Swiss participation at #Kerkennah01
Tunisia
June 21, 2018 till June 27, 2018
Kerkennah01
This month, Swiss photo experts Danaé Panchaud, Director of Pasquart Photoforum, and curator Sarah Girard are participating at the first edition of International Festival of Photography and Visual Arts #Kerkennah01.
A program of exhibitions, meetings, screenings and debates will take place on the 14 islands of the Kerkennah archipelago, from June 22nd to 27th, 2018. Kerkennah01 is the first festival dedicated to photography, video and digital arts in Tunisia, which aims to become a major platform for exchange, development and introduction to photography in North Africa.
Addressing professionals as amateurs, #Kerkennah01 intends to encourage the emergence of a photographic scene in Tunisia. By choosing to invest in the Kerkennah archipelago, the festival shows the desire to go off the beaten tracks, through radical decentralization. This project, as original as it is ambitious, is part of a marginal territory, insular, marked by strong economic and social stakes. Cited by Plutarch and Herodotus, Kerkennah or Cercina, houses the remains of a Roman city and the specters of Julius Caesar, Hannibal, Peter of Aragon, Sinan Pasha or Chateaubriand.
Experimental, collegial and demanding, the artistic direction of the festival is entrusted to a curatorial committee composed of internationally renowned curators. Thus, even within its creative process, #Kerkennah01 asserts itself as a platform for training and experimentation, questioning not only the curatorial practices, but also the impact of such a festival on the inhabitants of the archipelago and more broadly on the cultural life of the country and its actors (artists, students, gallerists, collectors …) The ambition is to create sustainable infrastructure for the local population, while raising public awareness and class policy on the cultural, educational, tourist and economic potential of such an event.
For its first edition, #Kerkennah01 will bring together many artists from around several countries, who will invest the territory of Kerkennah (its streets, schools, palm grove, beaches, ports and monuments) for a multiplicity of perspectives on photographic creation and its possible futures. Aesthetic and social experience, #Kerkennah01 aims to offer a wide audience a unique relationship to the image.
