Bonaventure Soh Bejeng Ndikung, the chief curator of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo

0:13Hello and welcome to the Monaco Weekly. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco, and on today's show I speak with Bonaventure Soubejang and Dikung, chief curator of the 36th Bienal de São Paulo, which is currently taking place in the city. The main theme this year is Not All Travellers Walk Roads, Of Humanity As Practice. Let's hear it from Bonaventure.

0:42Bonaventure, Soubejeng, Andy Kung what a pleasure to welcome you to Monaco Radio you are the curator of the 36th Sao Paulo Biennial which is also my hometown, Sao Paulo first of all, so tell us a bit more how was this process? when did you find out you're going to be the curator? because, you know, the Sao Paulo Biennial is a pretty good deal you know, it's a pretty big deal in the art world, right? Yeah, it is. But it wasn't really the fact that it was a big deal for the art world that interested me. Rather, it was the fact that it was one of the few biennials in the world that is for free for everybody.

1:24and having, you know, been going to Brazil for many years now, I have met so many people that told me one of their first experiences with art, you know, contemporary art, is through the Sao Paulo Biennial, you know. People that say that there were school kids and their school class went to see the Biennial. And I knew that the Sao Paulo Biennial had invested so much in the context of pedagogy and a lot of efforts have been made in the past years to connect, you know, people from less privileged communities to the Biennial. So that's what really intrigued me, much more than the status of the Biennial in the art world.

2:15I received the call, I think it was January 2024. And I think by March, I knew sometime in March or April, I knew that I was going to be the chief curator. So I received a call while I was traveling in West Africa in Côte d 'Ivoire. And I knew pretty well on that same day what I wanted to propose because I was traveling with a poetry collection by Conceição Evaristo. Which was one of the inspirations for the biennial, her poem, right? Exactly, exactly. So this poem, The Calma e do Silencio, I had just read it. And after the conversation I had with the president of the biennial, Andrea Pinheiro, I went back to the hotel and I took this book and this poem, you know, kind of spoke to me again.

3:11So, and the rest is history. And, you know, besides the poem, I think there's a theme here kind of correlated with bird migration as well. I wonder if you can tell us a bit more about how that kind of was one of the inspirations for the biennial, which has amazing work by 120 artists. Yes. The thing about the bird migration is that it came in actually when we started working effectively. Not part of the concept per se. It's the moment we came together with all the co-curators, you know, and the curatorial assistants, as they were called at the time. So all of us, all seven of us, the question, you know, that really is something that keeps me going all the time is what methodologies do we actually use to attain our goals?

4:07So, you know, having been trained as a scientist, I'm really interested in method, you know, in very structured method. So the question was, how do we do it? You know, we have seven people. We have almost a year and a half to prepare this thing. How are we going to approach it? So the idea of the bird migration came in for us to find a strategy of mapping the world. Because we wanted to do a biennial with people from as far and wide as possible. So most of the time you see someone who will say, I'll focus on the African continent. focus on Latin America. And then most of the time, these things are our comfort zones.

4:57So I was trying to find a way in which we can leave our comfort zones. So the metaphor of the migrating birds came in. So each of us curators adopted these birds and were flying their route, right? So trying to follow them, you know, stop in some countries, research there, and then go to the other countries, the one thing. The other thing that came up, you know, why we use the notion of the migrating birds was the fact that we're thinking about humanity and human beings have placed so much limits around what they do and how they do things. Borders, you know, all kinds of restrictions. More and more today as well.

5:44How, exactly, you know, How could we learn from those birds that on a yearly basis fly from the African continent to Scandinavia and back without any visas? Or even learning from the way they navigate space. In quantum biology, it is said that it is through a certain magnetic force that birds can actually fly without using a GPS. So they have an internal GPS. So I was interested in these things in the context of how can humans learn from non-human species. And it's interesting you were talking about this bird migration from Africa to Scandinavia, because it is true, looking at the numbers of the artists, like where they come from, it's, I mean, it's truly, truly global.

6:35it is European, it is African, it is Asian, it is American or South American, North American. And I think that's quite remarkable. I think that's very much in connection to what you're talking there, right? Exactly. We wanted really to do a biennial that touches different corners of the globe. Even before coming to Sao Paulo, it was very important for us. We cannot just go to Sao Paulo to talk about humanity without going to different places to understand what people understand, you know, how different geographies inform the humanities of the people in those different places. So that's why we did the invocations, you know.

7:25And what are the invocations? They're basically performative, you know, poetic gestures, lectures, and different forms of gatherings, offerings that we made in four corners of the globe. You know, and the four places we chose were one connected to a body of water. And the other thing was that it's a place with very strong sonic and performative cultures. So we went to Marrakesh, you know, because of the strong connection to Gnawa, you know, and the fact that it sits, you know, between the Mediterranean and the Atlantic. Then we went to Guadeloupe because it's a very strong culture of the guoca, you know, from the music to the dance and the way the body serves as a site of discourse.

8:29You know, the body becomes a book itself. so understanding humanity through performativity and through the sonic that is carried by the body and it is in the atlantic then we went to zanzibar because of tarap the music genre that is in itself a manifestation of the crossroad you know that is that body of water called the indian ocean you know, that we call the Swahili Sea, you know, so cultures from the Indian subcontinent, from the East African region, from the north of Africa, from Oman, in the Gulf, and so on and so forth, you know, and they're all reflected in this music and this performance.

9:14And then we went to Tokyo, that sits in the Pacific, that, you know, and we were looking at the, you know, particularly the no culture, no theatre, but also thinking with the work of Professor Mori, which was written in 1972, called the Uncanny Valley, you know, thinking about the relationship between humans and non-humans in the sense of robotics, you know, in the sense of humanoid robots. Super interesting. And, Bonaventure, one thing I was going to ask you as well, how was your experience in Brazil? Because I know you traveled to the country, you knew Brazilian art even before you became the curator, of course.

10:00But tell us, I mean, did you enjoy, do you think the art scene there is booming? So tell us more about your feelings about the country. Yeah, you know, like every other place probably, Brazil is a very complicated place, you know, especially with its history. It's very complicated, very layered. It's very difficult to talk about this without sounding romantic. You know, it's a place I have a lot of affection for. At the same time, it's a place with so much troubled undercurrents based on its history, the history of enslavement. You know, a place like Sao Paulo, which is one of the richest cities in the world, At the same time, some of the most, you know, dreadful cases of poverty are found there.

10:55At the same time, you go to a place like Salvador Bahia, where you have a very strong African presence. The same thing, you go up to the Nordeste, you know, to a place like Recife, you know, incredible culture of Maracatu. So it wasn't really about just staying within the art world bubble, because that is what we usually do. But to me, what was more interesting was to make excursions out of those bubbles, to actually see the things, the histories, the cultures that inform the artists that make these works. So somebody like Antonio Tazis from Salvador de Bahia, you know, going out to look at cultures in places like Itaparica, you know, you really understand his work.

11:52Right. So those are things that I found very interesting, you know, or the work of Manwara, you see, and her incredible performances and sculpture that related to the trans communities in Brazil, you know. And knowing that she came from this very conservative family from the Northeast, you know, that disowned her at a certain point because she was trans. And the fact that she built the whole community. So these are things that were more interesting to me, not really what the galleries are doing and so on and so forth. I mean, it's very important what is happening in the galleries. It's very important that artists sell their works.

12:42But to me, if a biennial has to act as a kind of a seismograph, then we need to measure, you know, the quake. We need to feel the temperature in other places, you know. It's not necessarily only in the works, you know, but in the, you know, the things that spread their tentacles towards the works. Yes. And you're very right. And if you're in a country like Brazil, it's so good that you venture out as well of São Paulo, which is a great city as well. I'm from there. But then there's so much to see in Brazil and very different. Very different experiences depending where you go as well, right? Oh, yes.

13:28I mean, you know, I went to Fortaleza as well. And again, just completely different, you know, and the stories that never ending, you know, stories of liberation from 18, whatever, you know. and these particularities actually make Brazil, you know, an incredibly dynamic place, you know. So one of the things that really informed the concept of the biennial was, for example, the Mangebid movement. Chico, yeah. Yes, you know. You know, Nassau Zumbi, you know, Chico Siança Nassau Zumbi. Great, great music. Mundo Livre, you know, from the 90s, you know, and I was very much fascinated by the manifesto that they wrote, you know, Carangueros Concelebros, you know, The Crab's With Brains.

14:34And the fact that these guys were all artists of, you know, in their own rights, you know, they were making this brilliant music. They were thinking of technologies. They were thinking of how to destroy the neoliberal economic system, you know, that had taken over the whole of Pernambuco at the time, you know, and the weapon they had at their disposal was culture. Right. So I was really interested in that. And I met, you know, Fred Zeroquatro. I met Dr. Mabuzi and all these guys, you know, from the 90s that were, you know, or the guys of Devoto's, you know, that were doing incredible punk music at the time.

15:18And I'm thinking not only of how this is important in the 90s, but I'm thinking of how this connects to Zumbido Pamares, you know, in the 1600s, you know, in Pamares in Pernambuco as well. So that kind of revolutionary idea, this kind of resistance and breaking out of the norm, right? So this is, you know, 400, 500 years of, you know, using sound and performativity as resistance. Finally, Bonaventure, I just want to tell you that you are a very stylish man. I wonder if you see what you wear, not what you wear, but fashion as a form of art as well. Or what's your relationship with clothing? Because, you know, you look very cool.

16:07I mean, people can see we're doing an audio podcast. You know what, Fernando? It's really not about that, you know. Style as attitude, you know. As I was saying somewhere else, You know, in French, sometimes when they ask you, how are you doing? Comment tu te portes? And you say, je me porte bien. I carry myself well. So it's really about that spirit of how, you know, whatever you wear helps you carry yourself upright. So it's really very much about that, you know. So it's not really about fashion per se, you know, because to me fashion is just craft. The etymology of the word is facere, you know, to make, which is the same.

17:04It has a relation to the etymology of the word, you know, poemas, poems, you know, which in Greek also means to make, to create, to craft. You know, so it's a question of inhabiting, carrying poetry on your body. so that's that's it you know and i come from a place you know i was born in cameron and i come from a place where there's an old tradition you know if you look at what we the ngemba people wear it's it's called a toga and it's a fabric it's on you know kind of a velvety material and they do this embroidery so it's usually black material and then they do embroidery with red and yellow threads.

17:55The whole, it's full of different symbols. And so people go out like this on a daily basis, you know, with this, you know, it's like, it's actually not just an, it's a regalia, right? So it's, it's the way people carry themselves is so, it's important, you know, you must feel good in your body. And it's not even something I think of when I wake up in the morning, you know, I just slip into something. But you have to feel that this thing carries you. You know, being from Cameroon and in Brazil, do you see any kind of similarities or differences between both countries? Perhaps a lot of some similarities, perhaps?

18:43A lot. First of all, I remember going to Salvador many, many years ago, and I stood at the coastline with some friends. And they told me, you know, some from Ghana, some from Cameroon, and they say, Bono, do you realize how familiar this place is to us? And I'm very much interested in the work of Milton Santos, you know, the Brazilian geographer, critical geographer. And I'm interested in space and the way, the fact that these two places were together. If you take the African map and the Latin American map, you see the way Brazil fits into West Africa, you know. So the connection to Cameroon and the rest of West African coast is very clear.

19:39So we're actually the same people. This is, I'm talking far before the enslavement project. So the memory is actually even in the landscape. So the separation of Gondwana still has its traces. If you ask me about similarities, I will start with the soil, with the earth and the connection there. Then the other part of it is obviously the fact that even before the Portuguese started carrying Africans to the Americas, what is called the Americas now, you know, Africans were traveling and coming over there. You know, there's a brilliant book by the Guyanese scholar called Ivan van Setima with the title, They Came Before Columbus.

20:33I need to read that. And he writes, you know, and he writes about how, you know, there were several Africans that traveled, set foot, you know, that took a boat and crossed the Atlantic. You know, the most famous of them being the uncle of Mansa Musa, Abubakar II, you know, who tried several times. And the last time he never came back. You know, so there are two options. One is that he made it to Brazil. The other one is that he died on the high sea. Nobody knows. But what Ivan Fancetima proves in the book is that, you know, not only were there so many Africans on Christopher Columbus's boat that actually showed him the way, but actually that when he landed there, in his diaries, he wrote about the people that he met there.

21:31So it's very interesting. So the connections are many. Now, of course, Columbus didn't go to Brazil, but I'm talking about the whole new world, quote unquote. Now, then you have the element of Africans that were violently enslaved, taken across the Atlantic to these places that worked on the plantations under the most terrible of conditions. Peru brought the culture over there as well. So if I'm in Salvador and I'm eating boboi de Cameroge, it's like eating in Cameroon. Or I'm eating akaragi. I love akaragi. It's like eating akara in West Africa, right? So these are just a few cliched examples, but there's so much there.

22:19Because we can talk about it through spirituality, you know, in Candomblé. We just did a big festival, a literature festival at Hakawe, Berlin. this past weekend where we brought Leda Maria Martins, who spoke of the Bantu cultures in Brazil, you know, especially the relationship to Congo. You know, an example would be Maracatu and so on and so forth. So, of course, I remember these things and I see them and I recognize them. But even in contemporary culture, you know, going back to the Mangebit movement, My best songs of the Manga Beat Movement is the song titled Samba Macosa, which is a combination of the Brazilian quote unquote national music and samba and the Cameroonian quote unquote national music, which is Macosa.

23:12You know, but this is these guys are playing this in the early 90s, you know. So I'm interested in this and many, many other connections. Not to talk about all the work that people like Abdias Donacimento did, you know, in connecting, you know, Brazil and the African continent, Beatriz Donacimento and all these people, you know. So there's so much to talk about that. So, yes, there's so many similarities. I love that. Bonaventure, thank you so much for chatting with us. That was perfect. Super, super insightful. Thank you so much. Thank you very much, Bonaventure, there. And the Biennale de São Paulo is on until the 11th of January.

23:51The Biennale is supported by Iguatemi and others. I'm Fernando Augusto Pacheco. The show was edited by Elliot Greenfield. Thank you very much for listening.