Why Goethe is keen about Lagos Book and Art Festival
Marc-André Schmachtel, Director of the Goethe Institute in Nigeria, will be leaving the country in July after a densely packed five and half years tour of duty. In a wide-ranging discussion with TOYIN AKINOSHO, Secretary General of the Committee For Relevant Art, he engages ideas around identity, definitions of culture spaces, and the place of Goethe Institute in the pecking order.
You’ve spent around five years in Nigeria and you’ve crammed so much activity into those years
It is always a question of perspective. Five years are a long time if you look at it from the beginning of a career. The normal length of Goethe tenures are between five and six years. I’ve just completed my fifth year in Lagos and will be leaving the country in July this year. Looking back, these five years have gone by at an amazing speed and I can say that Lagos has become a part of me. I still remember very well my first steps out of Murtala Mohammed Airport, coming from Douala, in October 2010. So much has happened since then! Was it me, or the team at Goethe, the partners (like you), or Lagos? I don’t know, probably a mix of all. The city and the job offered me a lot of opportunities and all I had to do was to channel them and to make them happen. Or at least try. If you look carefully, every corner of this city gives you a story, a link, something to take up and look at and say, oh wow, that’s interesting, let’s look at this a bit closer and see what we can do. I am a fervent defender of the try and error method. You have to take risks sometimes; if something works then it’s great. If not, you’ve tried and next time you know what to do different. And you might even have initiated a thinking process that could lead to something totally different from what you had expected. Try and error, playing – I think that these are notions that we apply far too little to our daily life. Of course, you are responsible as well for your budgets, but hey, nothing ventured, nothing gained. Sometimes I wish there would be a bit more audacity in the cultural scene!
You have a quarterly authors’ talk; you engage edgy photography, you run poetry slam, you exhibit movies and documentaries, and yours come across as the busiest of all of the European culture centres in the country. Would you say that those activities (at least four such on a monthly basis), mean huge achievements in terms of propagating German-Nigerian friendship, or spreading German Culture?
Yes, of course! What is the use of having a foreign cultural centre if there is nothing happening? If it is not engaging the audience, proposing a different image and vision to the normal, mainstream vision? This is the essence of Goethe-Institut! We want to show that a different perspective is possible because we strongly believe in the multi-dimensional characteristics of culture. It might sound banal, but Culture is never static, it’s always moving, evolving, transcending borders, changing. And what we try to do is to present one out of hundreds of possible perspectives on a given topic. It is definitely not to say how to do it the right way. Germany is not the perfect place; it is not the paradise and has a lot of problems. These might differ from problems Nigeria is facing for instance, but this doesn’t make it better. And by the way, what is German Culture? Even if Germany needed quite some time to accept it, it cannot deny that it is an immigrant country.
Especially, in the arts! Take for instance Akinbode Akinbiyi, the photographer. He has spent almost half of his life in Germany, is in certain ways more German than I am. If I organise a workshop on photography and I invite him as mentor, I am showing that Germany as a country has a multitude of cultures. There is not a single German culture! The dancer Samir Akika, originally from Algeria and France and now head of the dance department at the state theater in Bremen, did a workshop here, same as Theo Eshetu, an Italian-Ethiopian video artist. We had a coproduction meeting with a French-Lebanese, a German-Iranian and a Polish expert. A photo exhibition from one of the most prestigious museums in Germany, Museum Folkwang, showing archive images from Africa. A documentary film screening by a German filmmaker with Benin origins telling the story of voodoo in New Orleans.
All these examples to tell you that we are living in a globalized world, and there is no way we can shut our doors and pretend we don’t know each other. Goethe-Institut is working with German taxpayer’s money, so it has to account for a certain value or image. But I’m very happy that since the 1970s it has adopted the enhanced cultural definition, allowing us to broaden up our range of activities to sectors that do not necessarily come to mind when talking about Culture. I am not bound to the sometimes very elitist perception of “High Culture”, with only visual arts, architecture, etc. If I am working on renewable energies, I can still put this into the category of culture and environment. I can look at migration and still see the cultural aspects of it.
In fact, this makes it actually so easy to interact with your host country. If you accept that culture is a dynamic entity, and englobes everything we are producing, you are beginning to understand what the role of Cultural institutions like the Goethe-Institut can be.
To come back to your question I would of course, say that we are trying to propagate the German-Nigerian cultural exchange by offering a window on the German experience.
And this is why I am as well very happy that, for instance, Akinbode will be honored with the Goethe-Medaille this year, the official medal of Goethe-Institut.
Some people would say that the British Council does far less, but the few it does are targeted to have huge impact. For instance, they have this Theatre Season during which they commandeer the whole space and engage some of the best talent. Do you feel threatened? Afterall, The Goethe-Institut has always been more the hive of culture activities in post-colonial Nigeria than the British Council
Why should I feel threatened? On the contrary, there should be 10 more theatre seasons, 20 more cultural centres, offering 30 more cultural events! Lagos has 18 million inhabitants and I can count the professionally active cultural centres on two hands. Right now, everybody can do what he/she can do best; there is space for all of them. No, really, I don’t feel threatened at all. The British Council is a very close partner of Goethe-Institut, they can do stuff that we can’t do, and vice-versa. We are cooperating on many activities in Lagos and sometimes
I’m a bit envious when I look at their possibilities. But then I see our own structure and I’m happy as well about our flexibility. Besides, we are as well partners in the EUNIC cluster, the network of European cultural centres, together with the Alliance Francaise.
Which of your own activities gives you the most joy?
The kind of activity when you feel that all your efforts have not been in vain, that there is an audience that is attentive and reactive to what you have thought of and created. The intellectual and cultural exchange is not a simple thing, it needs to be challenged and re-invented every time. Working with partners that stimulate your own creative thinking is probably the most rewarding exercise one can have as a director of a cultural centre. And I’m very lucky that this is happening almost every day in Lagos.
You came in from Cameroun. That’s such a minuscule artistic environment than Nigeria. Did you have a concept of what you’d do when you were posted here?
I wouldn’t say that the Camerounian artistic environment is so minuscule. You have very famous artists there, and art centres in Douala were already working in and challenging the public space when Lagos was not even ready to have contemporary art centres at all. But of course, with respect to the sheer numbers (Lagos alone has the same population as the whole of Cameroun), it is a different environment here. Luckily for me, I had already made contacts with some important cultural persons while working at Goethe in Yaoundé. We initiated a programme called Cameria-Nigeroon, which was a cinematic exchange between the Anglophone and Francophone parts of Cameroun and Nigerian film professionals – the first of its kind not only between Nigeria and Cameroun, but as well between the two linguistic spheres inside Cameroun! I had invited Kunle Afolayan, Teco Benson, Victor Ochai and Jahman Anikulapo to come to Bamenda, meeting Camerounian filmmakers and professionals. The meeting was very memorable and still today I get feedbacks from that time. By reading these names you can imagine that I was not completely lost when I came to Lagos the first time. And then there was as well our team at Goethe-Institut Nigeria, and the invaluable contact database of our then programme assistant, Sunday Umweni. He introduced me to all the major partners. But you’re right, looking back to Yaoundé and
Douala from a Lagosian perspective, these two cities seem now like some nice little villages.
The Goethe-Institut has been involved with the Lagos Book and Art Festival (LABAF) for five years now; indeed, in those five years you have hosted the Publisher’s Forum, which is an integral part of the events prefacing the Festival itself. This year you’ve sponsored resource persons and even issued a cheque upfront. Why are you so keen on the Lagos Book and Art Festival?
LABAF is one of the oldest, if not the oldest book festival in the country. The organizing committee, the Committee for Relevant Art, regroups eminent and wonderful cultural persons. Even though not without challenges, CORA and LABAF have managed to keep the festival up till today, 18 years on, which is quite an achievement. Literature festivals have a very special charm on their own; the book is a very physical and imaginative media at the same time, much more intimate than a film for instance. You read and you are alone in your world of imagination. But when you get out, and you share your emotions with the audience it creates an energy that can be very powerful. Nigeria has an impressive number of great writers, people of the word, be it written or oral. It is only natural that we are looking at ways how to work with this tradition.
You are also involved with the Ake Festival. But, wait a minute, why the sudden interest in books; this was not always the Goethe’s strong suite?
Literature is a powerful tool and has always been a focus of the programme of activities of Goethe-Institut. Of course, there is the challenge of the language and its translation in non-German-speaking countries. This is why we have a lot of translated books in our library, and why we are working more with Anglophone authors at the Institut. Other genres are a bit “easier” to work with, but just imagine we would not work on authors like Günter Grass, Heinrich Böll, Christa Wolf, and of course our own Goethe. So it is just natural that literature plays an important role in our work. As I mentioned we are trying to present more the younger generation of authors and poets through regular programmes. Another focus is the very lively, but still small graphic novel scene (we are currently working on a big project with the Nigerian publisher Cassava Republic).
Your critics say that with shoestring budget you do so many things and…you may end up not getting results as profound as you expect because of insufficient funding and lack of depth of exploration of some of these programmes. How would you respond to them?
They are right! And that is maybe one of the main problems I am facing. Lagos and Nigeria offer so many perspectives for really interesting and challenging cultural activities that you can at times get lost in the myriad of requests, activities, plans, workshops, exhibitions, performances, concerts, rehearsals, meetings, discussions, lectures, screenings. You simply don’t know where to start and where to stop! And sometimes this brings you to a situation when you say to yourself that less might be more. But then I’m a person that can’t really say no!
For some time now the Goethe-Institut has been trying to take over the old Printing Press on Broad Street and convert it into a space for showcase of culture production. You consider that, with the Freedom Park down the road, the two colonial era spaces could link up as expressive sites of art events in an otherwise de-gentrified area. What is the proposal? And what challenges are you having?
Let me correct one small, but important thing: we are not trying to take over anything! The colonial Printing Press, which is now the Federal Government Press, is an empty building. I’m by nature a curious person and have always been interested in old buildings. It was Professor John Godwin who told me of this old colonial building that was more or less abandoned. At that time I was looking for a new space for Goethe-Institut as our current office space is not that convenient (and I’m still looking by the way). Together with Prof. Godwin we were looking at the possibility of trying to convert the old Colonial Secretariat (which became Federal Ministry of Justice after Independence) into a European-Nigerian Cultural Centre, regrouping the British, French and German Cultural Centres together with Nigerian partners. Unfortunately, this project did not happen, due to several constraints with the European partners. Already, then I had been accused of wanting to take over Nigerian buildings that should be remaining in the public realm. Of course, the building has a strong symbolic value in the Nigerian history, but to be honest, what has been done to preserve it? I climbed up onto the clock tower, you have a wonderful Swiss clockwork there, not working. Termites are eating their way through the wooden ceilings; rains are affecting the roof and so on. The European Cultural Centre would have been an opportunity to renovate the building, by respecting at the same time its historical symbolism and importance.
The same thing applies to the Printing Press. After I had a visit of the Colonial Secretariat, John Godwin recommended that I should have a look at this other colonial building. And when I saw I was really stupefied by the beauty and the potential. In Germany, spaces like this one would have been taken over by artists within seconds, but here was an icon of colonial industrial architecture, over 100 years old, completely empty! A ground hall of more than 400 square metres, a first floor that lets you step back into Nigerian history, with 40-year-old dust, files and furniture as witness from ancient times when this place was still a busy printing space. My first impression was to do something there, to have cultural activities and events so that people and especially artists could re-discover the space. Lagos is so short of creative spaces that are open to the public, that offer diverse facilities to the artistic scene, and here there was a dormant beauty, just waiting to be kissed awake. And that’s how the whole thing started.
I spoke to many artists, performative artists, visual artists, and all showed their big interest in the idea of a cultural centre, a space where they could have office and rehearsal space, studios, resource centres, etc. We organised several events there, from contemporary dance workshops to performance festivals, a big archive photo exhibition, discussion round tables, and many more. The aim was to show that the space could be used as a cultural space, that it had this huge potential to become a multi-disciplinary resource centre not only for artists, but as well for researchers, media people, anybody interested in cultural exchange and debate. The next important step we took was to get Ford Foundation interested in this project.
They saw as well the potential and said that they would like to partner with us on this – which was good, because their financial possibilities outnumber by far our modest cultural budget. We had several meetings and workshops to get the idea of this “Hub” a bit clearer; the Nsibidi-Institute, a local think tank, was of great help in this. With support from Goethe-Institut, Ford commissioned a report from Nsibidi-Institute, which was rendered early January 2016. These things take time, but it was worth waiting for this document, as we have now a very strong paper that we can present to the Federal Government, owner of the building. I had been in constant engagement with the Ministry of Information about this project, but couldn’t say much until the report was out. Now that this is the case the discussion will start soon. The aim is to get the approval of the Ministry to start a centre for media, culture and urban research that would get seed-funding from international partners (Ford and others) for a certain period of time and that would be run by a non-profit organisation. This structure should be able to be self-sustainable in a given period of time.
If you think of all the different possible uses of the Press building you can clearly see the incredible amount of creativity this centre could bring to Lagos: studio spaces, proper audiovisual archives, a resource centre, screening facilities, infrastructure for community media facilities, exhibition space and so much more!
In combination with on the one side CBAAC and Glover Hall, and on the other side Freedom Park, a possible future cultural use at the Colonial Secretariat and, taking this cultural axis further east, MUSON, City Mall, and even Randle Hall (which I discovered recently) you have a unique cultural boulevard that could not only be a great touristic highlight for Lagos, but also an immense adding to the cultural and artistic landscape of the biggest African city. But then I would have to clone myself and stay another 20 years in Lagos!
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