OtherNetwork is a new type of cultural institution dedicated to giving visibility to independent art spaces worldwide. Guided by a belief that self-organised projects offer urgent counter-narratives to larger institutions, OtherNetwork centres around an online platform that connects these project spaces with artists, curators and cultural producers. As a decentralised project, OtherNetwork hosts an international cultural programme of events, exhibitions and conversations in locations across Africa, Europe and Latin America. In addition, OtherNetwork commissions and publishes original editorial content aiming to build a discourse on what independent cultural production means in different localities.
To celebrate its first year, OtherNetwork is excited to announce a series of new features on the website, an upcoming exhibition, and an ongoing podcast series.
Add to OtherNetwork Itinerary
OtherNetwork now offers visibility to the programmes of independent project spaces by inviting users to add upcoming exhibitions and events to the OtherNetwork Itinerary. The itinerary can be sorted by location or date, allowing visitors to get an overview of what is happening in their own city or understand the art scene of somewhere that may have been missed off their cultural radar. The itinerary also builds on the central principle of the OtherNetwork platform in mapping collaborations, seamlessly linking events to the profile of each invited speaker or exhibiting artist which remain online as an archive of their past projects.
OtherNetwork exhibition in Accra
November 23, 2023–January 14, 2024
Following last October’s debut exhibition curated by Foundation for Contemporary Art-Ghana at ifa Gallery Stuttgart, OtherNetwork continues its curatorial project in the form of a relay. For the second iteration, FCA-Ghana have invited NGO–Nothing Gets Organised from Johannesburg to guest curate an exhibition at their own space in Accra. The project Delay and Encounter and/or Other Proximate Unknowns enters a dialogue with the influential figure of W.E.B. Du Bois, whose final home and resting place surrounds the site of the exhibition. Understanding the ‘Black Outside’ as a particular spatio-temporal disposition, the project brings together multiple responses from internationally-based artists and spatial practitioners including Ola Hassanain, room19isaFactory., Jabu Arnell, Nii Noi Nortey, Luana Vitra and Natalie Penang, curated by Sinethemba Twalo for NGO–Nothing Gets Organised.
OtherNetwork Conversations
OtherNetwork Conversations is a new podcast series that highlights some of the cultural projects reshaping the art world today. In each episode, OtherNetwork visits a different art space or gallery and puts them in conversation with an invited guest in order to unpack the politics of creating art from Accra to Aotearoa and beyond. Subscribe through your favourite podcast app, or listen to Episode 1 with Shimmer (Rotterdam) & Artspace Aotearoa (Tāmaki Makaurau Auckland) and Episode 2 with Compound House Gallery (Accra) & Ylinka Barotto (New York) directly on the OtherNetwork platform.
OtherNetwork events programme
This year, members of the OtherNetwork research team have hosted a season of local events in partnership with independent project spaces in Bogotá, São Paulo, Accra and Johannesburg. Continuing this series on December 14, OtherNetwork will host renowned feminist performance collective LasTesis for an evening at Espacio Checoeslovaquia in Santiago, Chile. On December 20 at Lugar a Dudas in Cali, Colombia, the event titled Between Valleys, Rivers and Mountains will bring together curators and researchers from different parts of the country to uncover the tension in cultural production between the capital and smaller cities sometimes deemed as provincial.
Visit othernetwork.io.
Follow @othernetwork.io on instagram.
OtherNetwork is a project by ifa—Institut für Auslandsbeziehungen in collaboration with Cookies.
Concept and production: Cookies (Federico Martelli, Alice Grégoire, Clément Périssé, Colin Keays).
Research team: Samantha Modisenyane, Abraham Tettey, Matheus dos Reis, Camila Alegria, and Camilo Quiroga.
Website and visual identity: F451 (Quentin Creuzet and Domitille Debret)
Editor: Colin Keays
Project management: ifa, Visual Arts Department (Nina Frohm)
Additional project support: Stimuleringsfonds Creatieve Industrie, Between Bridges
