Next Flag

Positions in contemporary African art

At the beginning of the 20th century, aesthetic revolutions occurred with the Dadaist and Surrealist movements. For their strategic actions the poet Léopold Sédar Senghor coined the term “franc-tireurs entrenched behind the enemy”–those who as vanguard start a new world order on unsecured ground. The initiators of “NEXT FLAG–an African sniper project for European spaces” use this image of Senghor’s franc-tireurs in order to express their desire for a new artistic and social space.

That the initiators are Africans is due to the Marxist concept of historical materialism. This states that no changes of circumstances can be derived from those who have profited from the contrasts of this world. In an act of post-postcolonial occupation, NEXT FLAG has made it its aim to represent contemporary African art in European exhibition rooms. The project thus makes the attempt to bring together existing contradictions under a new–the next–flag, not in the sense of unity but as the establishment of a new, emotional geography, detached from physical actuality.

With texts by the editors, as well as Simon Njami, Olu Oguibe, Nicolas Bourriaud, Kendell Geers, Daniel Buren, Loulou Cherinet, and Mounir Fatmi.

Published with the Migros Museum für Gegenwartskunst, Zurich, and the Institut für Kulturtheorie der Universität Lüneburg.