists and view their Asafo Flag project Forward Africa. In collaboration with cultural partners Africa Image Alliance.

On April 12th, the Design Made in Africa exhibit opened in New York at 4 World Financial Center. The exhibit is the first major traveling exhibition of contemporary African design. It presents a selection of 30 designers from 14 African countries featuring both utilitarian and decorative objects, including seating, lamps, tableware, wall hangings, graphic designs and body ornaments. The exhibition will be on display at the Courtyard Gallery. Featured designers are: Algeria: Amira Atallaoui-Deverchere, Abdelaziz Bacha, Mhedi Izemrane, Mohamed Faycal Guenni; Burkina Faso: Vincent Bailou and Vincent Rossin, Anthony Labouriaux, Hamed Ouattara; Cameroon: Sandrine Dole, Jules Bertrand, Wokam; Congo: Frederic Ruyant and Julien Robert; Cote d’Ivoire: Issa Diabate, Vincent Niamen; Ethiopia: Fasil Giorghis; Mali: Cheick Diallo, Marianne Montaut; Uganda: Sanaa Gateja; Rwanda: Laurent Hategekimana; Senegal: Balthazar Faye, Frederic Hardouin, Babacar Niang, Dominique Petot; South Africa: Marisa Fick-Jordaan, Maira Koutsoudakis, Piet Pienaar, Strangelove (Carlo Gibson and Zimek Pater); Togo: Kossi Assou, Ameyovi Homawoo; Zimbabwe: Ralph Gallagher.

• Untapped: the scramble for Africa’s oil.
• Africa in pictures.
• Danny Glover joins Bob Marley tribute ‘Africa Unite’.
• African governments not doing enough.
• Gallery opening: NY thru the eyes of African immigrants.
• Plugging Africa’s kids in to $100 laptop.
• The silent takeover of the continent (Africa) by South African businesses.
• Gay travel in Africa.
• Luxury hotels emerge in post-peace Sudan.
• Africa’s internet infrastructure: an interview with Eric Osiakwan and Ethan Zuckerman.
• Madonna returning to Africa, but not to adopt.
• Africa is a continent, not a crisis.
• Is South Africa living up to its responsibility as Africa’s leader?
• Afrigator goes mobile.
• Climate change and Africa.
• Madonna to do charity work in Malawi.
• Africa and the information age.

Here’s a really nice interview at Code Z Online with one of my favorite African artists Ms. Wangechi Mutu. Kenyan-born Mutu is a true talent.
Link ia My Global Hustle blog