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The Production of Social Space as Artwork 235
devices through which cultural production occurs and in the places where it
is grounded. Because this crisis affects the effectiveness of institutions, conditions
of production, and the visibility and quality of discursive formations,
the position of the artist and intellectual within the public sphere is constantly
called into question. Furthermore, the coercive power of the state to
force artists and intellectuals to adapt their practices according to an ofWcial
dictum of the state apparatus forces attempts at disclosing the autonomy of
the artist and intellectual under such force. 29 Many intellectuals, researchers,
and nongovernmental organizations working in the area of African political
economy in recent years have focused on different strategies of strengthening
civil society, governance, democracy, and informal economies as a way
of boosting the sovereignty of the subject in a time of crisis.
This has given rise to a number of responses. Though much of the focus has
been concentrated around the work of NGOs, community associations,
social science think tanks, and multilateral global institutions, very little
attention has been given to the dimension of culture. I do so here by examining
the work of two distinctly different groups of practitioners who have
made the analysis of the conditions of production under this crisis the sine
qua non of their reXexive activities since 1989 and 1996, respectively. The
two groups, Le Groupe Amos in Kinshasa and Huit Facettes in Dakar, were
each formed as speciWc responses to (1) the crisis of the public sphere under
the long dictatorship of Mobutu Sese Seko in the former Zaire and its further
deterioration under the late Laurent Kabila who overthrew the regime
of Mobutu in 1997; (2) the erosion of the link between the state and formal
institutions of culture; (3) the collapse and disappearance of the public
sphere; and (4) the crisis and alienation of the labor of the artist working
within the forced bifurcation of social space between the urban and rural contexts
of Senegal. All of these responses, the Wrst in the Democratic Republic
of Congo (formerly Zaire) and the other in Senegal, are positions speciWcally
articulated toward the production of a common social space and the
development of protocols of community as the Wrst condition for the recognition
of the sovereign subject.
It is by this insight that we can situate the work of Le Groupe
Amos and Huit Facettes, especially in light of their direct engagement with
the politics of crisis in African social, political, and cultural discourse in
order to produce new networks that link them to local communities. Each,
in their conception of the social and community, calls for evaluative procedures
in the construction of a reXexive practice within their given context.
Le Groupe Amos was founded in 1989 by a group of writers,
intellectuals, activists, and artists in Kinshasa. It emerged out of the political