I spent three days last week at the AICA (which stands for International Art Critics Association, IACA until you translate it into Francais) conference, which basically was about criticism and curatorship in Africa, with a wide range of African delegates attending.

The first and perhaps most interesting revelation of the first day was that the Department of Economic Development and Tourism, which had in part supported the conference, has prioritised the creative industries because they have a high potential for growth. This means that this department might be a viable body for funding. They also seemed to be an active and exciting department as opposed to the DAC, which appears to be a staid and uninterested department.

The rest of the day was taken up by representative from Zimbabwe, Zambia, Botswana and South Africa, expounded generally on the state of art and criticism in their field. What came out of this was a realisation that we have it fucking good here in the RS of A. Elsewhere, the art appears to have been stranded in terms of advancement by the development of saleable form of art (Zimbabwe stone sculpture being a point in case). We also have more than one dedicated art school. And magazines and online resources. So thank your lucky stars. What my thinking tended towards, and spurred on by Gabi Ncgobo's speech about moving beyond the Concept of Rainbow Nation to African Renaissance, was that we are too nationalistic here, and collaborating with partners beyond our borders is a paramount undertaking.

I'm worried that this might get boring for you, dear reader, but at that risk I'll continue with a few more observations. The first being that the daily papers in both Zambia and Botswana have a regular weekly art column. I would give my right arm for that. But it also means that the public still have some respect for art. The second being that their is a marked difference between the ways the national galleries behave elsewhere in Southern Africa. Here it takes the role of collector, recorder and presenter of art, where as elsewhere, probably because of the lack of other galleries and production means, they act as activators and educators, or even agitators. Not that we are in the same economic situation as elsewhere, but it would be exciting if our gallery could take a few notes from that book.

I'll put up some more stuff tomorrow, but for now I leave you with a pretty picture, dedicated to my friend in Paris.