Die Groupe d’Action et d’Étude Critique Africa (GAEC) is a decolonial collective, initially composed of faculty and students of the Université Gaston Berger (Satin Louis, Senegal), people from the neighborhoods, volunteers, professionals, thinkers, social activists. This study group rooted in the field of critical humanities, jointly carries out projects and programs towards public universities in Senegal and the region and other non-academic sites of knowledge production. The collective promotes research with practice through the organization of popular workshops, awareness campaigns, advocacy, experiential schools, but also aims to rethink pedagogy as a tool for changing mentalities and behaviors.
As we play with the arts, the spirit and literature, we'll be wandering the city streets and market squares, the bars and other terraces, the schools and workshops, the shops and the wise men, looking for traces that remind us of what's essential, but also looking for the sounds and names of objects that we don't want to lose.
As a partner in the development of the TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE, GAEC's project “Esprit des Objets - Objets des Esprit” deals with a collection of West African objects from the Musée Théodore Monod (Dakar) curated for the TALKING OBJECTS ARCHIVE. They delve into the cosmologies of the objects with the aim of re-discovering the knowledge hidden within them. GAEC is therefore establishing an Indigenous Wisdom Institute with a wide range of activities: community dialogues on local knowledge, healing and spirituality; a workshop on “Sound Arts as Archive”; a series of interviews on the objects (Cahier de Notes), discussion rounds and an exhibition (“Les yeux de l'eau”).
The exhibition “Les yeux de l'eau” opens on 18 May in Saint Louis, followed by workshops on objects and their cosmologies on 21 and 22 May together with the TALKING OBJECTS team, neighbors, artists and thinkers.