2021-2022 Existing Otherwise

EXISTING OTHERWISE

THE FUTURE OF COEXISTENCE

14 January – 30 April 2022

Exhibition and re-schooling programme

THE SAVANNAH CENTRE FOR CONTEMPORARY ART (SCCA), Tamale, RED CLAY, and NKRUMAH VOLI-NI, Tamale, Ghana

The one-year-long art project started in Berlin in 2021 and culminates in an international final exhibition at Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA) in Tamale, Ghana, opening in January 2022. Based on the idea that we do not want to return to any "normality" before the crisis, the artists Isabel Lewis (The Institute for Embodied Creative Practices, Callie’s, Berlin) and Ibrahim Mahama (Savanah Centre for Contemporary Art/ SCCA, Tamale) have been invited to co-curate and co-host the project. Whereas Lewis' performances, hostings, and choreographies transform our relation and idea of being together in order to help us to gain more intimacy among each other, Mahama rethinks our relation with material and history. The curatorial team have been working among all invited artists to form a vision of how we can exist otherwise, materially and relationally.

with
Ana Alenso (VZ), Ato Jackson (GH), Bernard Akoi-Jackson (GH), Cecilia Vicuña (CL), Eli Cortiñas (ES), Emily Hunt (AU), Ernest Sackitey (GH), Hannah Toticki(DK), Jem Bendell (GB), Rosemary Esinam Damalie (GH), Rüzgâr Buşki (TR), Sarah Ama Duah (DE), Sandra Kyeraa (GH), Selom Kudjie (GH), Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn (TH), Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (GH)

Artistic Director of Existing Otherwise & Galerie Wedding, Berlin, Germany
Solvej Helweg Ovesen
Co-curator, founder SCCA, Tamale, Ghana
Ibrahim Mahama
Curatorial advisor, founder The Institute of Embodied Creative Practises, Berlin, Germany
Isabel Lewis

Existing Otherwise – For a New Politics of the Senses
is funded by the German Federal Cultural Foundation, kindly supported by the DAAD Artists-in- Berlin Program with Funds of the Federal foreign Office and executed and directed by XO Curatorial Projects (Kathrin Pohlmann & Solvej Helweg Ovesen) in close collaboration with Galerie Wedding – Space for Contemporary Art, Berlin, The Institute for Embodied Creative Practices, Berlin and Savannah Centre for Contemporary Art (SCCA), Tamale.

  • Red Clay Studio Site. Photo Ibrahim Mahama

    14 January – 30 April 2022

    at RED CLAY, Tamale, Ghana

    14 January 2022

    5 PM Opening of the Exhibition with

    Cecilia Vicuña (CL), Eli Cortiñas (ES), Sandra Kyeraa (GH), Sarah Ama Duah (DE), Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn (TH), Tracy Naa Koshie Thompson (GH)

    7 PM Performance by Sarah Ama Duah (DE)

    8 PM Public Film Programme with Cecilia Vicuña (CL), Madeline Anderson (US), Martine Syms (US), Sikarnt Skoolisariyaporn (TH)

    Red Clay is a complex of studios. These are multi-purpose spaces for exhibitions, meetings, art talks, film screenings, workshops, and more. There are also dedicated spaces for a library, a cinema hall and a decommissioned aircraft serving as a site for teaching and learning purposes. The building also includes an outdoor atrium with a “pool of ideas” in the middle, which is called The Parliament of Ghosts. Here historical and contemporary humanist ideas are negotiated and challenged in talks and performances.

  • Nkrumah Voli-ni. Photo courtsey Nkrumah Voli-ni

    20 January – 30 April 2022

    at NKRUMAH VOLI-NI, Tamale, Ghana

    20 January 2022

    3 - 5 PM A tour and course on Resource Curse with Ana Alenso (VZ)

    5 PM Opening of the Exhibition with

    Ana Alenso (VZ)

    Nkrumah Voli-ni as a silo building is one of the many independence projects initiated by the first President of Ghana, Dr Kwame Nkrumah, before his overthrow in 1966. The building was originally intended to be a granary and storage for karité nuts, but abandoned after the overthrow of Nkrumah. The now renovated facility is converted into an exhibition venue for science and culture.

  • SCCA Tamale. Photo courtesy SCCA Tamale

    21 January – 30 April 2022

    at SCCA TAMALE, Ghana

    21 January 2022

    5 PM Opening of the Exhibition with

    Ato Jackson (GH), Bernard Akoi-Jackson (GH), Eli Cortiñas (ES), Emily Hunt (AU), Ernest Sackitey (GH), Hannah Toticki (DK), Jem Bendell (GB), Rosemary Esinam Damalie (GH), Rüzgâr Buşki (TR), Sandra Kyeraa (GH), Selom Kudjie (GH)

    5 PM Procession “Spectrum of All-eyes” from Tamale centre to SCCA with Ernest Sakitey

    SCCA Tamale is a monumental contemporary art center focusing on exhibition creation, research, publication and documentation of practices relevant to socio economic and ecological developments of the 21st and 20th centuries. It is also a cultural repository and residency space for artists that aims to build a community with other artists and curators to share and learn from each other.

The Future of Coexistence

Red Clay

Nkrumah Voli-ni

SCCA Tamale

Re-Schoolings & Performances

Re-Schooling programme

From Germany to Ghana

Re-Schooling Lecture by Solvej Helweg Ovesen within the framework of Existing Otherwise – For a New Politics of the Senses

Camera & Editing: Dafne Narvaez Berlfein