MORTUARY ARTS in Africa & African Diaspora. A Call for Papers

International Wed 01-02-2012

MORTUARY ARTS in Africa & African Diaspora. A Call for Papers
Krydz Ikwuemesi

Funeral in Africa has never been a mere act of interment marked by rites of passage, but an important performance on the social stage conditioned by the incident and social perception of death. Like much art, a funeral aims to solve a social problem. It is a creative exercise that complements the incident of death and mediates the physical and spiritual realms. As African communities (both at home and in the Diaspora) become more complex, so also have funerals and burial practices become more complicated. The attempt by churches, chiefs, and communities to curtail funerary excesses have yielded very little, as animist and Christian funerals and al burial practices continue to be marked by great vitality as against the usual “concealment and modesty” common in purely Western societies.

A picture by Edward van Herk

Throughout history, what has distinguished burials and funerals in Africa and the African Diaspora is their heightened artistry and theatricality.

There is art in every death, funeral and burial in so far as they involve a renegotiation of reality and the re-invention of being on transcendental terms. In Africa and parts of the African, these factors are not merely suggested in the component performances and actions of funerals, but are also enacted and affirmed in concrete terms through objects and practices of burial as part of visual culture. In other words, death is the spin-off of a chain of artistic performance/activity that is consummated in the rituals associated with funerals and burials. It is the initiator of a sombre theatre and artistic performance/creation whose principal goal is a denial of death itself, what Grainger (1998) has aptly described as “the refusal to die”.

In light of this background, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, painter and theorist, wishes to edit a volume on African and African diasporan mortuary arts.

The book is titled Celebrating Tragedy: Art and Theatre in African and African Diasporan Funerals and Burial Practices Methodological Justification The book seeks to re-interrogate the phenomena of death, funeral and burial in Africa and the African Diaspora so as to re-inscribe them as agencies of art and theatre in the face of the ever-widening meaning and definition of both genres (art and theatre) in postmodern discourses. To ths extent, the book will deal with its theme from three standpoints:

a) It will attempt a definition of art from perspectives that redraw the contours of organised symbols, performances and rituals as constituents of art with a view to accommodating the combination of spontaneity and preconception that surround actions in a funeral/burial arena.

b) It will examine the meaning and dimensions of theatre from classical African and postmodern perspectives and locate actions and reactions in the funeral and burial arena (including actions and objects in the grave yard) within the bounds of the emergent re-interpretations.

c) It shall look at the influence of technology on the artistry and theatricals of funerals/burials in Africa and the Diaspora and also appraise the influences of modernity, Christianity and Islam on the content and scope of such art and theatre. In other words, the book will adopt both theoretical and historical approaches in the pursuit of its thesis.

This methodology will result in a composite book that addresses its subject from a clearly eclectic position.

Significance

The book will break new grounds in the study and definition of art and theatre in Africa and also re-image African/Diasporan funeral and burial in the face of the changing values and the challenges of the cultural turn brought about by excessive Americanisation often taken for granted in the name of globalisation. It will re-examine the apparent folly and frivolity associated with funerals and burials in these parts, especially as seen through non-African eyes, and find a place for them within the realms of art, performance and entertainment. Thus, the book will be useful to artists, anthropologists, theatre artists, sociologists, historians, among others.

(a) Art and performance in African funerals.

(b) Poetry and minstrelsy in African funerals.

The politics of African funerals.

(e) Music and dance as creative metaphors in African funerals.

(f) The Art and politics of crying in African funerals.

(g) The poetics of wailing and ululations in African/Diaspora funerals.

(h) The theatricals of rituals in African funerals.

(i) Material ritual objects as art in the burial arena

(j) The grave yard as exhibition arena: graves as installations

(k) The role of graphics in funerals/burials

(l) The symbolisms of acts, actions and material objects in the

funeral/burial arena.

(m) Tradition vs. Modernity in African and Diasporan funerals/burials.

(n) The influence of Christianity, Islam and Westernization on African

funerals.

(o) Transition and change in African funerals.

Other related topics within the bounds of the theme are welcome.

To contribute:

Send an abstract of 200 words to chukrydz@gmail.com before March 30, 2012.

Full papers will be due by July 30, 2012. All contributions should be in English and should not exceed 7000 words. References should be entered and organized at the end of the text according to the Chicago Style.

Photographs, where necessary, should be of very high resolution and can be forwarded by email or separately through post in CD or DVD. Locations of the photographs in the text should be clearly indicated. Text should be accompanied by the author’s bio not exceeding 200 words.

The Editor, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, painter and theorist, studied art at University of Nigeria, Nsukka, graduating in first class in 1992. He is the founder of the Pan-African Circles of Artists (PACA) and Emeritus President of The Art Republic. He is the Director of Afrika Heritage (the PACA Biennale), Overcoming Maps (PACA Study Tour of Africa), and the annual Mmanwu Theatre. Ikwuemesi has researched and published on the art and , mortuary arts and healing enterprise of the Igbo of eastern Nigeria and is presently engaged in a comparative study of arts of the Igbo and the Ainu (of Japan). He is a Senior Lecturer at University of Nigeria and was recently a Visiting Associate Professor at the National Museum of Ethnology, Osaka, Japan. He has also researched Ainu arts and aesthetics as a Japan Foundation Fellow in Hokkaido in 2009.

C. Krydz Ikwuemesi

International Secretary

The Pan-African Circle of Artists

URL: www.panafricanartists.org

Tel: (234)- 7065513950, 08037244485

Skype: chukrydz

Posted By: Andrew Njoroge

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