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The Freedom To dream
Is It possIble for publIc art projects to address Issues of socIal and cultural justIce?
Yes, argues Zayd minTy In hIs profIle of doual’art, a cameroonIan publIc art organIsatIon
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riencing unprecedented growth, Douala’s infrastructure is also straining
under the constant flow of rural migration. The city is characterised by
a poorly co-coordinated urban development strategy, and power is not
decentralised to localities, as is common in other countries. Neither the
city council nor the metropolitan council has substantial power. Chronic
shortages in funding, enormous debts, high personnel costs and a lack
of qualified personnel further add to the problems. As a result, the city
is straining to meet its citizen’s needs.
There are mitigating factors: Cameroon has one of Africa’s high-
est literacy rates and its citizenry is dynamically attuned to negotiat-
ing the city. As Douala crumbles in on itself, it also renews itself end-
lessly. The informal nature of the city’s economy and development
engenders, in the words of Abdou Maliq Simone, a “pirate” attitude
to the city, residents increasingly seeking out and managing a wide
diversity of engagements within it, “without long-term or clearly
defined commitments”.
In the context of a state unable to respond adequately to the
city’s needs, doual’art’s savvy and sharp interventions play a critical
role in re-imagining a different city – from the ground up. Doual’art
plays an important role in sparking debates and discussions, which
crucially foster intercultural communication. Simone suggests that
“the key to realising movement within and among [pirate] cities is to
multiply the uses that can be made of resources of all kinds and this
means the ability to put together different combinations of people
with different skills, perspectives, linkages, identities and aspirations.
Such complex and not easily identifiable forms of social organization
constitute a kind of perceptual system, a way of seeing that leads
individuals and groups to put objects and experiences to many, oth-
erwise unanticipated uses.”
In this respect doual’art, with its informal4, insurgent and trans-
gressive approach to practice, is a unique African cultural institution,
one that is able to adjust its resources and networks to the flow of
the city. A non-profit organization driven by a transformative agenda,
doual’art receives almost no funding from the Cameroonian state and
is therefore not burdened by the decay and neglect typical of cultural
institutions in most parts of Africa. Much of its urban development
work is funded by a French non-governmental organisation working in
partnership with the city council, these activities focussed on empow-
ering local communities in neighbourhoods where residents are not
prone to working together. Development committees play a critical
here.5 They take responsibility for collectively identifying and analys-
ing basic problems and needs, implement action plans with clear
indicators of success, engage the city council to find cost-effective
solutions, and develop partnerships that enable funds to be allocated
(or raised). Once all parties validate a project’s basic infrastructure, its
implementation is further monitored on a regular basis.
A critically important feature of development committees is their
provision, at doual’art’s insistence, of a voice to youth, women and
minority ethnic groups. This is a unique innovation, doual’art offer-
ing an important intercultural space for addressing fear, distrust and
prejudice. Equally, it is a space that can and sometimes does ferment
tensions. The fact that doual’art is prepared to take on such risks is
both exhausting for the organisation but equally a source of new
opportunities and a signature of its unique work.
On the back of basic infrastructure projects (water pumps, elec-
tric street lights and bridges), doual’art has attempted to bring an
element of beauty to the city, at the same time animating Douala by
fostering connectivity and dialogue within and between neighbour-
Ananya Roy’s injunction that a shift in urban planning practices
towards a distributive justice that profiles the object of urban plan-
ning – the people themselves – forms part of a growing critique of
dominant modernist paradigms of planning.1 According to Roy, a com-
parative urban studies and international development expert at the
University of California, Berkeley, this dominant paradigm is founded
on an overriding “ideology of space” in which the built environment is
given priority over people and their livelihoods. She suggests we need
to engage with the so-called developing world more pragmatically and
practically – to become involved with the “Politics of Shit”.
Roy’s critique proposes a city that is at once socially and culturally
just, wherein citizens are active players in re-imagining and making
real their own conception of place (rather than having it planned for
them from above without their involvement). Collective or participatory
engagements with planning are seen as particularly necessary. Such
seemingly utopian approaches, which centre on dreaming better cities,
propose that vibrant groupings in civil society can and do create such
outcomes – better cities. It is precisely this sort of approach I hope to
argue is what makes doual’art’s practice special. This Cameroonian
public art organisation’s independently developed practice, which
draws heavily on its work with artists, resonates strongly with a criti-
cal planning that emphasises the need to ensure a re-imagining of city
through collective engagement. Doual’art’s greatest strengths, sug-
gests artist Achille Ka, resides in its ability to allow the residents of a
crumbling “pirate city” the freedom to dream new futures.2
Founded in 1991, doual’art’s premises are located in an old
cinema behind La Pagode, an exquisite 1905 landmark in Bonanjo,
Douala. A small garden cafe leads into espace doual’art where a
small bar and stylish gallery – together with mezzanine offices and
resource space – are located. The venue is used to host exhibitions,
performing art events, conferences, seminars and a residency pro-
gramme. However, the organisation is not bound to its space and has
a longstanding place-based approach to art, promoting public art and
urban interventions in several neighbourhoods, including Bonanjo,
Bessengue-Akwa, Cité de la Paix, and Deïdo, amongst others. Three
project staff oversees the organisation’s two core projects: the art
space, and a host of urban developmental programmes. While the
gallery stages art exhibitions of high quality, the urban development
arm undertakes projects which (formally) have nothing to do with art
and a great deal to do with culture in Douala.
Cameroon is a diverse and complex country with over 200
distinct ethnic and linguistic groups. Douala, in particular, is growing
rapidly due to rural migration and has a population of between three
and four million people.3 Contributing to city’s complex structure and
colonial history, rural migrants settling in the city often draw strength
from traditional relationships and ways of life. Intricate family and
clan relationships therefore persist, people with dissimilar ethnic
or linguistic connections treated with mistrust – as ‘others’ to be
feared. Additionally, Cameroon is a patriarchal society, with women
and youth offered little space for engaging meaningfully in shaping
the public sphere. In this context, social cohesion and real develop-
ment is complex and difficult.
Moreover, under the authoritarian rule of Paul Biya, Cameroon’s
second president, freedom of expression is limited. “[P]ublic memory
and national identity are still weak concepts and arts and culture have a
marginal role,” says Iolanda Pensa of iStrike, a partner organisation to
Doual’art. Public memory is split and fragmented, with nobody in Douala
sharing a common urban identity. Like many major Southern cities expe-
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hoods. Doual’art connects this work to its formal public gallery work
by nurturing artists of quality who share a similar interest in the city.
Through their engagements with neighbourhoods, artists attempt to
bring beauty and foster connectivity amongst residents. The interest
in integrating a place-based way of thinking into its practice has been
central to the organisation’s methodology, which has developed
iteratively over the years through its numerous projects.
The most potent and audacious of doual’art’s projects is a mas-
sive public artwork located at the roundabout at Deido, La nouvelle
liberté. The work of Cameroonian artist Joseph Francis Sumégné,
this ten-metre, seven-ton sculpture pays homage to art, freedom
and urban life. A well-known landmark, this controversial sculpture
seeks to show citizens that the government alone is not responsible
for the city.6 Recent projects have been less dramatic, although no
less potent. This is evident in the extensive work undertaken in the
impoverished neighbourhood of Bessengue Akwa.
Here projects such as Gody Leye’s curation of Bessengue City
(which included James Becket’s community radio station and Jesus
Palamino’s structure, that together formed a work titled Angel of
Bessengue) inspired the neighbourhood and paved the way for art-
ists to work on the development committee’s plans for basic infra-
structure. Artist Alioum Moussa designed handrails for a footbridge,
while architect Danièle Diwouta-Kotto designed a water pump. Both
projects were integral to improving the quality of everyday life in the
neighbourhood, while also promoting greater connectivity within
Bessengue-Akwa. The process of developing the projects helped to
actively transcend ethnic divisions by invigorating public discourse
around the inherent transformative possibilities of culture for urban
change. The water pump, for example, recognises that the carrying
of water is difficult and often a women’s job. The architect solution:
a space for women to gather, talk and rest.
Doual’art believes that by using art and culture to develop its
urban context, it can make its citizens aware of their resources,
potentialities and aspirations. By giving residents a sense of agency,
by allowing citizens to realise their needs and aspirations (while dis-
playing an audacious attitude), doual’art has created the necessary
space for Douala’s residents to negotiate their future. Moreover,
the organisation’s use of culture to address specific urban develop-
ment needs further shows that an artistic response can successfully
address issues of social and cultural justice. Significantly, by under-
standing Douala’s history, its informal nature, its network of complex
relationships; and by addressing the real needs and aspirations of
the city’s diverse communities, doual’art’s urban cultural practice has
enabled this West African city to speak for itself.
Zayd Minty is a PhD student at the University of Cape Town’s Department
of Environmental and Geographical Sciences and works for the Cape Town
Partnership on its Creative Cape Town strategy
Notes:
1. Ananya Roy, ‘Urban Informality: Toward and epistemology of Planning’. Journal of
Planning Association, 2007, Vol. 71(2), pp.147–158
2. Abdou Maliq Simone, ‘Pirate Towns: Reworking Social and Symbolic
Infrastructures in Johannesburg and Douala’, Urban Studies, 2006, Vol. 43(2),
pp.357–370
3. The lack of accurate data is the result of figures from the last census not having
been made public.
4. Christian Hannussek, talking about African cultural “platforms”, suggests that in
describing organisations like Doual’art as “informal” doesn’t mean to imply that they
do not have form, just that “they don’t correspond to the forms of our [Western
European] public infrastructure that has been moulded by bourgeois society”. See
Hannussek, ‘Platform profiles: Public forums for contemporary art in Africa, Marjorie
Jongbloed (ed.) Entangled: Approaching contemporary African artists (Hannover:
Volkswagen Foundation, 2006), pp.62–95
5. Development committees are usually set up with the support of a local neighbour-
hood. Chiefs serve as the “door” to the community. The Development committee is
usually a democratic structure of some sorts that involves a representative board elect-
ed through a community process that meets regularly as a team and with the public.
6. See Dominique Malaquais, ‘Quelle Liberte: Art Beauty and the Grammars of
Resistance in Douala’, Sarah Nuttall (ed.), Beautiful Ugly (Durham and London: Duke
University Press, 2006), pp.122-163
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