Tafa Juuf: Personally, I've always been convinced that the town of Joal draws its nourishment from two sources: fishing and culture, through Senghor and all the other world-famous figures who hail from Joal. And these two aspects are being neglected for various reasons, or maybe not, and are dying out on their own, because culturally, the town of Joal has almost no life left in it. And the other udder, the fish, has become so rare that the town really can't take advantage of it. So in reality, we're witnessing the cultural and economic agony of the town of Joal.

 

And yet in your project I saw that you have combined the two to try to give new life to the commune of Joal. Now how people perceive it depends on their degree of culture, reflection etc... But the aesthetic aspect and the impact are present. We've seen a lot of posts on social networks where images have been used to the point of being illegally plundered and used for inappropriate purposes. Which is why the aesthetic impact is very real, and to be welcomed.

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Kan-si: it's an electroshock that we wanted to achieve by combining these two elements that you mentioned. In fact, all we had when we tackled the subject was a vision.  To give you an idea, imagine someone observing the sea from above and say that when we started the project we were up high looking out over the sea, we observed and we saw. But then we realized that when we started the project, we entered the sea. And what we saw was nothing like what we expected. We were able to capitalize on a whole mass of information, meeting such interesting people who also told us about the relationship, not necessarily of the sea, but of the relationship between the city and the sea. And what has changed historically, culturally and also sociologically, not only with this relationship but also that of the nation with this resource, fish.

 

How it was used and what has become of it. And what's also interesting in terms of popularization and communication in relation to the project is the very important aspect of educating children at school. Because here in the schools, the schooling of many children is financed by fish, i.e. school uniforms, supplies, ceremonies etc., and the pupils in our commune are not aware of the problems that revolve around fish. So one of the positive consequences of this project is that we need to move towards a curriculum that revolves around the sea and fish, so that children attending the many schools in Joal can benefit from this vital information.

Not only did we produce works of art to enhance the commune's heritage, we also conducted interviews with activists, fish processors, fishmongers, fishermen and all those who gravitate around this; and we gathered some fascinating information. This second phase of the project was carried out in collaboration with Dieynaba Ndiaye, professor of psycho-sociology at Cheikh Anta Diop University in Dakar. The idea is to draw up a catalog and make it available to the public in terms of information. And it doesn't have to stop with us, because in my opinion it's essential that it extends to the formal and informal knowledge transmission points in the locality.

In addition to the general problem, here we're talking about the common, "liñu bokk". And the en commun, which is the way in which the common is managed. And this common ground is losing its traces, and it's linked to the way things are managed, both by others and by ourselves, our behavior towards natural resources.
So we've been able to create a material and artistic heritage that exists, contextualized with an issue that is people's experience. We try to create synergies between artistic expression and people's lives. So how can we broaden our scope as artists, because we're not just workshop artisans, because here and now, it's the lived experience that has become the issue.