Keyword : la critique (Criticism)

Anthropometric visions

Simon Njami

The current approach to contemporary African art is on the same order as the anthropometric studies of the first African explorers; it's still at the stage of trying to establish a sort of typology of race and genre.

All the art in ther world

Jean Loup Pivin

Loss of faith

Revue Noire was invited to conferences in New York, Düsseldorf and Lomé to speak and hear about contemporary African art and the future of African museums. We came away from these events both satisfied and then again not. Satisfied, because we'd met new people or seen people we already knew. Dissatisfied, because not much new was said, despite the enormous expenditure of time, money and energy. Since the necessity of such colloquia is not in question, what we seriously need to discuss is the form they should take.

"Image, blowing in the wind" interview with Djibril Diop Mambety

Simon Njami

Djibril Diop Mambety, senegalese film-maker, interviewed by Simon Njami

Simon Njami - To address film in order to discuss photography was a crazy idea. And crazier still was interrogating Djibril Diop Mambety, the filmmaker who's given Africa a new rhythm, a new image, an unexpected point of view, the filmmaker whose fans had given up hope that he'd ever make another film. Almost 20 years have elapsed since his two cult films, Touki Bouki and Badou boy were released. The project he's currently editing, Les Hyènes, is an adaptation of F. Durrenmatt's "La visite de la vieille dame". The interview was not a disappointment. We knew what we were after: a loose discussion of the nature of photography, the meanderings and digressions of a conversation blowing in the wind, because only the wind...

Of Impossible Comment

Jean Loup Pivin

Because the writing was intended primarily literary - as a form - few have understood the challenge that contained the form itself of Revue Noire. As if those who "read" Revue Noire could not read the simple fact that the forms without comments indicated in themselves the challenge of the comment : today we understand better the choices of many curators who need talkative artists to understand their works. Hence, over time, the strengthening of our doubts about the critical capacity of art history to look at contemporary expressions of other worlds. It's not because Western history of Western art was dismissed that it was also denied, unequivocally knowing that our own eyes were those fed by this Western history.

Capernaum of Words

Jean Loup Pivin

Neophytes, we're slow at the time to find the right words in the vocabulary of capharnaüm nickname. We understand over time that we must change our terminology, and we will have difficulty moving from a "African contemporary art magazine", to "magazine for contemporary expressions",