Key concepts: Exchange of culture VS cultural exchange, virtual exchange, relational empathy, heritage sites (Freedom Park, Lagos, Nigeria).
The aim of this project is to encourage culture appreciation and exchange of intangible cultural heritage [dance traditional songs /chants and costume] as a vehicle for exploring past and existing cultural similarities across continents; between Nigeria, Hungary, and many more ‘distant’ countries. With a goal to emphasise similarities not diversity, in the hopes of developing relational empathy towards peace building.
Being a Nigerian and having lived and experienced traditional and everyday practices of Hungarian people in the city of Szeged for ten months, I found that other than our apparent differences in skin colour ( I am black and they are white) and accents, we are not as different from one another as we would like to believe. 'We' being Nigerians like myself, even though I am tempted to generalise a bit and include most of the African continent since we obviously share a lot in common (save for the north of Africa which I know very little of), and Hungarian people alike.
For nearly four years of my career as an artist and creative entrepreneur, I have craved for the art space to shift from culture appropriation to culture appreciation. To be honest I have grown weary of reading and hearing about culture appropriation in most content that discuss cultural heritage and practices, and somehow the gist leads back to colonisation. I always wondered why viewing someone else do or wear your own thing was viewed as appropriation, then I gained an education in the field of anthropology and ethnography and in recent years understood that context and motive are two very powerful terms when discussing about culture and it's practices. I realised that in order for there to be a shift from appropriation to appreciation, someone has to do something, it has to start from the owner. If you want people to appreciate your culture and learn about it right so that the practise is not taken out of context or used with wrong motives, then you have got to show it. Not necessarily teach it, but you have to show it , be proud of it and teach only what needs to be learnt or tell only what needs to be known.
Whether we like it or not, our dances, songs, traditional attires and accessories are being consumed by others daily. Some out of genuine love and interest/curiosity, others for profit, exploitation and whole bunch of other things, all owing to an ongoing exchange thanks to technology and social media, so it is by default inevitable. colleague of mine once talked about how social media was meant to be an equaliser for people of diverse cultures to be able to properly represent themselves, but then 'it' turns into a trend or a hashtag (#), being made popular by some influencer who would then have pseudo rights/ownership over this 'thing' . 'it' and 'thing' being a traditional dance, song, chant, or even a clip/footage of a rare performance of heritage being done in its original context.
A photo showing Temi Ami-Williams (Nigerian), Soumya Sharma (Indian), Joan Mbabazi (Ugandan) , Daniel Nii Tettei-Tetteh (Ghanaian), Lucia Rua Bustamante (Peruvian) and Marie N'Diaye (French) after a multi cultural dance performance at the university of Szeged in Hungary.
Having looked at the definition of cultural exchange (see pdf attached below for formal research and references) particularly from the tangible visual arts perspective even in recent times, and the definition of exchange of culture, I maintain that these concepts when employed on human beings (being tangible still) outside of artefacts do not satisfy the use of the term ‘exchange’ with regards to intangible cultural heritage. However, if I had to choose which of the terminologies best describes what this project is about, I would rather use ‘exchange of culture’ as opposed to ‘cultural exchange’ but flip it from being dominantly one-sided to what I believe to be the opposite of colonisation itself, where culture is not appropriated, exploited, or stolen, but intentionally gifted and received in the right spirit of respect for the practice and acknowledgment for the position of authority of the tradition bearers, and most importantly reciprocity occurs so that it becomes a give-and-give situation, that is the true definition of exchange from my perspective.
A video of Temi sharing one of her traditional dances (Bata) with her international classmates in Hungary, 2022.
How close can I feel or get to you without sharing physical space?
What is the plan for the project?
I plan to gather groups of performers in both Hungary and Nigeria, then get them acquainted with one another virtually, through zoom and other kinds of social media. The idea is to get each group to learn;
- A traditional dance and a song/chant, from the group in the other country, (to test similarities from the past).
- A common contemporary dance, song/chant (to show similarities of the present).
- Shoot videos of each group performing the traditional culture of the other group in their traditional attire.
- Make a documentary film of the whole exchange process of learning online.
- Conduct photo shoots of each group in the traditional attire of the other group.
How will this be displayed?
- In each of the countries, alternative gallery spaces will be created in heritage sites. While I am yet to decide on where in Hungary, although it will be in Budapest, for Nigeria it will be at Freedom Park Lagos.
-The exhibition will have photos hung up, screens playing the documentary film, Traditional costumes displayed on mannequins painted in different skin tones and finally, to create the illusion of dancing bodies in the present, holograms of the dancers will be used to achieve this.
A clip of Natasa Chanta-Martin from Athens, Greece, singing a Yoruba folk song from Nigeria to Temi Ami-Williams, 2022.
How much of ourselves can we see in other people of different backgrounds and what kinds of emotions do they evoke from us?
One of the project's aims is to evoke relational empathy amongst people from different parts of the world who will participate in this exchange of culture. Through cultural appreciation, one can learn to be more empathetic to others, and one can learn that we have so much in common as a human race, more than we would even like to believe we are alike. It is difficult to imagine that someone on the other side of the world would have cultural practices like yours, this is what this project aims to pull out, these subtle yet powerful similarities through dance, music, chants, and costume/regalia.
