Deadline: 30 March 2012
Funeral in Africa has never been a mere act of interment marked by ritesof passage, but an important performance on the social stage conditionedby the incident and social perception of death. Like much art, a funeralaims to solve a social problem. It is a creative exercise that complementsthe incident of death and mediates the physical and spiritual realms. AsAfrican communities (both at home and in the Diaspora) become morecomplex, so also have funerals and burial practices become morecomplicated. The attempt by churches, chiefs, and communities to curtailfunerary excesses have yielded very little, as animist and Christianfunerals and al burial practices continue to be marked by great vitalityas against the usual “concealment and modesty” common in purely Westernsocieties. Throughout history, what has distinguished burials and funerals in Africaand the African Diaspora is their heightened artistry and theatricality.There is art in every death, funeral and burial in so far as they involvea renegotiation of reality and the re-invention of being on transcendentalterms. In Africa and parts of the African, these factors are not merelysuggested in the component performances and actions of funerals, but arealso enacted and affirmed in concrete terms through objects and practicesof burial as part of visual culture. In other words, death is the spin-offof a chain of artistic performance/activity that is consummated in therituals associated with funerals and burials. It is the initiator of asombre theatre and artistic performance/creation whose principal goal is adenial of death itself, what Grainger (1998) has aptly described as “therefusal to die”.
In light of this background, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, painter and theorist,wishes to edit a volume on African and African diasporan mortuary arts.The book is titled Celebrating Tragedy: Art and Theatre in African andAfrican Diasporan Funerals and Burial PracticesMethodological JustificationThe book seeks to re-interrogate the phenomena of death, funeral andburial in Africa and the African Diaspora so as to re-inscribe them asagencies of art and theatre in the face of the ever-widening meaning anddefinition of both genres (art and theatre) in postmodern discourses. Toths extent, the book will deal with its theme from three standpoints:
a)It will attempt a definition of art from perspectives that redraw thecontours of organised symbols, performances and rituals as constituents ofart with a view to accommodating the combination of spontaneity andpreconception that surround actions in a funeral/burial arena.
b) It willexamine the meaning and dimensions of theatre from classical African andpostmodern perspectives and locate actions and reactions in the funeraland burial arena (including actions and objects in the grave yard) withinthe bounds of the emergent re-interpretations.
c) It shall look at theinfluence of technology on the artistry and theatricals offunerals/burials in Africa and the Diaspora and also appraise theinfluences of modernity, Christianity and Islam on the content and scopeof such art and theatre. In other words, the book will adopt boththeoretical and historical approaches in the pursuit of its thesis. Thismethodology will result in a composite book that addresses its subjectfrom a clearly eclectic position.SignificanceThe book will break new grounds in the study and definition of art andtheatre in Africa and also re-image African/Diasporan funeral and burialin the face of the changing values and the challenges of the cultural turnbrought about by excessive Americanisation often taken for granted in thename of globalisation. It will re-examine the apparent folly and frivolityassociated with funerals and burials in these parts, especially as seenthrough non-African eyes, and find a place for them within the realms ofart, performance and entertainment. Thus, the book will be useful toartists, anthropologists, theatre artists, sociologists, historians, amongothers.
(a) Art and performance in African funerals.
(b) Poetry and minstrelsy in African funerals.
(c) Introduction and evolution of technology in African funerals.
(d) The politics of African funerals.
(e) Music and dance as creative metaphors in African funerals.
(f) The Art and politics of crying in African funerals.
(g) The poetics of wailing and ululations in African/Diaspora funerals.
(h) The theatricals of rituals in African funerals.
(i) Material ritual objects as art in the burial arena.
(j) The grave yard as exhibition arena: graves as installations.
(k) The role of graphics in funerals/burials.
(l) The symbolisms of acts, actions and material objects in thefuneral/burial arena.
(m) Tradition vs. Modernity in African and Diasporan funerals/burials.
(n) The influence of Christianity, Islam and Westernization on Africanfunerals.
(o) Transition and change in African funerals.
Other related topics within the bounds of the theme are welcome.
TO CONTRIBUTE:
Send an abstract of 200 words to chukrydz@gmail.com before March 30, 2012.
Full papers will be due by July 30, 2012.
All contributions should be in English and should not exceed 7000 words. References should be entered andorganized at the end of the text according to the Chicago Style.
Photographs, where necessary, should be of very high resolution and can beforwarded by email or separately through post in CD or DVD. Locations ofthe photographs in the text should be clearly indicated. Text should beaccompanied by the author’s bio not exceeding 200 words.
The Editor, C. Krydz Ikwuemesi, painter and theorist, studied art atUniversity of Nigeria, Nsukka, graduating in first class in 1992. He isthe founder of the Pan-African Circles of Artists (PACA) and EmeritusPresident of The Art Republic. He is the Director of Afrika Heritage (thePACA Biennale), Overcoming Maps (PACA Study Tour of Africa), and theannual Mmanwu Theatre. Ikwuemesi has researched and published on the artand, mortuary arts and healing enterprise of the Igbo of eastern Nigeriaand is presently engaged in a comparative study of arts of the Igbo andthe Ainu (of Japan). He is a Senior Lecturer at University of Nigeria andwas recently a Visiting Associate Professor at the National Museum ofEthnology, Osaka, Japan. He has also researched Ainu arts and aestheticsas a Japan Foundation Fellow in Hokkaido in 2009.
C. Krydz Ikwuemesi
International Secretary
The Pan-African Circle of Artists
URL: www.panafricanartists.org
Tel: (234)- 7065513950, 08037244485
Skype: chukrydz
CONTACT INFORMATION:
For inquiries: chukrydz@gmail.com
For submissions: chukrydz@gmail.com
Website: www.panafricanartists.org