In 2008, I curated an exhibition of African digital art for the Dunlop Art Gallery in Regina, Sask.  The goal of the exhibition, Transnational Convergences in African Digital Art, was to explore the existence of transnational spaces in African digital art and, more specifically, to see how African artists use a variety of digital and computer-based strategies to express their identities in transnational spaces.  Africa is frequently described as a “have-not” continent and a victim of a digital divide that prevents African nations from participating in contemporary knowledge-based economies.  Despite the clear difficulties in going digital in a context where serious life needs are not fulfilled, Africans are nevertheless actively contributing to digital discourses.  This includes the 2 artists chosen for this exhibition, Home and Away, 2003, Berni Searle (South Africa) and Cryptic, a Traveler’s Diary, (2007), IngridMwangiRobertHutter (Kenya/Germany), who explore the interrelationships and disjunctures between concepts of identity, race, locale and history.

This presentation will examine issues around archiving and interpretation of texts (artworks) produced for a specific context, but “repurposed” for other venues/contexts.  In particular, Berni Searle’s installation, Home and Away (2003) was originally a performance which involved the artist floating in the ocean between Spain and Morocco, an obvious reference to trade routes between Europe and Africa, but also a lyrical reference to the artist’s own complex personal history and ancestry.  The performance piece became a video document which then morphed into a double-screen video installation.  Can each of these experiences/iterations be archived?  What happens to the viewers’ and artist’s identities/experiences in this process?  And what becomes of specific historical experiences or moments?  Are they reconfigured into post-colonial transnational spaces?  Is archiving a new form of colonization in an era where self-styling has allowed post-colonial African digital artists to navigate globalized, transnational spaces and take African visions of self to the world (Mbembe 2002, 242)?

Mbembe, Achille.  “African Modes of Self-Writing.”  Trans. Steven Rendall.  Public Culture, 14(1), 2002: 239-273.