Kenya-Indian Ocean -Conference
Culture: Kenya to host int’l conference, festival on ‘World of Indian Ocean’
http://www.apanews.net/apa.php?page=sho ... icle=88178
APA-Nairobi (Kenya) Kenya will this month host a five day international conference and festival on the “Worlds of Indian Ocean”, (WIO 2009), a theme connecting the past to the future, organizers announced here on Saturday.
The conference will be opened by Firoz Rasul, President of the Aga Khan University (AKU) on February 19 and is expected to bring participants from all over the world.
According to the organizers, the WIO 2009 event underlines the intention of the Aga Khan University to prioritise regional perspectives and dynamics, exploring nuances that have arisen through the region’s centuries old encounters with the realm of the Indian Ocean.
Connecting the Past to the Future through Peoples, Routes, Places, Landscapes, Treasures and Futures ---WIO’s work images---to generate an ‘Ideas and Action’ territory of profound encounters:
“This event aims to not only re-configure the Indian Ocean’s past, but also stake a claim in its future shape,” Mshai Mwangola, the WIO 2009 Event Director told the press in Nairobi.
The event looks afresh at some of the lessons entrenched in past Indian Ocean encounters and processes that are useful for informing both the present and the future, he said.
“WIO 2009 is a space deliberately constructed to enable society’s sector players who rarely engage one another to interact in a practical, mutually beneficial way with a view to imagining the region and the world’s future,” he explained.
He acknowledges the tensions of encounter which have also been played out in events such as the trade in humans, commercial monopolies, displacement of populations, and the amputation of entire cultural narratives.
The event will unusually combine strategic and practical workshops, intellectual explorations, artistic and cultural expression to provide a seed-bed for the AKU Faculty of Arts and Science campus that will be built in Arusha, Tanzania, to service the region and African continent. The conference will also be complimented by public performances, screenings and exhibitions from the worlds of the Indian Ocean.
“The edges of this Ocean stretch from the hinterland and shores of Africa to China and from the Middle East and Asia to the islands of South East Asia and into Australia”, said Rafique Keshavjee, head of planning at the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.
“This is the most significant arena of centuries-long convergence among people from a whole slew of backgrounds and societies, a zone of continued exchange of goods and ideas, of encounters, ordinary and extraordinary, tragic and invigorating, resulting in diverse and complex histories,” he added.
JK/daj/APA
2009-02-07
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http://nairobinow.wordpress.com/2009/02 ... d-nairobi/
Upcoming: Worlds of the Indian Ocean, Feb 19th-23rd 2009, various locations around Nairobi
February 5, 2009
WORLDS OF THE INDIAN OCEAN 19TH TO 23RD FEBRUARY 2009
Aga Khan University Faculty of Arts and Sciences, East Africa presently located in Nairobi would wish to introduce to you the event we will be hosting in Nairobi from February 19 to 23, 2009. The Worlds of the Indian Ocean (WIO 2009) is a showpiece arts and science festival and conference that will bring some of the most unusual minds and thinkers to Nairobi to debate, discuss, celebrate, explore, imagine roles and responsibilities (local, regional and global) against a backdrop of the Indian Ocean as a geographical and metaphorical space of opportunity in the twenty first century.
Our WIO (2009) is the first of such creative interdisciplinary and multi-sectoral events that we will be a part of, and will be held in different Indian Ocean linked states of the world. Our five day event, hosted largely at the National Museums of Kenya space, shall combine strategic and practical workshops, intellectual explorations, public and cultural expression and business forums. Emphasis is being placed on the facilitation of productive linkages among peoples on different edges of the Indian Ocean. For our part, we are keen to tap into the projected needs and opportunities of the different sectors of the society that will have an impact on our planning and thinking as we prepare to establish a standard-setting regional arts and science campus in Arusha, Tanzania.
Apart from a Gala Night that will be held on February 20 at the Safari Park, the main activities are built around a three-day scientific conference. The lectures are broad-ranging, engaging and agenda-setting rather than narrowly focused. A one-day strategic business forum will involve specialists presenting ideas around biodiversity, security, marine ecology and economies, new and digital technology including nanotechnology and nanoscience and futures literacy which shall involve profiles of a new generation of thinkers and actors who are involved in innovative ventures in this region.
Our goal, is to stimulate a wide range of encounters to stimulate the creativity and imagination that emerges when different worlds meet. We are inviting business leaders, academicians, scientists, technologists, future thinkers, diplomats, journalists, artists, development innovators and environmental experts and educationalists to grab a hold of and roll with the ideas while considering the implications of the regionally under-imagined resource that the Indian Ocean is.
More details and festival programme coming shortly