Wikipedia:WikiAfrica/doual'art

This page presents a summary of the collaboration between Wikipedia in English and doual'art. doual'art contributes to the project WikiAfrica and it's a GLAM.

The institution

Doual'art is an independent organization and exhibition center based in Douala, Cameroon, founded in 1991 by Princess Marilyn Douala Bell, socio-economist and her husband Didier Schaub, art critic, and contributing to Wikimedia projects, in particular Commons, from 2007 within the WikiAfrica project.

History of the collaboration

The participation of WikiAfrica to cultural initiatives in Douala, for several years, allowed a better knowledge of a world far away and familiarity with the pulsating artistic life of a big city inhabited by about two and a half million people. Artists and intellectuals, African and foreigners roamed the streets of Douala, observed, studied, photographed, represented, debated. Some of the material from this research on the field is still contained in the Doualart.org official website and in the Foundation iStrike one, released under a free license so that it can be used in the Wikimedia Foundation projects and elsewhere, while many images have already reached the digital repository Commons. After these experiences there are still unanswered questions, including those on the role and usefulness of art in a context scarred by misery and degradation, if what has been achieved so far belongs to the category of art or if it is plain urban development, if African artists are actually the protagonists in this process. A book tries to go beyond prejudices and illustrates the influence of art upon the city life and its landscape.

Among doual'art's events, Ars & Urbis International Workshop was a workshop organised in Douala Cameroon by the art centre Doual'art in collaboration with the iStrike Foundation in March 2007. During the workshop a group of artists, architects, art critics, researchers and writers worked to produce and collect new contents for Wikipedia on the city of Douala and on the cultural institutions and artists working in and on Douala. The workshop also produced the book Douala in Translation. A view of the city and its creative transformative potentials, published by Episode Publishers in Rotterdam in 2007.

Institutions

Artists

Koko Komégné

Douala in Translation

A view of the city and its creative transformative potentials

curators: Lucia Babina, Marilyn Douala Bell
publisher: Episode Publishers
pages: 254
city and year of publication: Rotterdam, 2007
language: English
ISBN 978-9059730717
awards: Best Dutch Book Design 2007

Interview with Roberto Paci Dalò

We asked the artist Roberto Paci Dalò to tell us something about his experience in 2010 at SUD 2010, another event organized by doual'art and based on the theme of water (more details in the Italian entry);

My trip to Cameroon in December 2010 was my first experience in Africa. I had brought a Canon 7D with the intention of shooting a video as I usually do in my explorations. Instead, the urgency focused on something else and for this reason, starting from the mere need to document all the work, I found myself taking a series of photographs which I then decided to donate to the Wikimedia Commons.

I am nothing but a tourist and cartographer but - in this role - I sensed a subtle familiar with the place and especially with people. Hard to explain without ending up in the common places of the traveler, but the fact is that I came back to Europe shivering with instant nostalgia. Mal d'Afrique? I do not want to overdo it. Let's say that empathy was high and with it, a sort of childish emotion and happiness. "My Africa", which in part I can also find here in Italy, in a country unprepared to such a power and a grandeur.

Content analysis

In July 2012 some hundreds of files wew uploaded onto the WMF servers, some are presented in the gallery below. The category containing Doual'art-related pictures on Wikimedia Commons has been populated by mass upload by the project tutor Michele Casanova, and contains almost 600 files, yet few of them, about 2%, have been used to illustrate some articles in any Wikipedia. About half of the pictures were taken by Roberto Paci Dalò, and are therefore unique in that they reflect his point of view as an artist on the days spent in Douala, capturing the works, the colleagues, the people, the everyday scenes that most impressed his look and his sensitivity. The remaining photographs were taken and generously donated by the photographer and artist Lard Buurman and cover artists who were in the city during the same event (eg., the popular Hervé Yamguen), their installations, the execution of these, the debates. Some of them are now displayed in entries like Christine Eyene, Joseph-Francis Sumégné, Tayou, Salifou Lindou on the Italian Wikipedia. The photo of the statue at the top of this article, instead, has crossed the borders of Cameroon to be used, especially in the entries for Douala, even in Wikipedia in Catalan, Czech, Welsh, Finnish, Hebrew, Fiji Hindi, Croatian, Lombard, Macedonian, Piedmontese, Swahili, Chinese, and Simplified English; thanks to this massive presence, in the first seven months of 2012 it was thus displayed a total of over 62,500 times.