art & conflict transformation

The humanities constitute a decisive complement to more traditional techniques of investigation; in some cases, the use of methods referring to different forms of cultural and artistic expression is the only way to access certain dimensions of the issues at stake. Community healing in itself is also a matter of mobilizing cultural resources aimed at restoring collective memory, encouraging personal narratives and accounts, re-integrating child soldiers into their community, or re-establishing links to the dead whose bodies were not treated with the dignity and the rituals worthy of a human being. This cluster presents theoretical and methodological texts on the subject, concrete examples as to how these techniques may be used in different context, a database of country experiences and a presentation of ongoing field research.

Field Research

An international comparative qualitative analysis on projects using art in conflict transformation programs
This comparative research project started in the Summer 2006 in collaboration with different NGOs. Overall, it aims at understanding better the functions of community art experiences and their role in supporting conflict transformation. There are three main dimensions in that research:

• To assess the specific functions of arts in conflict transformation programs;
• To better understand the conditions in which arts may actively and positively participate in a transformative process and contribute to the re-building of the social fabric of transitional societies;
• To assess the way in which these activities may help understand and monitor changing systems of reference (or ‘social representations’) of the individuals and communities concerned – in other words, what conflict transformation is about.

The first phase of the work has involved identifying a large diversity of projects in order to get a broader view of the different ways arts have been conveyed so far in conflict transformation programs around the world. These experiences are accessible through an online database.

The selection of the case studies on which field research has been conducted was based on the interest manifested by the organizations concerned, as well as their commitment to actively participate in the field work, and two additional criteria:

• The organizations have been consciously using art as a contribution to a larger effort in conflict transformation;
• The projects put a specific emphasis on a community based participatory approach, or at least include additional activities ensuring interaction between artists and community members.

The theoretical and methodological framework for field research in Africa, South America and potentially Asia, has been developed in collaboration with the following NGOs and research centres:

• Human Rights Media Centre, Cape Town, South Africa
• Centre  Lokole, Search for Common Grounds, Bukavu (South Kivu), Democratic Republic of Congo
• RCN Justice & Démocratie, Bujumbura, Burundi
• Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la PUCP (IDEHPUCP), Lima, Peru
• Syarikat, Java, Indonesia

Field research in Peru, South Africa, Democratic Republic of Congo and Burundi was undertaken between January and March 2007.

‘Breaking the Silence: A Luta Continua’: An art project about memory & healing in post-Apartheid South Africa
A collaborative field research project with the Human Rights Media Centre
(Cape Town, South Africa)

The traveling exhibition Breaking the silence: A luta continua documents a process involving over one thousand Khulumani* Support Group members in the Western Cape who used scrapbooks, body-maps, photographs, memory cloths, drawings, paintings, art banners and film to tell the stories of their lives under apartheid. This project has been initiated and lead by the Human Rights Media Centre.

Both arts and conflict transformation are difficult to evaluate, yet it is possible to document the kinds of processes, responses and conversations that are nourished by the creation, production/exhibition, and witnessing of the work. The research undertaken in collaboration with HRMC and the Khulumani Support Group has clearly allowed us to map out a whole set of emotional and cognitive processes supported by the art work undertaken by over four hundred survivors of the Apartheid regime and showed in exhibition Breaking the silence: A luta continua. Very concrete and rich insights were given around the five avenues which were identified as potential functions of arts in conflict transformation programs:

• The possibility to go beyond non-narrative or impossible narratives;
• The participation in a healing/therapeutic process;
• The participation in the re-symbolization process and the reinsertion of subjects back into their culture and the history of South Africa;
• An alternative to more traditional educational and vulgarization programs;
• The support to a creative process of producing beauty while violence has been very destructive.

*Khulumani is a Zulu word meaning ‘to speak out’. The organization gathers survivors of violence and torture under the Apartheid regime.

Click here to access the presentation sheet of the project
Click here to access the final report of the field research (with photos)

Participatory Theatre for Conflict Transformation in South Kivu (East Congo)
A collaborative field research project with Centre Lokole/ Search for Common Grounds (Democratic Republic of Congo)

Search for Common Grounds participatory theatre for conflict transformation is aimed at promoting peaceful solutions to conflict in DRC. In particular, the Centre Lokole is focusing on the conflicts inherent in the process of repatriation of hundreds of thousands of Congolese now returning home after up to ten years in neighboring countries as refugees. The field research concerned the theatre experience of Centre Lokole theatre group (Jirani ni ndugu) as well as the experience of two other theatre groups, one consisting of former child soldiers, the other one of women victims of sexual violence.

Field research has identified five main functions of theatre in ongoing experiences in South Kivu:

• A strong support to public education
• The opening of new space for public debates
• A powerful contribution to daily conflict transformation in wartorn societies
• A contribution to the transformation of imaginaries of violence
• The support to a creative process for individuals and communities.

Click here to access the presentation sheet of the project
Click here to access the final report of the field research (in French with photos)

Theatre & Justice in Burundi
A collaborative field research project with RCN Justice & Démocratie
(Burundi)
A volunteer RCN group produced two theater pieces “Si Ayo Guhora” (“We cannot be quiet”) and “Habuze Iki” (“This that has lacked”). Comedians come from the three ethnic groups – Hutu, Tutsi and Twa. The pieces were written by Frederique Lecomte from the association Le Château de Barbe Bleue, based in Belgium. Her methodology is to take participants’ personal experience as the basis for creating the performances. As a consequence, she included the narratives of the comedians themselves but also from several groups of the population, including prisoners, refugees, ex-combatants and inhabitants of the hill country who have participated in theatre improvisation workshops. These plays question the spectator on their responsibility in the violence. The representations took place all over the country, at schools, in prisons, in displaced and refugee camps, in demobilization centers.  Extensive workshops were set up for the spectators after the show.

Field research has been conducted mainly through focus groups organised accross the country. Four main functions of theatre have been identified in Burundi experience:

• The possibility to go beyond non-narrative or impossible narratives as well as the opening of new space for public debates
• The participation in a healing/therapeutic process
• The participation in the re-symbolization process
• The support to a creative process while violence and war have been very destructive.

Click here to access the presentation sheet of the project
Click here to access the final report of the field research (in French with photos)

El teatro y la transformación de conflictos en Perú (Theatre and conflict transformation in Peruà)
A collaborative field research project Instituto de Democracia y Derechos Humanos de la Pontificia Universidad Católica del Perú (IDEHPUCP)
(Lima & Ayacucho, Peru)
Two distinct theatre experiences in the context of the ongoing ‘reconciliation’ and democratization process in Peru have been investigated. The theatre group Yuyachkani produces a theatre intimately related with the problems of Peruvian society. Their last piece called Sin Tìtulo Técnica Mixta, echoed the recommendations of the Truth and Reconciliation Commission. It was shown to victims of the conflict who were displaced to Lima, the capital city. In the region of Ayacucho, another theatre group called Estirpe has produced a piece called Nada Es Eterno, dealing with the mourning experience of four survivors of the war. The region of Ayacucho was the most affected by the war violence and was also the place where the war first irrupted.

Field research was conducted in Lima and Ayacucho regions.

Click here to access the presentation sheet of the project
Click here to access the final report of the field research (in Spanish)

Research Papers

Understanding Situations of Post-Mass Crime by Mobilizing Different Forms of Cultural Endeavours, Béatrice Pouligny
Abstract. This contribution refers to the ongoing preparation of field investigations in countries where mass crimes have been committed. The project brings together practitioners and academics (both international and local) from different disciplines, but also artists, in an effort to get as close as possible to the multifaceted experience of the people concerned both individually and collectively. Indeed, the events cannot simply be boiled down to a collection of individual strategies. It is the Culture itself, the possibility of social life, which is under attack, a dimension which is worsened by the gravity of symbolic attacks generally committed at the same time as the massacres. The research also needs to consider the representations and the imaginaries that are built around the experience of violence and refer to different myths. To grasp this, investigations will include methods which refer to different forms of cultural and creative expression. This contribution will explain why and how this will be an integral part of the research with specific support given by artists who already encounter such an experience in different contexts of violence: story tellers, artists who refer to the practice of the theatre of the oppressed, drawings, sculpture… This dimension of the project is also related to the specific attention the research team wants to pay to the restitution and re-appropriation of the results of the research by the people concerned and to the need to situate itself in the process of “creating meaning” about what happened to the community.
Click here for downloading the document

Memoria y Olvido, Nicolás Buenaventura Vidal
Abstract. La presente reflexión parte de la experiencia y trabajo de Nicolás Buenaventura Vidal como cuentero. Es un intento de observar la memoria y el olvido en mi práctica y formular, al respecto, algunas hipótesis y preguntas. Entre otras, esa: Si la enfermedad del olvido es la amnesia ¿cuál sería la enfermedad de la memoria... La memoria es camino, es el necesario trayecto para el olvido, no es un fin...
Click here for downloading the document

Proposals for the use of different artistic tools

The Use of Story Telling and Video

Creating the conditions allowing people to tell their own story
The use of story telling and video, Notes by Nicolás Buenaventura Vidal, story teller

Click here to access the original version in Spanish

Stories selected for Re-Imagining PeaceInternational Seminar
(Charlottesville, November 2004).By Nicolás Buenaventura Vidal, story teller

Click here to access the original version in Spanish

Visual arts

Methodological Proposals by Geneviève Herrgott, Visual Artist
(Many of these proposals concern work with children and teenagers).

Bibliography

Art & Conflict Transformation - Click here

Links

In Place of War (Researching Performance and War)
The University of Manchester
The project aims to research, link, debate and develop the practice of performance in sites of conflict – bringing together theatre makers and scholars who practice performance in place of war.
http://www.inplaceofwar.net

Le Château de Barbe Bleue. Théâtre et Réconciliation
This association based in Belgium has developed original theatre projects. Its specificity is to create professional performances with non-professional actors originated from vulnerable communities (migrants, detention or psychiatric centers, etc.). Its methodology is to take participants’ personal experience as the basis for creating the performance. This approach has been developed by Frédérique Lecomte, director, for the last twenty years. She has recently developed projects in Burundi and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
http://www.reconciliation.be

Peace by Piece
“What does peace look like to me…?” This is the question Maureen Bennett O’Connor is asking each of us through this project. She invites everyone to create a piece for peace, to do it individually or as a group, and then submit a few words of the experience for a travelling book to accompany the exhibition. The only visual requirement is that the piece must include the word “peace” in some small way. The exhibition grows as it travels. Through these small acts of self-expression, their voices have been harmoniously linked peace by piece.
http://www.peacebypiece.info/index.html

Recasting Reconciliation through Culture and the Arts
Brandeis University’s International Center for Ethics, Justice, and Public Life
International Fellowship Program
http://www.brandeis.edu/ethics/bif/index.html

Intermusic Center
A network that draws together cultural activists and focuses on: creativity across cultures, intercultural music education, music in conflict transformation and peace education, minority music in school and community, and rehabilitation through the performing arts.
http://intermusiccenter.org

The Community Arts Network (CAN)
CAN promotes information exchange, research and critical dialogue within the field of community-based arts. It publishes a newsletter called Art in the Public Interest. API news reports current directions in public art, art in communities and art in the public arena, with links to additional information elsewhere on the World Wide Web.
http://www.communityarts.net

The Power of Culture
The Power of Culture website reviews art and cultural expressions in conjunction with human rights, education, the environment, emancipation and democratisation. The site offers a list of projects, initiatives and objectives of Dutch organisations active in this area. The site also reports on the part played by cultural organisations in Africa, Asia, Latin America, the Caribbean and South-east Europe. This website is an initiative of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in Netherlands, Cultural Collaboration, Education and Research Department.
http://www.powerofculture.nl