Condition Report #5
— Directed by Felwine Sarr
/ Dakar, 18 - 21/12/2024

RAW Material Company is pleased to announce its upcoming symposium
Condition Report 5: A Sense of Place/Displacement, Replacement, Non-placement, an international gathering conceived in collaboration with writer, Senegalese academic and Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University, Felwine Sarr, to be held in Dakar from December 18 to 21, 2024 at the Théodore Monod Museum of African Art. 

“A Sense of Place” can be literally translated in French as ‘le sens d’un lieu/la relation avec un lieu’, although it can also refer to a sense of belonging to a place. It is a complex, multidimensional construct at the intersection of social, material and symbolic meanings that characterizes the relationship between people and spatial environments. It refers to the emotional bonds and attachments that people experience in places, on scales ranging from the home to the nation. It can also play an important role in the construction of identity, community and the understanding of cultural heritage. It encompasses the full range of lived experiences in forms of expression that are imagined, desired, conserved, preserved, remembered, contested and advocated.

The main aim of this fifth international symposium is to provide a platform for reflection on our relationship with the world through the following 4 axes: the city, the living, the intangible and the cosmopolitics of hospitality. How do we inhabit the place and the world in which we live? How have actors—active in our local contexts and from across the creative disciplines— responded to and shaped their—our—environment? How do they create sites of possibility? Evoking questions as a way of framing our commitment to what Felwine Sarr describes as “epistemologies of the sensitive”.

These questions will be explored by a range of academics, philosophers and creatives, including architects, artists, filmmakers, curators and innovative collectives. The inaugural lecture will be given by Professor Felwine Sarr, confirmed participants include Germaine Acogny & l’École des Sables, Sénamé Koffi Agbodjinou, Eyumane Baoulé Assengone, Cheikh Abdoul Ahad Mbacké Ba, Mouhamadou El Hady Ba, Rokia Bamba, Alyssa K. Barry, Hicham Bouzid, Yasmin Abdu Bushra, nora chipaumire, Liliana Coutinho, Mariama Diallo, Alice Diop, Carole Diop, Elizabeth Gallòn Droste, Ola Hassanain, Nadia Kopogo, Nzinga Biegueng Mboup, Aisha Mugo, El Hadj Malick Ndiaye, Mame Fatou Niang, Josèfa Ntjam, Ernesto Oroza, Marie-Helene Pereira, Ana Pi, yasmine eid-sabbagh, Aliou Sall, Felwine Sarr, Fatou Seydi Singhiam Sarr, Cesar Schofield Cardoso, Ibrahima Silla, Maboula Soumahoro, Ibrahima Wane, Bonnie Devine's Woodlands.

The closing plenary session will be chaired by Maboula Soumahoro and El Hadj Malick Ndiaye, who will act as observers for this fifth condition report.

A Sense of Place: 

                Displacement 

                      Replacement 

                           Non-placement

Some places have a presence. The question is how all the components of a place can be cultivated and sustained, and to what extent the energies—born of historical connections and movements—are left latent or can flourish to give meaning to this presence. In Dakar, there are many places with a presence. Most of the time, a place is understood far beyond its three-dimensional spatial boundaries. 

Nowhere is the relationship between humanity and the invisible entity more striking in form and meaning than in the place that was, and will always be for many, the courtyard of the late Issa Samb. An artist whose practice was fundamentally centered on attentiveness, Samb was the conductor of an ensemble of entities that filled the courtyard at 17 Rue Jules Ferry. Every object, whether animate or inanimate, was free to breathe and speak in relation to its environment. Sometimes, Samb would insist on moving a chair by the slightest angle: he was so sensitive to the vital elements of his surroundings. Today, this courtyard is a construction site; the kapok tree that stood at its center, several hundred years old, has been destroyed, and with it, unknown stories, customs, and ecosystems. The relationship to place is changing here, as it is across much of the planet.

Climate, economic, social, and political disasters are redrawing the contours of our physical environments. It is becoming increasingly urgent that, as individuals and/or organizations, we examine not only how we occupy the various sites we inhabit but also how we truly dwell in them. As an institution, this leads us to reflect on our relationship to the place in which we are embedded; to question the best way to work with a resolute sense of this context, making it visible. This task is all the more important because, in many cases, it is institutions that have contributed to suppressing the truths of places. Inextricably linked to this endeavor is the need to ask questions about the politics of presence and access.
 
This seminar is thus an invitation to think about research and creative, innovative practices in relation to place. If we want to strengthen the relevance and potential of these disciplines, we must not only decipher the history of major exhibitions of the last century or the current economic trends in the contemporary art world, but also explore a diverse set of modus operandi as sources of inspiration to reinvent, organize, and narrate creative praxis. How do the actors in our contexts respond to and shape their environment? How do they collaborate? How do they tell stories and recall History? How do they create possible worlds? And how can this impact our methods? These questions frame our engagement with what Senegalese intellectual Felwine Sarr describes as the "epistemologies of the sensible."
 
In this sense, an additional perspective could be to reflect on our place in the geopolitical world. Which part of the world is accessible to us? How is our experience of the world conditioned, bounded, and limited by our ability to move? In light of the many changes and transformations we face, and the forms of violence and dehumanization our bodies encounter, how do we claim our share of humanity? If any still exist, what defenses remain when our bodies, even in their inert state, are no longer treated with equal dignity? This reflection advocates for a cosmopolitics of hospitality, a universal ethics of welcome, and a fundamental right to freedom of movement: a passport for humanity, to prevent it from becoming the instrument of our decline.

#Practical informations

The symposium is free and open to the public, provided places are available. 

International attendees are kindly requested to arrange their own accommodation and travel to Senegal and notify the travel coordinator of their attendance.

Coordination
Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy : 
lecture@rawmaterialcompany.org

Delphine Buysse: 
programmes@rawmaterialcompany.org

Travel coordination
Mame-Farma Fall: 
admin@rawmaterialcompany.org

Press relations officer
Aissatou Diop : 
aissatou.diop@heritageforafrica.com

#Symposium Location

Musée Théodore Monod
Bâtiment B — 1er étage
Musée Théodore Monod d’art africain | IFAN
1, place Soweto, BP 206
Dakar, Senegal

+221 33 823 92 68

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Assemblée Nationale

Tuesday to Sunday from 9am to 5pm
Closed on Mondays

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