lumbung konteks: thinking, playing, dancing together by Another Roadmap Africa Cluster (ARAC), Fondation Festival sur le Niger, Gudskul

lumbung konteks is a seven-part series of online conversations, taking place on the first Sunday of every month until June 2022. Each session invites two documenta fifteen lumbung members to introduce their practices and wider ecosystems and to expand and reflect on each other’s work. Through sharing stories, songs, and tools for living and working in community, the lumbung members discuss the differences and affinities between their contexts. lumbung konteks addresses the importance of the localities within which we all work, the conditions that inform and ground our practices, and the ways we can learn from each other’s models of education, ecology, and economy.

The third episode of the series features lumbung members Fondation Festival sur le Niger and Gudskul in conversation with Lineo Segoete. Drawing from Fondation Festival sur le Niger’s practice of Maaya entrepreneurship and Gudskul’s Collective Study program, the lumbung members invite alumni of their study programs and other interlocutors to share stories, music, and games that exercise and explore ways of co-learning and collective study.

In conversation:

Fondation Festival sur le Niger was founded in 2009 to sustain and further develop the advances made by the Festival sur le Niger for the arts in Ségou and beyond. After its inception in 2005, the Festival sur le Niger quickly became the largest cultural event in Mali and, indeed, West Africa. By training young artists and cultural entrepreneurs throughout Africa, producing artistic work, and developing distribution circuits, the Fondation Festival sur le Niger strengthens the whole spectrum of culture and arts in Mali and Africa at large. Their collaborative way of working, a practice they call Maaya entrepreneurship, brings traditional humanist Maaya philosophy to contemporary society and culture.

Gudskul is an educational knowledge-sharing platform formed in 2018 by three Jakarta-based collectives, ruangrupa, Serrum, and Grafis Huru Hara. They sincerely believe that sharing and working together are two vital elements in developing Indonesian contemporary art and culture. Gudskul is building an ecosystem in which many participants co-operate, including artists, curators, art writers, managers, researchers, musicians, filmmakers, architects, cooks, designers, fashionistas, and street artists. Gudskul is open to anyone interested in co-learning, developing collective-based artistic practices, and art-making with a focus on collaboration.

Lineo Segoete is a Mosotho storyteller, creative writer, researcher, photographer, and history enthusiast. She is the cofounder and codirector of Ba re e ne re Literary Arts in Lesotho and co-convenor for the Africa Cluster of the Another Roadmap School. Currently, Segoete works as head of the content division at Selemela Learning Network, a social enterprise for education outreach and access, named after the constellation Pleiades. Her independent work as a research consultant focuses on critical literacies and alternative pedagogies, cultural production, and the preservation of creative heritage.

Lilian Astrid Geese is a conference interpreter based in Berlin.

Undine Schäfer is a sign interpreter based in Göttingen.

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