Scientist in Residence

A collaboration between artists and scientists is often a one-way street. An artist learns from the scientist, and reflects on their science and themes or, at times, is being helped around the laboratory. The go-to model for such ‘ collaboration’ is the artist in residency model, where an artists is housed within a research group of a scientist, or the research center.

Belgium organization GLUON, with lead curator Hans Ulrich Obrist, wants to turn the tables of this model, and move far beyond the current state in a project called ‘Scientist in Residency’. Here a scientist will take on a residency with an artist. Two projects will start as a pilot, in one of them Raoul Frese will be a resident at the studio of Malian filmmaker Manthia Diawara. An undefined output is expected as way to showcase the residency, on the topic of artificial intelligence. The artist – scientist duo will not only explore a novel type of collaboration, the theme to explore is also outside each direct expertise. Other scientists, specialists and experts may join the effort as the project moves along. Raoul Frese will visit the studio of Diawara at the town of Yene, south of Dakar in Senegal.

Manthia Diawara

A native of Mali, Professor Diawara received his education in France and later traveled to the United States for his university studies.  He has taught at the University of California at Santa Barbara and the University of Pennsylvania.  He is the author of We Won’t Budge: An African Exile in the World (Basic Civitas Books, 2003), Black-American Cinema: Aesthetics and Spectatorship (ed. Routledge, 1993), African Cinema: Politics and Culture (Indiana University Press, 1992), and In Search of Africa (Harvard University Press, 1998).  He has published widely on the topic of film and literature of the Black Diaspora.  Professor Diawara also collaborated with Ngûgî wa Thiong’o in making the documentary Sembene Ousmane: The Making of the African Cinema, and directed the German-produced documentary Rouch in Reverse.