Tracing a lineage of radical pedagogical experimentation in Africa, the School of Mutants reflect on several years of polyphonic practice and interdisciplinary inquiry. A fellowship from the Nieuwe Instituut offered the collective an opportunity for repose; here, artist Lou Mo shares a repository of found wisdom.
I. A School On the Go
In 2018, Hamedine Kane and Stéphane Verlet Bottéro were both artists-in-residence in Dakar. Together, they would discover the site of the University of African Future on the outskirts of the capital, in Diamniadio. It was like finding a mirage, these unfinished but grandiose buildings, with their dark and empty window spaces staring out like hollow eyes, speaking of faltering political promises intertwined with metamorphosing dreams of Pan-Africanism. This unrealised project, then already in ruins, became the beginning of an ongoing collective inquiry on pedagogy and higher education in Senegal.
In nearby Sébikotane, they would visit the ruins of École Normale William Ponty, a colonial school destined to train administrators for France from all over Francophone West Africa. The Ponty school is a very different kind of ruin, imbued with oedipal spirits, as native sons themselvesbecame fathers of their own nations— although sometimes they did not come back to tie up all the loose ends.
The University of Mutants – founded in the late 1970s – lay at the doors of Dakar on Gorée island. There, Léopold Sédar Senghor tried to turn the page on Transatlantic trade, into a future of collaboration, solidarity, and change, through scholarly and cultural exchange. This institution has also run its course, its empty building now reoccupied and given a new life by its current inhabitants. The few leftover dossiers bear witness to this post-independence experimentation.
Like Joseph Ki-Zerbo says, muter ou périr.
Today, the University of African Future — initiated as a Panafrican promise and one of the seven wonders of Dakar by former Senegalese President Abdoulaye Wade in the early 2000s — has disappeared entirely, and Diamniadio given over to new dreams of a smart city and a petrol institution. Ponty and the University of Mutants still stand as reminders of ideas on imaginaries, pedagogical possibilities, and endeavours towards a different future.
With each discussion, each trial, activated by exhibitions and public events, as we try to learn to occupy different spaces, find new methodologies, we pick up a piece here and there.
There are so many questions. How to mutate? What to learn? What future is possible? Who are our allies? What should we do? There is urgency to this inquiry, and we, the mutants, are the carriers of a message in pieces. Along the way, with each discussion, each trial, activated by exhibitions and public events, as we try to learn to occupy different spaces, find new methodologies, we pick up a piece here and there. This message is also a diffused message, diffracted through the past and the future, gleaned from the deeds, speeches, and writings of those who could have been our companions.
As The School of Mutants emerged and continues to exist as a collective, we have also chosen the path of collective work, of being one and multiple at the same time. This is another possibly unexpected decision, but it has a profound impact on each of the mutants, our message, and our work. In this moment of abyss through a prolonged and aggravating crisis, when values deemed universal (DEI and the value of human life in Palestine to name but a couple) are suddenly retracted and rolling on the reverse, the urgency of our exploration and the importance of finding companions on the way seems ever more pressing.
II. A Fellowship Mapped in Time and Space
From 2021 to 2022, in the midst of the chaos brought by the Covid-19 pandemic — itself a mutant — the collective undertook a fellowship residency with the Nieuwe Instituut. It was an uncanny experience combining both headspace and time spent together — albeit often across great distances — to develop a discursive space as there was no pending deadline to make a new installation appear. We had time to go down the rabbit hole with some research projects and initiate other discussions — yet the entire experience was remote, each in their own bubble. The collective formed a relationship with the Instituut and the other fellows, and these friendships continue.
It was also a time of repose and understanding difference. In our collective, we come from different areas of the world: different trajectories, different heritages and different art practices. The mutants vary a great deal in age, language, hometown, education, gender, sexual orientation, life experiences, skin colour, and much more. In our daily lives, we are artists, curators, researchers, filmmakers, activists, teachers, but also nomads, parents, writers, readers, thinkers, nature lovers, immigrants, gig workers, explorers and beyond. All these differences mix to create complementarity that imbues us with great energy, synergy and momentum to mutate into something more than ourselves: a collective.
At that time, the collective was still a toddler, gradually finding its feet, still to grow into new phases. With a few exhibitions and events behind us, some took on new interests and projects that led them to depart on different paths, and others joined along the way. It was also dynamic, acquiring and saying goodbye to members.
What does research mean for us? What does it mean to work with others respectfully when our goals are so different? Are we the objects or subjects of this inquiry?
The collective practice developed a special spatial and temporal quality, because we had to learn how to work as a multiple when each of us have already developed very different and sometimes affirmed identities and practices. It was fun to have this different interval to ponder important questions in company. What does research mean for us? What does it mean to work with others respectfully when our goals are so different? Are we the objects or subjects of this inquiry? What are the findings we want to share? Where do we take it from there? The journey was also about finding stories and pursuing inquiries, with each other and in the companionship of many who were there before us. We learned from the cohort who has accepted us with generosity and trust.
III. Study Time, Work Time and Play Time
We enjoy using shortschedules and light means to produce very different results each time, like rapid fire. The collective is a platform, and the significance of a platform is centred on usage — members or groups of members can use it to research or create a particular work project, without necessarily requiring everyone being tied up in a full-on, full-time horizontal structure, where all decisions are based on consensus and lengthy discussions. The agility and organic response brings both flexibility and challenges. We may not always all agree, but that is also part of artistic collaborations. You learn from what is outside of your scope. What we do share is our hybrid heritage and nomadic becomings. Maybe that’s what mutation is about.
What we do share is our hybrid heritage and nomadic becomings. Maybe that’s what mutation is about
Our work has also evolved in mutation as we work together, bringing ideas to life through this rhizomatic methodology. In the beginning, our inquiries departed from schools and pedagogy, the lands that their institutional embodiments stand on, the futures and promises, kept or unkept. This prompted us to explore and inhabit other related venues, near and far. For example, the work we presented at the 14th Dakar Biennale was situated within the Théodore Monod - IFAN Museum, an institution with a complex colonial and post-colonial history and one which is highly involved in the discussion around restitutions and the future of collections. We brought into the museum everyday objects and scriptures that circulate on Dakar’s markets. These assemblages are an amplification of a vast ensemble of precolonial practices, materiality, and semiotics that mutated, adapted, and eventually resisted the imperial ordering of sign, but found refuge in material cultures hidden away from institutionalised knowledge spaces.
In Berlin, we re-enacted a scene from Abderrahmane Sissako’s 2006 film Bamako, which is itself a mise en scène of a trial in the courtyard of Sissako’s childhood home, in the capital of Mali. The International Monetary Fund is put on trial by the African civil society. In a colourful and playful scene recreation guarded by empty, giant, and mutated black court robes, every visitor becomes a player in the scene. This work, All Fragments of the Word Will Come Back Here to Mend Each Other, is a double inquiry, both about the role of institutions and the experiment of third-worldism. Even if an institution is to be judged, what does this verdict do to restitute the damage done? It was exciting to insert our presence and initiate a reflection about the importance of epistemic justice and mutating futures, into such a symbolic and loaded western museum like the Akademie der Künste.It is a matter of balance between being in and out; more specifically, to bring something from the outside into the western institutional system without forgetting to keep building and showing outside of this realm.
It is a matter of balance between being in and out; more specifically, to bring something from the outside into the western institutional system without forgetting to keep building and showing outside of this realm.
At the autostrada biennial in Kosovo, we started working with the idea that play time is study time through a mobile installation that can be activated outside of the exhibition space, which was itself atypical in Kosovo. In the last couple of years, we do not feel that we have exhausted the explorations on having fun and being more mobile, hence the introduction of the library-like structures for Playtime in Merano, Glasgow, and more. The installation always takes on a new life, in a different context and with a different audience. The exploration of pedagogical solutions towards a better future remains an important topic for our collective, though it has also gradually morphed and made room for other ideas and formal trials to what our collective practice may become.
Our practice has become less serious and more expansive, and we learn along our way. It is interesting to note that the original set of books we used to use in our exhibitions and activities is not the set of books we have now: some things get lost, others are added by visitors, and we ourselves keep discovering. Sometimes, inclusion is as simple as giving space to others to use, stay, criticise or modify your work. This generosity and loss of control is very important. We hope that visitors have as much fun discovering and spending time with our works as we do making them, in full enjoyment of the company of our fellow mutants. Our practice emerges from a need to think beyond commodifiable art objects, so we fight against commodifiable art practices into our own collective practice too. That is why we strongly encourage different forms of re-use, for our works to be modified and adapted for other local usages.
IV. Seeds of Resistance, Seeds of Hope, and Strategies for a Collective Future
“It matters what stories we tell, to tell other stories of the future,” curator and educator Oulimata Gueye wrote. This was a part of the curatorial statement from the University of African Futures exhibition, which she curated in Nantes in 2021, featuring her personal research and collaboration within the collective. The School of Mutants is a collective voice taking inspiration from many places across geographical and temporal spans; it is in the company of the like-minded from the past and present that we hope to speak to the future, sowing seeds of resistance and hope. We look at Africa, Asia, the Americas, the Caribbeans, but not only these; we are also concerned about current struggles and problems such as contemporary colonialism.
We think there is greater awareness and need to call out the gatekeepers and normative forces in the art world; more responsibility to introduce more inclusive or radical works.
After a few years of practice, it is a good time to think about what messages we want to spread going forward. We think there is greater awareness and need to call out the gatekeepers and normative forces in the art world; more responsibility to introduce more inclusive or radical works. But the world is not perfect. Every system has dominant players, and so far we play within the system. We also want to continue amplifying our understanding of the world through more of its nooks and crannies, spanning broader fields. In an age of uncertainty, companionship is even more important. The time to think and to act together is now.
We’ve always been very keen on long installation titles and quotes, which are seeds of sorts, so here are a few we’d share with you:
“Colonialism is not a thinking machine, nor a body endowed with reasoning faculties. It is violence in its natural state, and it will only yield when confronted with greater violence.” ― Frantz Fanon
“I would simply add that it would be pointless to recognise and denounce [the injustices and arbitrariness of the colonial system] if action is not taken to put an end to it.” — Ruben Um Nyobè
“Stumbling across the truth isn’t the same as making things up.” ― Octavia Butler
“Nothing happens in the “real” world unless it first happens in the images in our heads.” ― Gloria Anzaldúa
“Europe is not my center. Why be a sunflower and turn towards the sun? I myself am the sun.” — Ousmane Sembène
“In our world, divide and conquer must become define and empower.” — Audre Lorde
“Act in your place, think with the world.” ― Édouard Glissant
Bios
Lou Mo is a Chinese Canadian artist and curator. Her research is focused on modern and contemporary Afro-Asian connections and Third World artists’ creative practices. She is also interested in issues of diaspora, identity, and perception in relation to post-colonial history and the centre-periphery model. As a member of the School of Mutants collective, her works have been exhibited in venues such as the 12th Taipei Biennial, Centre Pompidou Metz, the 12th Berlin Biennial and Glasgow International.
The School of Mutants is a collaborative platform for art and research initiated in Dakar, Senegal, in 2018 by Hamedine Kane and Stéphane Verlet Bottéro. Its starting point is an inquiry into the role of universities, public school projects, and academic utopia in post-independence processes of nation-building in Senegal and West Africa; it is informed by wider transnational networks such as the Non-Aligned Movement, Afro-Asianism, and Third-Worldism. A nomadic project that aims to mobilise spaces for the production, transmission, and pluralisation of knowledge in a nonhierarchical manner, The School of Mutants engages with sociocultural, ecological, and aesthetic mutations of the real.
