(...) But this anthropological approach to culture has also been on the agenda within the art scene over the course of the last three decades; critical questions on issues pertaining to ethnic, racial, and regional equality have shaped a revolt against the fact that Western cultural powers-that-be (museums, critics, and art historians) have in the past acted in ways that discriminated against non-Western artists. In days gone by the Western art institution applied a somewhat stereotypical, anthropological view of art, meaning that e.g. an African artist could have their art exhibited in the West if, and it is an important if, the works were hand-carved wooden masks, but not if they employed the same "modern" media as Western artists. The works of an African could be accepted as "African art", not simply as "art" on a par with Western art.

Whereas artists and their works would formerly be regarded as anthropological stereotypes, nowadays it is often artists who cast a critical gaze on such stereotypes in their works. For the Socle du Monde biennial Christian Danielewitz and Christian Botale have created the work The Fourth Estate and the Fifth Column, which addresses the ways in which Western media portray Africa. A row of laptops broadcast different TV channels and their news coverage about the African continent, but the status that media hold as the "Fourth Estate" is difficult to assess when it comes to creating images of states other than the one to which the given media itself belongs, for on whose behalf are such media watching out? Are they looking out on behalf of African states or on behalf of the Western states who, by virtue of their colonial past, share a great deal of the responsibility for the creation of the Africa we see today?

Perhaps Western media actually come to exercise as a kind of fifth-column activity, undermining the chances that African voices have of being heard. Danielewitz creates an alternative to the media cacophony by inviting Botale from The Democratic Republic of the Congo to present his version of the story during a performance at the exhibition. Among other things, the story is about the dangerous and wearying work that Congolese miners carry out in pursuit of coltan (or columbite-tantalite), from which minerals important to the manufacture of electronic devices are extracted – devices like those used to display Western media coverage of Africa.

Lotte Philipsen

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