Mutant Assembly
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Mutant pedagogies presents a collective, multi-voiced enquiry by contemporary artists, writers, dancers and researchers. Together we depart from post-independence, utopian educational projects to rethink the possibilities of school today. The proposed publication is dynamic in form, mirroring the leading metaphor of mutation.

This publication departs from the latest School of Mutants's gathering in Dakar in July 2022, titled Assembly of Mutants, during which 30 international artists and researchers convened around the question: "comment faire école - comment apprendre différemment ?" / "how to make school - how to learn differently?" / تفعيل مدرسة (taf'eel madrasa) - تَعَلَّم مختلف (ta'alom mokhtalef). Together we explored: How to learn with the body? How to learn from a place? How to centre community knowledge? How to teach in non-hierarchical ways?

The contributors created essays, notes and drawings, interviews, and dense materials based on the situated experience of each participant - from para-institutional learning spaces for black community knowledge in Brazil to institutes for radical pedagogy in Egypt - but also on the collective discussion of global issues in education, research and "epistemologies of the South" (a term we borrow from B. de Sousa Santos). The backdrop of our reflections is a shared critical reflection on the state of present education, starting with the historical construct of the University in colonial and post-colonial contexts and a collective examination of current initiatives and speculation on potential new models. This publication project aims to disseminate further the content created in this gathering but also enrich it and complement it with new contributions to the debate on the decolonization of knowledge and the reinvention of learning in African and Afro-diasporic worlds.

Our approach is an experimental publication that will assemble a dynamic set of essays, interview transcripts, lively materials, and visual works. Our aim is a space for dialogical research, mutation and cross-contamination of different perspectives on pedagocial mutation. We also wish to reflect on the notion of authorship and put into practice the principles of non-hierarchy and decentralized autonomy and mutation discussed in the essays. Towards this end, we are proposing:

The Assembly of Mutants formed part of the exhibition UFA, Université des futurs africains curated by Oulimata Gueye, which took place at le Lieu Unique in Nantes in 2021 as part of the africa2020 season. The Assembly of Mutants is produced by Point Sud, a program of workshops and conferences in Africa, funded by the German Research Foundation (DFG) and coordinated by the Goethe University Frankfurt, Germany. The Publication project is part of the Het Nieuwe Instituut research residency programme. Organisational Committee: Oulimata Gueye; Hamedine Kane; Julien McHardy; Stéphane Verlet-Bottéro. Scientific Committee: Felwine Sarr; Katharina Schramm; Mamadou Sy.

Editorial team

(researchers / curators / writers)

Oulimata Gueye, Stéphane Verlet Bottéro, Hamedine Kane, Mamadou Diallo, Emilie Aurat, Julien McHardy

Contributors

Felwine Sarr, Seloua Luste Boulbina, Ana Pi, Joseph Tonda, Maria Aparecida Moura, Ntone Edjabe, Nolan Oswald Dennis, Ken Bugul, Carole Diop, Baptiste Brun, Catitu Tayassu, Daniel Sciboz, Dulcie Abrahams Altass, Eyumane Baoulé Assengone, Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy, Fatou Kiné, Hamedine Kane, Judith Rottenburg, Julien McHardy, Karim-Yassin Goessinger, Khouma Gueye, Katharina Schramm, Kuukuwa Manful, Leuz Diwan G, Mamoudou Sy, Marie Hélène Pereira, Mourtada Gueye, Nathalie Vairac, Oulimata Gueye, Romain Baudot, Stéphane Verlet Bottéro, Tabara Korka Ndiaye, Thierno Seydou Sall and Fehe

How to reclaim the university?

Does the university have a monopoly on knowledge ? Certainly not. Which kind of colonial biais are reproduced in adopting the western pattern Popular universities, para-institutions and community contexts are spaces where knowledge is created and shared. It is crucial to center these knowledge economies for a critical approach to education as commons.

Sodo Badé - Théâtre de l'Engouement

Felwine Sarr: opening remarks and questions for the week.

intervention de Felwine Sarr

Maria Aparecida Moura: Plural knowledge, orality and situated narratives : methodological approaches related to the Brazilian context.

intervention de Maria Aparecida Moura

Joseph Tonda: The School System as Mutants Generating Apparatus.

🗎 the school system as mutants generating appartus
🗎 l'école comme dispositif de génération des mutants
intervention de Joseph Tonda

Thierno Seydou Sall: Ndank Ndank (Prendre son temps).

intervention de Thierno Seydou Sall
How to think from a Black Planet?

To overcome the universal, technoscientific structuring of the world and the oppressive boundaries of where and by whom knowledge is produced, implies reclaiming the whole Earth as a learning space. We must unlearn, occupy, and follow the fugitive path. These two workshops explore what is thinking from a Black Planet.

Sobo Badé - Théâtre de l'Engouement

intervention de Ana Pi and Nolan Oswald Dennis
interview of Nolan Oswald Dennis

Nolan Oswald Dennis: FREE EARTHS, low entropy and the image of a black planet (a collective exercise for thinking with the world).

"In the realm of thought, man may claim to be the brain of the world ; but in real life where every action affects spiritual and physical existence, the world is always the brain of mankind ; for it is at this level that you will find the sum total of the powers and units of thought... "

Ahmed Sekou Toure, 2nd Congress of Black Writers and Artists, Rome,1959.

interview with Ana Pi

Ana Pi: STEADY BODY - peripheral dances, sacred gestures.

Vitality and dance rhyme have always rhymed, even at the times of the cruel apocalypse. Atlantic Ocean. Raw, wound. Our bodies remember it until now. Our imagination fights amnesia. If we meet here, it's because dance has blessed our way. Ancestral technology of resistance. Through movement we are still, the entire Earth.

What futurity gestures are these that disobeyed the impossible?

Compte rendu dessiné des workshops :

How to teach like mangroves

The mangrove schools of the PAIGC in Guinea-Bissau, invented a militant education inseparable from the natural environment. What happens when the teacher-learner hierarchy is dissolved in favor of rhizomatic collectives that include more than humans? How to take down the “Hostage School” of coloniality by reactivating past experience and relationships?

Centre Mampuya

Eyumane Baoulé Assengone: Bambougar Mbambouxar.

🗎 BAMBOUGAR MBAMBOUXAR
intervention de Eyumane Assengone

Mamoudou Sy: Three scenes of education practices in the 19th and 20th centuries in the Senegal Valley (African education, arabo-islamic school, French School).

intervention de Mamoudou Sy

Nathalie Muchamad: Pour une fiction non-alignée/non-aliénée (reading by Nathalie Vairac).

intervention de Natalie Muchamad

Mohamed Mbougar Sarr: Ñaangooj ou l'invention perpétuelle du même (reading by Marie Hélène Pereira and Hamedine Kane).

🗎 Ñaangooj

Issa Fofana: Technology and mutation.

lecture by Issa Fofana
How to relate to everything?

Regenerating the Earth comes with restoring the body's centrality in experiencing the world. Being-in-relation in the world is a consciousness of the co-presence of multiple others, not just human bodies. According to Souleymane Bachir Diagne, the experience of African art shows that a “cosmology of emergence” breathes force into all living beings, minerals, and objects, thus opening multiple possibilities of embodied terms of exchange between humans, and other-than-humans.

Karim Yassin-Goessinger: Letting pigeons teach us.

Film program introduced by Tabara Korka Ndiaye.

Taking place just a few kilometers away from the Ndayane mega-harbour construction project, the Assembly faces the necessity to address the logics of dispossession, extraction and ecocide that characterize so-called "development". The films gathered in this program address the body as repository of the violence of colonial modernity, but also as a site of memory, resistance and interspecies liberation.

NoirBLUE - déplacements d'une danse // Ana Pi (27 min, 2018)

In the African continent, Ana Pi reconnects with her origins through the choreographic gesture, engaging in a space-time experiment that combines traditional and contemporary movements. In this dance of fertility and healing, the black skin under the blue veil is integrated with space, reenacting new forms and colors that evoke ancestry, belonging, resistance and the sense of freedom.

Mangrove School // Filipa César & Sónia Vaz Borges. (35 min, 2022)

Mangrove Schools is a tribute to the "liberation schools" conceived by the philosopher and activist Amílcar Cabral and the PAIGC during Guinea- Bissau's war of independence against Portugal. It is a fictional work based on research and testimonies collected by the historian Sónia Vaz Borges and the artist Filipa César.

Le temps de dire non // El Hadji Demba DIA produit par PLAN B (13 min, 2021)

Bargny, commune de 70.000 habitants, est la nouvelle banlieue industrielle du Sénégal. Elle est polluée par la centrale à charbon et par la cimenterie Sococim, asphyxiée par l'installation du port minéralier et par l'avancée de la mer. Les populations sentent l'urgence de lutter pour préserver leur environnement, devenu invivable. A leur côté : les activistes Fadel Wade et l'association Takkom Dieri propulsent le combat à l'échelle internationale.

Xaar Yalla // Mamadou Khouma GUEYE, produit par PLAN B (25 min, 2021)

Elle avance vers nous. Elle avance contre nous. Elle avance avec nous ... Elle c'est la mer avance sur la ville de Saint- Louis, la « Venise du sud », dont certains quartiers,Guet Ndar et Ndar Toute, enclavés entre la mer et le fleuve, risquent de disparaître, tout comme Ndoud Baba Diéye, une île des alentours ...

Kédougou // Mamadou Khouma GUEYE, court-métrage documentaire, (2017)

Guinaw rails // Kady DIEDHIOU, court-métrage documentaire, (13 min, 2014)

Dior Leye se lève tous les jours à 5h du matin, traversant les rues sombres et obscures de son quartier insécurisé et l'imposante autoroute à péage qui, comme un barrage, la sépare de la route nationale pour aller au marché central de poisson.

How to learn from images?

Discussion and lunch with Plan B. Plan B collective strives to make cinema accessible for the inhabitants of Dakar suburbs. Playing with collective energy, the group of young filmmakers also produces and distributes its own films. They embrace the idea that art must create hospitality for ordinary people, and participate in the representation and consciousness of social and political realities, though at times difficult.

Plan B - Lac Rose

How to build openings?

The diverse built layers of Dakar indicate different historical, political and social narratives that intertwine in the everyday experience of the city and the material relation to space and time. Architecture, art and thought after independence, tell of patterns of circulation and translation. Senghor's philosophy of Negritude paved the way to understand how notions of rhythm and aesthetics interplay in the colliding encounter of African knowledge traditions and imposed extra-continental epistemic models. These mutations are essential to understand contemporary Senegalese culture.

Raw Material Company

intervention de Seloua Luste Boulbina

Seloua Luste Boulbina: En finir avec l'Afrique.

🗎 En finir avec l'Afrique ou la fin d'un mythe
interview de Seloua Luste Boulbina

Carole Diop and Daniel Sciboz: Learning from Dakar.

In this conversation, Carole Diop and Daniel Sciboz discuss their research projects Learning from Dakar and Dakarmorphose, which revolve around the architectural metamorphosis of the capital of Senegal.

🗎 Dakarmorphose

Judith Rottenburg: Aesthetics of forms and colors in post-independence Senegal.

intervention de Judith Rottenburg

Nathalie Vairac: Performance.

How to remember?

Thierno Seydou Sall et Fehe: Recital.

🗎 D'une rive à l'autre

Leuz Diwan G: Improvisation.

🗎 world music
🗎 musique du monde
How to think continue?

This section is open to the next chapter. What are the pressing issues to deal with? How to put knowledge into action? We dedicate this section to the new generation of artists and researchers who explore daring paths.

Anna Diop Dubois: Recital.

🗎 Sexualité des femmes au Sénégal, les enseignements de la culture populaire
Ana Pi

Choreographic artist and researcher

Anna Diop-Dubois

Designer and researcher

Romain Baudot

Web developper

Baptiste Brun

Enseignant-chercheur en histoire de l'art

Carole Diop

Architecte, fondatrice de la revue Afrikadaa

Daniel Sciboz

Graphiste, enseignant, chercheur

Dulcie Abrahams Altass

Curator and art historian

Émilie Aurat

Graphiste, typographe, enseignante et chercheuse

Eyumane Baoulé Assengone

Porteuse du projet BäTisseurs

Fatima Bintou Rassoul Sy

Commissaire d'exposition et médiatrice culturelle

Felwine Sarr

Economiste, musicien, auteur

Hamedine Kane

Artist and film-maker

Issa Fofana

Researcher and Point Sud coordinator

Joseph Tonda

Writer and professor of sociology and anthropology

Judith Rottenburg

Art historian and researcher

Julien McHardy

Designer, curator, dramaturge, scholar and publisher

Karim Yassin Goessinger

Founding director of Cairo Institute of Liberal Arts and Sciences

Katharina Schramm

Researcher in social anthropology

Katy'taya Catitu Tayassu

Artist-animist

Leuz Diwane G

Auteur, compositeur, interprète

Mamadou Diallo

Research and contributing editor of Chimurenga

Mamadou Khouma Gueye

Réalisateur militant pour l'accès au cinéma

Mamoudou Sy

Historien et enseignant-chercheur

Maria Aparecida Moura

Professor, director of the University of Human Rights

Marie Hélène Pereira

Curator

Marion Louisgrand Sylla

Directrice co-fondatrice de Kër Thiossane

Mourtada Guèye

Architect

Nathalie Muchamad

Artiste vidéaste-plasticienne

Nathalie Vairac

Performeuse et comédienne

Nolan Oswald Dennis

Artist

Ntone Edjabe

Writer, journalist, DJ, founding editor of Chimurenga

Oulimata Gueye

Critique et commissaire d'exposition

Seloua Luste Boulbina

Philosophe

Stéphane Verlet Bottéro

Artist, ecologist, curator

Tabara Korka Ndiaye

Researcher, writer and creative

Thierno Seydou Sall

Poète

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