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The
AMA DIALOG FOUNDATION
Directors: Doris
Weller M.A., Dr.
Meki Nzewi, |
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The AMA DIALOG FOUNDATION undertakes research, documentation and re-orientation projects aimed at giving contemporary relevance and appreciation to the viable cultural arts heritages of African peoples. At the same time the Foundation promotes artistic and human understanding through cultural arts study-visit programmes to Africa by other worldpeoples. The philosophy of the AMA DIALOG (centre for interaction), is that knowledge is a cycle of experiencing; when you wake up is your morning. That is, knowledge continues to recur and growin substance and possibilities. Every awareness or contribution to the rotating pool (cycle) of knowledge at every and any point in time, has consequence for humanity, now or in the future. As such,we advocate that the traditional mental arts heritages of Africa should not be relegated,subverted or merely frozen in time while its human environment is modernising. African creative and performance arts have always reflected the advancing intellects ofAfrican human genius. Africas original artistic genius should not stagnate as exotic legacies of exhausted human mental enterprise. Rather, Africa has the unique,modern blessing to advance into the present with its viable past. The AMA DIALOG organises annual Study-Visit programmes. Participants from other, particularly industrialized worlds, have mentally recreating experience of art and life while residing in an African rural environment. Study-Visit participants take part in workshops on painting (with African traditional women Upa artspecialists), African music (theory and practice of African drum music), African traditional dance and drama.
This involves theoretically orientated creative interaction with Africas traditional as well as modern master creative and perfomance artists within a traditional, African, arts-alive environment.A Study-Visit programme culminates in a mini arts festival in which workshopparticipants take part as performers and observers. The participants, most of whom come from Europe and America, could be professionals, amateurs, educators or general knowledge visitors wishing to have recreational experience of traditional African living. The AMA DIALOG has a traditional compound with mud, residential houses in the rural setting of Nsugbe, Nigeria. There are also studio and workshop facilities for artists, researchers and Study-Visitparticpants. The AMA DIALOG FOUNDATION is a Non-Governmental Organisation which depends mainly on grants and donations to enable it prosecute its various projects of research, and the re-orientation of Africas viable traditional arts heritages. The AMA DIALOG also runs special Study-Visitprogrammes for sponsored groups such as University/College students or managers of industries. Special programmes are designed to suit the specific study or human-cultural interests of the sponsoring organisation.
Set up in 1993 by the private initiative of the Founders, Doris Weller, M.A., a German professional modern painter and Dr Meki Nzewi, a Nigerian Cultural Scientist, the Foundation has already undertaken the research, documentation and re-orientation of : The Upa, Aesthetic Wall Art, civilisation of the Igbo of Nigeria which has rural Igbo women as the traditional specialist paint-drawers. A group of these women have now been re-orientated for contemporary relevance as modern Upa art professionals. They still produce their unique Upa artstyle using the original earth colours. However, they have now additionally developed a continuum of the abstract Upa art style. They paint-draw on canvasses, paper and modern cement walls. Their modern art works have since been put on exhibition in the modern art market, forworld appreciation and patronage, as well as to offer fresh creative direction in the modern fine arts milieu. This project was prosecuted between 1991 and 1993 with funding from the German Foreign Office in Bonn.
The African Modern Classical Concert Music Series is the second major research and re-orientation project of the AMA DIALOG, funded independently by the Founders/Directors. In progress is the research and re-orientation of the African Spirit-Manifest Music theatre (hither to in appropriately termed masquerade) practices. The current trend in Africa is to present the maskingtheatre as modern garish shows with flimsy but flashy entertainment content. Our objective is to study and re-orientate both the human and artistic contents of the traditional masking practice. The now re-orientated masking drama, in content and presentational style, represents a modern continuum for its traditional committments to the management of society, life and personality.The modern spirit-manifest drama has a standing professional troupe which produces value-imbued spirit-drama entertainment theatre for world television audience as well as for the original live-theatre audience. The AMA DIALOG FOUNDATION is the clearing agency for the world wide exhibition, performance and marketting of the products of the various re-orientated African creative and performance art forms it has developed.
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Contact Addresses: AMA DIALOG FOUNDATION AMA DIALOG FOUNDATION
NIGERIA: |
