Google “African art” and the search results show curio images of the continent. No Kentridge, no Sibande, no Tlale, no Macharia, no Stuurman.
Now there is a movement to change those images to a contemporary picture of African creativity through the African Art Intervention. Absolut One Source Live have loaded a vast catalogue of contemporary images of African creativity at www.onesourcelive.com. The more votes an image gets, the more those images will become the ones you see when you google African Art next time.
And before you know it, the picture that search engines present are the real and rich African art that the continent has to offer.
The African Art Intervention is part of Absolut One Source Live, a festival of African creativity that will take place in Johannesburg on 24 March 2018. Led by 5 creative revolutionaries, Absolut One Source Live will be an all-day collaborative celebration of contemporary music, art, fashion design and food. Headlining are Absolut One Source Live creative revolutionaries: award winning rap-star Khuli Chana (South Africa / Music) alongside Sho Madjozi, (South Africa/ Music), Trevor Stuurman, (South Africa / Fashion) Fabrice Monteiro, (Senegal-Benin /Fashion, art), and Osborne Macharia, (Kenya/ Photography).
Iris Le Berg, Global Marketing Manager at The Absolut Company says: “The internet is the primary source of information for billions of people around the world. Images people see online about Africa affect their perception and attitude toward the continent and its people. We believe that by changing the predominant images people see, we can affect their attitude too.”
How the African Art Intervention works:
Every time a person enters a search on google, the search engine crawls the net for information and links based on the keywords used in the search command, i.e. African Art.
Google returns the most “relevant” results based on the keywords used i.e. “African Art”. The relevance of a search result is based on how often particular images have been linked to specific keywords.
This means if enough of us go onto www.onesourcelive.com and “upvote” images with a more accurate reflection of African art today, the google algorithm will increasingly relate them to the keywords and return them as search results that will change what the world sees when they search for African Art online.
