|
Be it in New York, Paris or Bamako, the world is experiencing a paradigm shift that began in Africa. Worldwide, members of the financial and racial majority are no longer satisfied with matriculating into a web of systems designed to benefit only the most privileged individuals and nations. Sparked by the 2011 toppling of Egypt’s thirty-year dictator, calls for revolution echo through mass media and populate social networking newsfeeds. As governments crumble and attempt to regain power, African citizens take to social media outlets, text messages and blogs, adding fuel to the growing global uprising. |
|
“now that the world is tuning in and watching via social media how the continent continues to move and grow – minds are changing.”
Be it in New York, Paris or Bamako, the world is experiencing a paradigm shift that began in Africa. Worldwide, members of the financial and racial majority are no longer satisfied with matriculating into a web of systems designed to benefit only the most privileged individuals and nations. Sparked by the 2011 toppling of Egypt’s thirty-year dictator, calls for revolution echo through mass media and populate social networking newsfeeds. As governments crumble and attempt to regain power, African citizens take to social media outlets, text messages and blogs, adding fuel to the growing global uprising. On the Continent, young people demand LGBTQ equality, workers’ rights and Democratic elections.
While such issues are grossly ignored in European and U.S. mainstream media coverage, a ghost contingency of global onlookers offer anonymous support, facilitated by the digital distance of cyberspace. From October 2012 to January 2013, MoCADA’s Curatorial Series, NEWSFEED: Anonymity and Social Media in African Revolutions and Beyond, reveals a collection of visual art that investigates global interconnectivity and how anonymous parties define, construct, and support uprisings in Africa via social media.
NY Arts: How has social media affected Revolution today?
Jessica Lanay Moore & Nelson Nance: Whe n Ne lson and I were planning the show we recognized that after the North African Revolutions that social media had exposed the consequences of revolution, such as the witch-hunts that ensued in Libya against Sudanese immigrants or other immigrants from Sub-Saharan Africa.
We also researched how social media covered the Malian ethnic separatists uprisings and noticed that even social media could not accurately report what was happening on the ground because of the lack of access in general to social media in that a rea. We realized that social media has affected Revolution in such a way that people are starting to question the very definition and purpose of revolution. In our personal opinions Nelson and I’s ideas differ on how much influence we think social media has in revolutions – and all of our artists for NEWSFEED have differing opinions as well, but that is the point of this exhibition – to generate dialogue and challenge peoples perceptions.
NY Arts: Why has Africa remained anonymous/faceless in the Western conception of revolution?
Jessica Lanay Moore & Nelson Nance: One reason, I believe that this has happened and this is not Nelson’s opinion, is because the world for a long time has relied on the continent of Africa to represent poverty, destruction, the source of slavery, the world needed a place to judge and to save, but now as Africa reveals that is has been progressive for many years and that it continues to develop technologically, socially and politically the world is finding more ways to locate themselves within the social struggles that we share with the continent. Revolution is always for the better or the worse associated with progress and Africa was not associated with progress but historic inertia, but now that the world is tuning in and watching via social media how the continent continues to move and grow – minds are changing.
