Conversation - What are its voices? The ocean: the cultural stakes of a natural asset.
Conversation with Dr. Aliou Sall, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, Awa Djigal. With Diane Vandesmet. Moderation by Jennifer Houdrouge.
Date: Thursday, July 4th, 2024 at 6:30 PM.
While fishing has always been a pillar of Senegalese culture, it is currently endangering communities and natural ecosystems with the industrialisation of the coastline and a globalised reappropriation of resources. Working with the legal organisation ClientEarth, Hamedine Kane has created an artistic proposal addressing these issues in collaboration with the individuals most affected by the sudden changes to their main and traditional activity. By documenting the stories through numerous exchanges, he brings socio-environmental issues into a cultural institution that calls for reflection through art, and reinforces the role of institutions in a collective dialogue.
Participants
Dr. Aliou Sall is a researcher specialised in fisheries development studies. He is the director of the Senegal-based NGO CREDETIP, founded in 1989 to support fishing communities. He has been involved in artisanal fisheries and has been conducting research into the social anthropology of artisanal fisheries for over 25 years. During this time, he has worked with trade unions and fishermen's social movements in West African countries. Through his collaboration with artisanal fishermen's social movements, he provides the expertise needed to help conduct negotiations with political decision-makers. His main concern is to raise awareness of the cultural dimension of small-scale fishing and its intangible, non-commercial values. From January 2020 to June 2020, Dr. Aliou Sall was recruited as a consultant by the Minderoo Foundation to assess fisheries governance in over 13 countries. He is a member of the Too Big To Ignore platform, an international network of scientists specialising in fisheries, for which he is responsible for coordination in Senegal.
Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy is a curator and cultural practitioner based in Dakar. In 2020, she joined RAW Material Company, a Dakar-based center for art, knowledge, and society, of which she is currently director of programs. She graduated from Paris 1 Panthéon-Sorbonne University, in Exhibition Sciences and Techniques and holds a double Bachelor's degree in Arts and Culture and Visual Arts. Prior to joining RAW, she worked for several years in the field of hospitality and cultural mediation in institutions such as Grand Palais and Fondation Louis Vuitton in Paris. In 2018, she moved back to Dakar where she accompanied the opening of the Museum of Black Civilizations. Most of the projects Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy is involved in are based on archives — in the broadest sense — and their uses and request community engagement at different levels. She is strongly interested in Afro-diasporic trajectories and how local communities embody those narratives. She is looking at possibilities of third spaces to grow in new commonly-defined geographies; to anchor stories that have not yet been accessed or told.
Awa Djigal has been working as an artisanal fish processor for over 40 years. She is one of the leaders of the Fédération Nationale des GIE de Pêche du Sénégal (FENARGIE), which was founder in 1990 in Joal, and is recognised as the most dynamic representative of small-scale fishing organisations. She is engaged to improve the working and living conditions of the women involved in the fishery sector, one of the main sources of work in Senegal, through her involvement in the Réseau des Femmes de la Pêche artisanale du Sénégal (REFEPAS). REFEPAS is striving to "provide a framework for consultation and a source of proposals to promote sustainable fishing in Senegal", battling against industrialisation, its economical and ecological consequences. Awa Djigal is also an eco-activist, alerting on the pollution of the ocean, the climate changes and its impacts.
Diane Vandesmet is part of ClientEarth, one of the world's most ambitious environmental organisations founded in 2007 in London by James Thornton, an ex-Wall Street lawyer who won over 80 cases to force the Reagan Administration to clean up polluted water. Before joining ClientEarth, Diane Vandesmet worked for five years in China as a broadcast journalist and communications manager for an international business organisation. After a Master’s degree in European Politics from Sciences Po Grenoble, she also worked for the French ministry for the Environment and in a Brussels-based lobbying organisation. Currently, she is part of the ClientEarth team working on the fishing industry and its environmental and social impacts in Senegal.
Jennifer Houdrouge is a French-Lebanese-Senegalese gallery owner, director and curator. She graduated from King’s College London (2014) and holds a Masters in Art History and Archaeology from the Institute of Fine Arts, New York University, and a Masters degree in contemporary art from Sotheby's Institute of Art, New York. In 2015, she founded and co-directed The Chimney (2015-2020), an art gallery in Brooklyn, NY where she developed a program focusing mainly on in-situ installation commissions to revitalize and repurpose non-traditional, historical or industrial buildings. In 2020, Jennifer Houdrouge founded Selebe Yoon - a contemporary art gallery and artist residency in Dakar, Senegal, in an historical building from 1952 in the city center of Dakar in Senegal. Across the 1000m2 venue, she organises large-scale exhibitions, welcomes artists and curators for research residencies throughout the year and develops a public program with series of conversations and performances.