More about Digital Communities prize…

The “Digital Communities” category focuses on the wide-ranging social and artistic impact of the Internet technology as well as on the latest developments in social software, user generated content, mobile communications, mash-ups and location based services. Digital Communities” focuses on innovation in relation to human coexistence. Its main goals lie in first, bridging the geographical as well as the genderbased digital divide and second, bridging across cultural conflicts and third, supporting cultural diversity and freedom of artistic expression. Digital Communities sheds light on the political and artistic potential of digital and networked systems. As such, “Digital Communities” selects a broad range of projects, applications, artworks, initiatives and phenomena around which social and artistic innovation is taking place, as it were, in real time. Consideration is given to projects dealing with the concept of “Smart City” and especially of “Smart Citizen”, going beyond the purely technological view of a Smart City and focussing on the societal and participatory processes.

We hope to continue to inspire more people in our continent to pursue the creative arts and participate in the digital space. Check out Ars Electronica and please bookmark the site and submit your entries in the future!

Cristina De Middel joined forces with Ubicuo Studio, an app publishing house responsible for the first published photobook for iPad in Spain (November, 2011), to make The Afronauts available on iPad and iPhone. They have made not only an ‘adaptation’ of the book, but a really transportation of it. The interactivity between the book itself and the reader has been rethought and the book for iPad and iPhone has different ways of being read. Cristina De Middel wants the reader to interact with her photobook The Afronauts.

We’ve wanted to create an experience for the user, recreating an atmosphere. When the book starts the user will have to navigate and explore the sky looking for something that he/she doesn’t know. Cristina De Middel loves to play with her ‘readers’ and ‘spectators’ and she has found that an ideal format to do so is creating an app photobook with Ubicuo Studio.

We love the app, take a look and purchase it here… For iPad, for iPhone

With the overall theme being legacy, this story was inspired by vintage african portraits. Taking reference from traditional dress, skincare rituals, markings and overall poise and elegance these women carries as well as the stories they told and communities they held. We wanted to bring it into the modern day where we ask the question what can we learn from these women with their heads held high and so the concept of illustrating their stories with pop art elements surrounding them in turn becomes them. Are we losing track of where we come from or does where we come from make us who we are?

Photographer, Nakeya Brown, knows just how to catch your eye with a simple image of just a single woman of color. But in these series of images in The Refutation of “Good Hair”, Nakeya gives us a simple but powerful message – that African hair is good…actually good enough to eat. Most of the images in the project feature a Black woman eating a handful of African hair. Nakeya’s words below reveal her inspiration for the project. It’s truly a pleasure to see her interpretation of beauty in such vivid images.

“Ideas take a long time to be born. They take a long time to gestate. They take a long time to come into the world.” I would put my inspiration behind this series in that context. The Refutation of “Good Hair” is based off of my experience dealing with the way hair defines beauty within the African-American populace. I specifically focus on the phrase “good hair” as it was a term I’d use and heard others use to describe “beautiful” and “desirable” hair when speaking about a woman of color. This series is my examination of that.”

Find out more about Nakeya and this project on her website here.

„Watch out she is a witch!“ is an accusation that means a hard lot for the lives of thousands of women in Africa, often it is a death sentence. This very day there are still cruel witch hunts in Sub-Saharan Africa. Partly caused by the belief in witchcraft that remains strong in this region. But accusations of witchcraft are frequently also a consequence of poverty that makes certain women a burden for their family or creates jealousy and disputes. In order to get rid of them it is claimed that they had caused sickness, arguments and other problems. They are branded as witches and expelled-chased, tortured and many of them even murdered. Witches in Exile is based on the photographer ́s intention to give the women back their individual identity, dignity and pride.

This  subject is also the topic of the film Witches of Gambaga by Yaba Badoe which was introduced at Afrikamera 2012.

Below a few pictures of the exhibition:

PINTER & MILCH

Auguststraße 49,
10119 Berlin, Germany

Opening hours: Wednesday-Saturday, 2-6 pm and by appointment

About Ann-Christine Woehrl:

Born in 1975, she grew in Germany and France. Sshe studied photography in Paris and worked as an assistant to David C. Turnley, as a lab assistant to Reza and did an internship at Magnum Photos Paris. For the artist photography is a way to meet “other worlds and realities.” In addition to artistic expression, she wants her work to raise awareness for injustice and bring about change-even very little change. She lives and works in Munich.

There are as many Africas as there are people perceiving « that thing » called Africa. Revised, corrected and augmented, this second edition of At The Heart Of Me is the visual and written first witness account of a young man who aspires to attain the African Dream. And what is the African Dream ? The African Dream is the African version of the Human Dream.

At The Heart Of Me can be considered the logbook of a contemporary voyager, as he sails through the days and nights, in attainment of the dream of dreams.

There are two interwoven books within At The Heart Of Me. One is a collection of colorful photo series painting the portrait of a vibrant world and the other is an ensemble of anecdotes and insights experienced over the distance travelled. Together, they constitute the trail left behind by a joyful journeyman.

This book will serve Africa and its lovers, its thinkers, its tourists, its visionaries, its dreamers, its builders, its explorers and its questioners.

You can purchase the book at amazon.

My Mother’s Songs, is set in an African landscape that examines inter-generational trauma. The film depicts a collection of traumatic experiences through the eyes of several young women desperately trying to make sense of their existence. This theme is connected to Africa’s history of brutal colonialism, shattered dreams from independence, and chronic poverty. The second trailer is particularly harrowing as a child tells a story of a parent’s murderous rejection. Watch to the end.

Tanzanian writer and director Erick Msumanje was recently awarded the highly-competitive Princess Grace Award for filmmaking. Msumanje, positions his film making to “push the boundaries of cinematography, aesthetics, and storytelling.”

Recent work includes The Journey which examines violence, fear and racism from the perspective of a little boy in search of something that could potentially change himself and those around him and a short documentary film titled The Devil’s House, which is about a mysterious young man who takes a journey clouded in blurred memory, displacement, and trauma.

Join writer and director Erick Msumanje for the first screening of My Mother’s Songs, at Hampshire College which will serve as his Division III (senior thesis) premiere.

APRIL 6, 2013, 7:00 PM
Hampshire College (Jerome Liebling Center for Film, Photography, and Video)

Bill Brand Screening Room (room 120)

Few regions remain as photographically misrepresented as Africa, but this six-part series profiles the continent’s latest generation of photographers, who are taking back control of their image with a more nuanced portrayal.

As Kenyan fashion photographer Barbara Minishi says, “Don’t look at Africa and think one thing. How come this view of Africa is always the soldier or the starving child? ”

The six episodes are:

1. Invisible Borders (22 April 2013)

Nigerian Emeka Okereke is the founder of Invisible Borders, an annual photographic project that takes African artists on a road trip across the continent. Invisible Borders follows Emeka and fellow Nigerian photographer Lilian Novo on the most recent journey, from Nigeria through Cameroon and Gabon. Emeka says, “Everywhere we go in Africa, we see our generation talking about doing things for themselves. This is the time to actually go in and experiment.” Watch and embed the promo for Invisible Borders:

2. The Red Dress (29 April 2013)

Barbara Minishi is a leading fashion photographer in Kenya. For her latest project, Barbara swapped skinny models for normal people, photographing a wide range of women all wearing the same red dress, as a symbol of unity and national identity in the aftermath of the 2007 post-election violence in which more than 1 000 Kenyans were killed.

3. George Osodi (6 May 2013)
Nigerian George Osodi is a former Fuji African Photographer of The Year Award winner who’s also been shortlisted at the SonyWorld Photography Awards. He’s renowned for his hauntingly beautiful pictures of the oil devastation in the Niger delta.  “I think it’s my responsibility as the man with the camera to find a way to represent this [situation], so that it becomes appealing to whoever sees it. At first sight you’re like, ‘What a beauty,’ but then behind it is a huge Armageddon.” He hopes his latest project, in which he photographs Nigeria’s traditional monarchs, can offer a more positive way forward.

4. Neo Ntsoma (13 May 2013)
South African Neo Ntsoma is the first woman recipient of the CNN African Journalist Award for photography. She revisits DJ Cleo and the stars of South Africa’s new democratic dawn, to take new portraits and discover the effects of 20 years of freedom. Neo moved away from news because she didn’t want to reinforce African stereotypes. “My dream was to be an advertising photographer and take pictures of beautiful things. Black people feeling good about themselves, dressed well. But it was a picture that the apartheid regime didn’t want to show to the world. They wanted to paint black people as barbarians.”

5. Congolese Dreams (20 May 2013)
Executive produced by Viva Riva director Djo Munga, Congolese Dreams follows photographer Baudouin Mouanda as he explores the idea of marriage in Congo. The Congolese photographer burst onto the global photographic scene with his colorful photographs of Brazzaville members of SAPE (The Society of Tastemakers and Elegant People). As Baudoin says, “Africa will surprise everyone. There are lots of images of war, so I want to show another image of Africa.”

6. Mario Macilau (27 May 2013)