ArtoP - The Visual Articulations of Politics in Nigeria

历史上，静态和动态图像在政治思想的表达（视觉和文本）方面发挥着关键作用，并构建了选举政治的立场和话语。 ArtoP 着手通过尼日利亚艺术家（以及各自的创意产业）在 2019 年 2 月尼日利亚总统选举前后的关键时刻制作的图像来捕捉这些表达。作为一个多站点研究项目，ArtoP 将识别与尼日利亚各地区政治话语相关的艺术内容的创作者。它将重点关注正在创建的图像类型，以收集、整理和分析档案的证据。它特别关注艺术家如何在尼日利亚官方网络内外以及围绕 2019 年选举的社交媒体竞争空间内运作。通过与拉各斯大学和巴耶罗大学的合作伙伴合作，以及先前研究（Callus，2017，Gore，2001）与尼日利亚艺术界的既定中心和本地网络（包括数字空间中的中心和本地网络）的联系，ArtoP 将分析 1）政治话语政权分散和/或的方式在艺术上受到物质上和虚拟上的抵制； 2）官方和非官方的传播和消费模式和组合，它们塑造并试图重塑这些艺术生产者、政治赞助人和颠覆性评论家所面对的公众。政治议程的审美化在西非有着长期的发展轨迹（Gore，2001），但已经在能够吸引和吸引新公众的数字媒体技术中以创新模式进行部署。先前针对非洲动画的研究发现了动画在官方和非官方（真实和虚拟）网络中分发以传播政治声音的例子（Limb，Callus，2017）以及同时制作战术颠覆性动画（De Certeau，1980）。由于其制作和制作的混合模式，动画为关注尼日利亚境内政治和更广泛的创意产业的这些表达提供了强大的工具。这些提供了新的创意可能性，并支撑了尼日利亚创意产业新的（或更新的）形态的出现，这些形态与塑造其轨迹和组合的政治结构交织在一起。在尼日利亚上次选举期间，政治竞选活动利用了这些新技术（《卫报》，2018 年 3 月 23 日），各种形式的动画在创建和制作可访问的政治内容方面发挥了作用。 2019 年尼日利亚总统选举提供了一个镜头来研究这些相互联系，因为它们在现实和虚拟空间中进一步增强，并考虑当地社交媒体如何实现其视觉政权。因此，ArtoP 摆脱了画廊背景下的艺术实践和生产的传统概念，转而识别在数字空间中流通并被认为属于流行文化空间的形式（动画、GIF、视频、海报、卡通）。通过识别这些类型的图像，人们可以绘制新的组合、艺术实践的变化及其与新技术的关系，同时识别与尼日利亚艺术范围内的艺术实践传统相关的方面。ArtoP 的主题：技术、材料和艺术实践；政治的视觉表达；组合和网络空间代表了在这个关键时间点发生的融合，并嵌入到不同的事件和项目可交付成果中。在线档案、故事地图和创意纪录片旨在广泛向公众、学者和全球化创意产业的利益相关者通报这些实践。通过在伦敦大学亚非学院举办的研讨会和会议，ArtoP 将在学术背景下研究这些阐述。

Still and moving images have historically played a key part in the articulation (visually and textually) of political ideas and have constructed positionings and discourses on the politics of elections. ArtoP sets out to capture these articulations through the images produced by Nigerian artists (and respective creative industries) at a critical time around the Nigerian presidential elections in February 2019.As a multi-sited research project, ArtoP will identify the creators of artistic content that engage with political discourse across regions in Nigeria. It will focus upon the types of images that are being created with a view to collect and curate and analyse evidence of this for an archive. In particular it focuses upon how artists operate within and outside of official networks in Nigeria and within contested spaces on social media around the elections in 2019. Through collaboration with our partners at University of Lagos and Bayero University, and links stemming from previous research (Callus, 2017, Gore, 2001) to established hubs and local networks of Nigerian art worlds including those in digital spaces, ArtoP will analyse 1) the ways regimes of political discourse are dispersed and/or resisted both materially and virtually in the arts; 2) the official and unofficial modes and assemblages of dissemination and consumption which make and seek to reshape the publics addressed by these art producers, political patrons and subversive commentators. The aestheticization of political agendas has longstanding trajectories in West Africa (Gore, 2001) but has been deployed in innovative modes within the technologies of digital media that are able to make and address new publics. Previous research that focused upon animation from Africa, has found examples of animation being distributed in official and unofficial (real and virtual) networks to disseminate political voices (Limb, Callus, 2017) and the simultaneous making of tactical subversive animation (De Certeau, 1980). Animation offers a powerful tool for focusing on these articulations of politics and the wider creative industries within Nigeria due to it's hybrid modes of making and production. These have offered new creative possibilities and underpin the emergence of new (or renewed) formations of the creative industries within Nigeria which intertwine with its political structures that shape its trajectories and assemblages. During the last elections in Nigeria, political campaigning exploited these new technologies (The Guardian, 23/03/2018), with animation in its varieties of forms playing a role in creating and making accessible political content. The Nigerian presidential elections of 2019 provide a lens to investigate these inter-connectivities as they further augment in real and virtual spaces and consider how local social media realise its regimes of visuality. Consequently, ArtoP moves away from the conventional concepts of art practice and production for a gallery context, to recognising forms that circulate in digital spaces and are considered to belong to spaces of popular culture (animation, gifs, videos, posters, cartoons). By identifying these types of images, one can chart new assemblages, changes in artistic practices and their relationship to new technologies whilst identifying aspects that relate to traditions of artistic practice across the range of Nigerian arts.ArtoP's themes: Technologies, Materials and Art Practice; Visual Articulations of Politics; Assemblages and Networked Spaces, are representative of the convergence that occurs at this critical point in time and embedded across different events and project deliverables. An online archive, StoryMaps and a Creative Documentary are intended to broadly serve to inform general public, academics and stakeholders in globalised creative industries of these practices. Through the symposia and conference at SOAS, ArtoP will investigate these articulations in an academic context.