Mozambique

^{Posted on 10th March, 2008}

One on One : Miguel Petchkovsky

^{Interview by Bertha Kang'ong'oi, AfricanColours}

^{AfricanColours exclusive interview with Miguel Petchkovsky, Mozambique-born painter and Curator of the Imaginary Lines Project.}

 ^{(Note: The views expressed here are solely those of the artist and  do not necessarily reflect the opinion of AfricanColours)}

^{In simple terms, explain the imaginary lines concept.}

^{The imaginary lines concept was launched in 2006, during a video workshop I had organised at the Nucleo de Arte in Maputo Mozambique. The main idea behind this concept is to launch in Africa, new processes of education, learning and investigation using video and electronic art concepts and techniques.}

^{The proposal of video and electronic art workshops in Africa under the concept IMAGINARY LINES calls for the renovation of the theoretical interface of contemporary art practices, to depart from its all pervasive discourses and work together with artists and critics to discover new modes of thinking and develop new analytical tools for dealing with the world today.}

^{Given this, my contention with international sponsors is that they should invest on promoting meaningful strategies and a coherent set of methodologies in their approach towards Africa and her art. Other than perpetuating seemingly slavery discourses and the somewhat exotic modernist classifications and definitions that only serve to endorse a stereotype, these strategies and methodologies would envision both a pragmatic artistic and intellectual development of Africa’s new artistic vocabularies among the new generation of artists and thinkers.}

^{Most of this post-colonial discourses are managed by International institutions that are not interested on the intellectual development of African creativity therefore rendering a clearly poor and unarticulated vision towards Africa’s new generations. Very often those institutions worked towards building discursive sites of repetitive voices and negotiating spaces of diverse values emphasising correctness in cultural politics. These have inadvertently succeeded to neglect of independent pursuit of artistic creativity and alternative imaginative worlds, where concepts of identity, multiplicity and difference are changed to become ideological and institutional. It is to counter this trend that Imaginary Lines exists.}

^{How long have you been developing the Imaginary Lines Project?}

^{I have been developing this project since 2006 in Mozambique and Angola. But I have now extended this concept in a project in Dakar with Senegalese and Cape Verdian artists and there is also a possibility for another project in Lagos Nigeria.}

^{Are you an artist by profession? If yes, what kind of artist are you and did you have to go to school to learn your art?}

^{My position in the world, you can call it profession, is to develop my own artistic practice on painting, drawing and video multimedia projects. I am a curator of video and public space art projects and to organise and train young African and Brazilian artists on video art and electronic art, via workshops in Africa and Brazil.}

^{I attended the Rietveld Art Academie in Amsterdam, The Netherlands.}

^{(View his Curriculum Vitae)}

^{What inspires you to do what you do?}

^{I am inspired by the positive response of all young artists during my workshops. Some groups I formed in Brazil have already organised themselves to construct strategies of continuity and one group in  particular, Mandril -which I trained in Sao Paulo, has even launched a website! (www.mandril.ato.br)}

^{In your own words, define what you believe art is}

^{Art is everything but definition, one can argue that it is the transformation of one thing in another thing. The exercise of definition about art in only rooted on the necessity to classify in order to supply international art markets, and food for thought for art critics that are the conceptual suppliers of those markets. So art is the way you articulate with your own self and the way you can transmit knowledge and creative vision to others, in sharing experiences and knowledge.}

 ^{The modernist approach to classification and define, only acknowledge the necessity to merely supplying it with contemplative objects whose value is either endorsed or discarded according to its commodity value.}

^{Where do you see yourself in five years?}

^{I don’t exercise the future concept of timeframe. For me the future is now .}

^{What response have others given the Imaginary Lines project? Is it what you expected?}

^{The response has been overwhelmingly positive, on a conceptual basis and artistic practice, with plans underway for the project to be launched in Senegal, Cape Verde and Nigeria. Other possibilities much depend on international sponsorship.}

^{Do you plan to expand the project to other African countries, and perhaps indeed other parts of the world?}

^{I have already designed a large project dubbed VIDEO CARAVAN THOUGHOUT IMAGINARY LINES, as a joint project with the Video Caravan concept from Morocco, in conjunction with three other curators. This is a tour project based in a video workshops staring in Las Palmas, Grand Canaria, Morocco, Mali, Nigeria, Senegal, Cameroon, Angola, South Africa, Mozambique, Comoros Island, Kenya, and possibly Sudan and the end part will be Brazil.}

^{This is a very ambitious project that would be organised and carried out in 2009 /2010. Much will depend of international sponsors.}

^{Miguel Petchkovsky (Angola)}

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