30r364 boek.qxd:awards book 11 - Prince Claus Fund

IntroductionThrough its diverse programmes the Prince Claus Fund is involved inan expanding range of innovative actions. Our networks continue togrow as people around the world create inspired initiatives to stimulatecultural production and social development. This year, for the first time,our annual publication celebrating the Prince Claus Awards includes anoverview of the Fund’s activities.To refresh its outlook and extend its research, each year the Fund intro -duces a new theme. Culture and the Human Body was selected for 2008with the aim of focusing awareness on the crucial role of the body inculture and development. During the year, the Fund has supportedseveral inspiring initiatives related to this theme. They include a festivalof performance art in the city of Cali in Colombia that highlights thepower of the body as a medium for questioning social concepts; ‘HuacaII’, a project involving musicians and dancers from India and Peru incross-cultural examination of the relationship between the spirit andthe body; and the Young Kings Arts, who generate public engage ment inNigeria through spontaneous performance of body-related arts.In some cultural environments gender and skin colour may lead todisadvantage; in other situations using a wheelchair or being blind maygive rise to discrimination. The links between the physical body andcultural norms are clearly revealed in conceptions of sexuality, withdirect effects on both societies and individuals. During 2008, the Fundcollaborated with Nepal’s Blue Diamond Society to enable a group ofMetis, people of ‘the third nature’, to perform at the International aidsConference in Mexico City, sharing their realities and their experiencesof the body through dance and theatre. To coincide with the eu/LatinAmerican and Caribbean Summit in 2008, the Fund collaborated withAlta Tecnologia Andina in an event conducted in sign language thatoffered critical comment on contemporary politics.The body is the interface between our ideas and our lived realities. Ithas such an essential role that there is a tendency to take it for granted,but the 2008 Prince Claus Laureates ensure that we can neither overlooknor ignore what the body reveals. As the culmination of work around thetheme, the 2008 Prince Claus Awards honour the outstanding achieve -ments of individuals engaged in exploring and exposing the multifacetednature of the interconnection of Culture and the Human Body. Repre -sen tation of human physicality in the monu mental sculptures ofSenegalese Laureate Ousmane Sow confronts stereotypes and calls for14 2008 Prince Claus Awards