Live Biennale: An Evening With Nathalie Mba Bikoro and Willem Wilhelmus

As a part of LIVE’s 2015 performance art program, Nathalie Mba Bikoro (Future Monuments, Gabon) and Willem Wilhelmus (Mother Tongue Festival, Finland) gave a talk on their curatorial practices and discussed transcultural strategies in contemporary art production. Drawing from their experiences of facilitating international art exchanges in Finland, Gabon, and Germany, Bikoro and Wilhelmus addressed questions such as:•Working internationally, how can curators facilitate meaningful cultural exchanges? What constitutes a meaningful cultural exchange?•What possible intersections and alliances may be found through addressing transcultural issues through art practices?•What are some of the demands and particularities specific to the local contexts in which you have organized?•Is it possible for an artist from “away” to make work that adequately addresses regional concerns?•What strategies have you encountered or developed that counterpoint or exist outside of Western art traditions?•How may we sustain healthy regional and international artistic ecologies?Nathalie Mba Bikoro is a visual artist, educator, activist, and director of the DNA Arts Foundation (Gabon) and Art Lab (London). She has exhibited and performed internationally, receiving numerous awards including the National Finnish Presentation Award for Best Performance Artist (2010) and two international awards for Best Artist in Senegal during the Dak’Art Biennale (2012). Her work has been featured widely in print and media, including on Al¬Jazeera and the BBC documentary Who Are You Calling an African Artist?Bikoro’s work and practice uses performance, printmaking, media, installation, and social encounters to address ecology, colonialism, social struggle, and personal emancipation. During the 2009 Gabonese elections, Bikoro devised an experiment called the Squat Museum as a means for local communities to imagine ways towards self-¬sustainability. The project was a travelling gallery space that visited neighborhoods and villages in and around Libreville, Bitam, and Omboué, exhibiting in an old car and trailer and on a floating pirogue boat. The programs presented a series of contemporary performances, dialogues, sculptural re-enactments, and activities that re¬interpreted the role of Griot storytelling and the relations between people and foods through drawing, games, video and photography.Willem Wilhelmus is not an artist. He didn't study arts in the first place, something that becomes quite obvious when you try to talk with him about his work: it will end in smiles and silence. His preference for simple materials (if any) fits into this picture. Instead of focusing on creating an elaborate landscape for his actions he just leans on his indeed undeniable presence. We have to admit that some of the actions from his package of diverse works did have a stunning if not mesmerizing effect on his audience, but to call that art.