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）中发挥了关键作用，并构建了关于选举政治的定位和话语。ArtoP旨在通过尼日利亚艺术家（和各自的创意产业）在2019年2月尼日利亚总统选举的关键时刻制作的图像来捕捉这些表达。作为一个多地点的研究项目，ArtoP将确定与尼日利亚各地区政治话语互动的艺术内容的创作者。它将侧重于正在创建的图像类型，以收集、整理和分析这方面的证据，供存档。它特别关注艺术家如何在尼日利亚的官方网络内外以及2019年选举前后在社交媒体上的争议空间内运作。通过与我们在拉各斯大学和巴耶罗大学的合作伙伴的合作，以及来自以前研究的链接（Callus，2017，戈尔，2001）尼日利亚艺术世界的中心和当地网络，包括数字空间，ArtoP将分析1）政治话语的方式分散和/或抵制物质和虚拟的艺术;（2）传播和消费的官方和非官方模式和组合，这些模式和组合制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轨迹（戈尔，2001年），但已经在数字媒体技术中以创新的模式部署，能够创造和解决新的公众问题。以前的研究集中在非洲的动画，已经发现了动画在官方和非官方（真实的和虚拟的）网络中传播的例子，以传播政治声音（Limb，Callus，2017）和同时制作战术颠覆性动画（De Certeau，1980）。动画提供了一个强大的工具，专注于这些政治和更广泛的创意产业在尼日利亚内，由于它的混合模式的制作和生产。这些都提供了新的创造性的可能性，并巩固了尼日利亚内新的（或更新的）创造性产业的形成，这些产业与其政治结构相互交织，形成了其轨迹和组合。在尼日利亚上一次选举期间，政治竞选利用了这些新技术（卫报，2018年3月23日），各种形式的动画在创造和制作无障碍政治内容方面发挥了作用。2019年的尼日利亚总统选举提供了一个透镜来调查这些相互联系，因为它们在真实的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制度。因此，ArtoP从传统的画廊背景下的艺术实践和生产概念转向识别在数字空间中流通的形式，并被认为属于流行文化的空间（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;装配和网络空间代表了在这个关键时间点发生的融合，并嵌入不同的事件和项目交付成果。在线档案、StoryMaps和创意纪录片旨在广泛地向公众、学者和全球化创意产业的利益相关者宣传这些做法。通过SOAS的研讨会和会议，ArtoP将在学术背景下调查这些表达。

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.