Chris Cyrille – "Which kind of world are you preparing for us?”

Villa Romana invited the exhibitionteller and poet Chris Cyrille-Isaac to imagine and curate cartes blanches (or cartes noires) around the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists in Rome (1959) with the help and the friendship of imagination-makers.

For this first carte blanche (or carte noire), Villa Romana hosts a discussion echoing the main issues of the Congress with imagination-makers such as Samuel Baah Kortey, Johanne Affricot, Bocar Niang, Mistura Allison, Janine Gaëlle and Justin Randolph Thompson (BHMF), the team of Villa Romana, and others who spread and share the reactivation. To reactivate is to pay homage to those who left but are still here by spreading an initial poetic call.

In 1959, the Second Congress of Black Writers and Artists took place at the Campidoglio in Rome. It witnessed more than 150 thinkers, writers, artists, and political figures who attended the Congress, welcomed by the Italian government. Organised by the Société africaine de culture (founded by Alioune Diop) and the Istituto per l’Africa (which later became the Istituto Italiano per l’Africa e l’Oriente), it followed the First Congress in Paris three years earlier.

Launched during the decolonisation processes of the Fifties, the Congress sought to work on the de-westernisation of the world, specially of African countries: "Dewesternize to universalize, that is our wish" (Alioune Diop, 1959). Influenced by the theory of Négritude, its participants were divided into different delegations to rethink culture outside of European hegemony and from a Pan-Africanist, humanist point of view.

More than sixty years later, we ask: How can we rethink the main issues of the Congress, that is to say, culture, ethics, and politics concerning the black diaspora and African countries? How can we rethink the role of arts and culture at a time when culture, national identity, difference, belonging, and emancipatory politics have changed, but the problems remain the same? Most importantly: How can we reactivate the spirit and the solidarities of this event by recreating conversations and discussions about black experience and black dignity differently?

Participants: Samuel Baah Kortey, Johanne Affricot, Bocar Niang, Mistura Allison, Janine Gaëlle, Justin Randolph Thompson, Chris Cyrille

OPENING

15 April 2023, from 7.30pm onwards

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