Notebook Art in the Streets of Dakar
A travelling exhibition cruising the streets of Dakar on a car rapide. This is the last stop of the myDetour 5x5 creative sharing project, an off event of the Biennale d'Art Africain Contemporain, May 7 - 10, 2010.A mobile exhibition of 25 decorated notebooks travelling through the streets of Dakar on a car rapide, a urban mini-bus very common in the Senegalese capital city. This is the last stop of a journey started in 2009 in Italy, with previous stops in Milan, Florence, Parma, Naples and Rome. In every city a drop box collected the creations of the local art community. The jury selected 5 notebooks in every city, to be showcased in the next stop. 5x5= 25 selected notebooks now travel to the final exhibition in Dakar, hosted by the
Afropixel festival as an off event of Dak'Art, the 9th
Biennale d'Art Africain Contemporain. The exterior of the car rapide is decorated by Senegalese artist
Henri Sagna. For the 5 opening days of the Dak'art event, the car rapide will be parked in front of the most important Biennale venues each day. On the
car rapide, an interactive flick-through video installation will also be displayed, showcasing the selected notebooks though the experimental open source Arduino technology for
physical computing. The car rapide installation is designed by
Zetalab.
New Moleskine® collectable items.
The whole myDetour5x5 project is narrated in a new Moleskine collectable set, sold online through
moleskine.it and in laFeltrinelli bookshops in Italy. 1 euro for each copy sold will be donated to the
Kër-Thiossane association, to support their project for a new Media Lab in Dakar. The Moleskine set includes a catalogue of images from the 25 selected notebooks, a Wikiafrica custom made blank notebook, a series of themed stickers, collectable cards narrating the project and two travel postcards ready for mailing.
Supporting African creativity and the Kër-Thiossane Media Lab.
Local partner for this event is Kër-Thiossane, a cultural association based in Sicap Liberté, a popular district of Dakar. Kër-Thiossane promotes art, digital culture and access to information in Africa, with a connection to the Afrofuturism cultural milieu. Revenues from the myDetour 5x5 set support the creation of the new Kër-Thiossane Media Lab, which will function as a meeting point and support centre for both African and international artists, encouraging circulation of ideas, creative experimentation, and creative industries spin-offs.
More travelling notebooks projects.
All authors donated their notebooks to the lettera27 Foundation. myDetour 5x5 is also a permanent online exhibition, you can visit it
here. myDetour 5x5 is connected to many other myDetour events also organized by Moleskine Company which took place starting from 2007 in
New York, Paris,
Berlin,
San Francisco,
Tokyo, with hundreds of people sharing their creativity worldwide. All the notebooks collected in those cities are now part of the lettera27 collection and travel the world with Moleskine events and installations. This is only a small part of all the notebook sharing and notebook crossing events taking place every year in all continents, most of them happening spontaneously, organized over the internet and the social media. See for example:
Sketchbook Project,
Moleskine Grand Tour,
1000Journals,
Sketch Crawls,
Urban Sketchers.
Innovative tools and technology for education in Africa.
The lettera27 Foundation.
Kër-Thiossane partners with lettera27, a non-profit foundation supporting education and access to knowledge in Africa. lettera27 is in turn supported by the Moleskine Company. lettera27 was born in July 2006. Its mission is to support the right to literacy, education, and the access to knowledge and information. lettera27 is the 27th letter of the alphabet, the missing letter, the letter yet to be, the hybrid sign, the empty box, the link between oral and written words, the connection to the future, the intersection of analogic and digital. lettera27 focuses on Africa and finances literacy projects based on innovative tools and technology. Among its
many projects, lettera27 supports the growth of African content on Wikimedia through the
WikiAfrica project.
Moleskine is distributed in Italy by
For Hi Res Images and press contact:
Europe: Silvia Trenta, Moleskine srl silvia.trenta@moleskine.com - T +39 02434498.1
US: Marlene C. Capron, BDE marlene@bdeonline.biz - T: 212.353.1383
Kimberly Krueger, BDE kim@bdeonline.biz - T: 212.353.1383
The CollectionmyDetour 5x5 Collectible Catalogue includes:
1 Cover Collection Holder
2 themed Stickers Sets
4 Cards with the myDetour 5x5 story
2 Car Rapid Mailing Cards
1 Normographe for themed drawings
1 Volant Pocket Plain Black Cover
customized "Wikiafrica"
1 Volant Pocket Catalogue Red Cover
The ExhibitionmyDetour 5x5 Car Rapid Exhibition
May 7-11, 2010 in the streets of Dakar.
An Off Event of the Biennale d'Art
Africain Contemporain.
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