The ArtBox Digital network
More than an event, ArtBox Digital is a network of multidisciplinary and international professionals. It is a space from which we intend to produce knowledge and reflection about the material conditions in which cultural production and artistic creation take place as a phenomenon immersed in a geopolitically determined economic, historical, political and social context.
The digital revolution of the 21st century is a phenomenon that, far from being universal, morphed depending on the context in which it develops. The experience of digital technology from the global south, especially in Africa and Latin America, has particularities that are vital to take into account, especially when we talk about cultural practices and artistic production in the digital arts.
The ArtBox Digital network responds to the need to create new dialogues capable of upsetting the physical and immaterial borders inherited from the economic and political models of the last century.
What is the ArtBox Digital Award?
The ArtBox Digital Award is a device to support digital creation in Africa and Latin America, which offers award-winning artists the opportunity to carry out their creative project in an international space, surrounded by an experienced and multidisciplinary team.
Conceived as a workshop-laboratory, the residence of creation is combined with a series of events around the artist and his project (workshops with local and international artists, meetings, conferences), allowing him to explore new ways of working and expand his network at the level international.
At the end of the residency, the work done is presented to the local public in coordination with the host space.
Subsequently, the work carried out, as well as the finalist works selected by the Jury, are included in the annual ArtBox Digital exhibitions program developed in Africa and in other parts of the world.
The digital artbox prize
This award seeks to be an accelerator for those artists who aspire to develop professionally in the field of digital creation. He celebrates the artists of Africa and Latin America inscribed in a dynamic of reflection on the changes that current technologies cause in their environments and in the world.
Thanks to this contest and combined actions (training and creation workshops, meetings, regional and international exchanges with artists and various professionals), Artbox Digital seeks to contribute to the creation of an ecosystem more conducive to digital creation and the consolidation of a network professional of the global south, open to dialogue with the world, beyond physical and material boundaries.
A process
Artbox Digital is the continuation of the work started by Trias Culture in Senegal since 2008, in order to promote digital creation and the integration of new digital media in the professional development of cultural actors in Africa.
More than 300 artists and cultural entrepreneurs have participated in the various training and digital experimentation programs developed in Senegal, as well as in other countries in the region (Niger, Benin, Togo, Cote d’Ivoire, Senegal).
These various initiatives have allowed artists to experiment with various media and technologies: light sensors, bending, rangefinder, ultrasound, etc., as well as real-time data capture, the use of the video camera in different formats and the use of softwares dedicated to digital creation.
The results of this work have been presented at various international events, such as the International Digital Art Market in Brussels (Belgium), Montréal (Canada) and Casablanca (Morocco), as well as in different events in Panama, El Salvador, France (in the Mirages Festival in Lyon), among others.
This work has contributed to paving the way and has made it possible for artists to venture into the world of digital creation, based on collaborative and interdisciplinary practices with artists and various professionals from the world of technology.
Thanks to a first collaboration between TRIAS CULTURE and the City of Bogotá (Colombia), through the Institute of Arts-IDARTES- and the interactive laboratory of art, science and technology Bogotá Platform, ArtBox Digital 2017 created possibilities for an unprecedented dialogue between digital artists from Africa and Latin America was possible.
More than an event
True to its commitments, in 2017, TRIAS CULTURE launched the Africa ArtBox award, to highlight the pioneering work of African artists in the field of digital art and promote new spaces for innovation, collaboration and creativity in the continent. With this new edition of 2019, Trias Culture continues to expand horizons, based on new collaboration synergies between Africa and other regions of the world.
AFRICA – LATIN AMERICA
The 2017 edition of “Africa ArtBox” was intended for artists from the African continent. By way of correspondence, the 2019 edition is dedicated to Latin American artists with two calls organized in coordination with the Fakugesi Festival (Johannesburg, South Africa): the call for artists from the city of Bogotá, with the participation of Bogotá City Council through the Platform Bogotá laboratory, and the call for artists from all over Latin America (excluding Bogotá).
This new edition, proposed under the name of ArtBox Digital, invites participants to reflect on the material conditions of artistic practice associated with digital technologies as a phenomenon immersed in a geopolitically defined economic, historical, political and social context.
The digital revolution of the 21st century is a phenomenon that, far from being universal, evolves according to the context in which it is developed, and the experience of digital technologies in the countries of the South, particularly in Africa and Latin America, presents particularities that are essential to take into account, especially when talking about the cultural and artistic production that result from current digital media.
Can we talk about a digital art from the south? What are the theoretical, aesthetic and technological specificities of the discourses produced by artists in Africa and Latin America?
Understanding the material conditions of these artistic practices in a given context is the key to separating us from the matrix of power that dominates the economic, artistic, cultural and political relations of the contemporary world.
