‘Séminaire de l'erg 2017’

What can an art school do, what can artistic gesture do while the trauma of the loss of empires for the colonial nations - never assumed, never thought, never put to analytical work - reappears in the jolts of nationalism, racism, mysticism and threatens to occupy the symbolic field of creation and fantasies?

Under the title of a book by Paul Gilroy, the seminar organised by erg (école supérieure des arts, école de recherche graphique) wonder how we can contribute to the global reflection on the past-present of the relations between Belgium and its former African colonies, especially the Congo. A past-present whose legacies weigh, albeit in different ways, on the economies, experiences, experiences and Belgian and Congolese representations.

What can be done with these common divergences without producing renewed versions of the relations of domination? How can we be and act together? To look at the bruises (wounds) of the souls and the bodies is also to invest the possibilities of unexpected futures, and invest possible transformations. Films, scream, radio, lectures, poems, comics, the forms to be experimented are as many as the singularities.