Thierry Nlandu

 is Professor at the Faculty of Arts of the University of Kinshasa, Congo.  He teaches Anglo-American literature. He is a dramatist and a  sociopolitical activist. Presently, he is the Executive Secretary of the  Provincial Government in Kinshasa, DRC.

 Interested in meeting this Abramowitz Artist-in-Residence? He'll be on  campus April 7-25, 2008

  Public Program: “Picture Book on Participatory Democracy: An Art's   Act of Resistance against Facade Democracy”

  Date: Monday, April 14, 2008, 7pm

  Location: Bartos Theater

 co-presented with VAP

To manage these responsibilities, Congo's citizens need to be informed about the decisive role they are expected to play in the present democratic process to understand their participation to civic life. No nation can claim to be democratic without citizen participation. Hence to allow citizens to have a critical and efficient commitment to civic life, they need to have basic knowledge and skills.

This picture book is meant to offer a didactic tool to the different organisations that, in DRC struggle to inform citizens and help them to build a democracy that will refuse to be a facade democracy to offer a better future to this rich nation. A didactic tool, the present picture book is an act of resistance against a democratic process made of elections only and so called free democratic institutions without any democratic praxis or culture.

The present paper will not probably use the language you are familiar with when you talk about visual arts and their connection with political and social changes. My language will be the everyday language of local people who struggle to have a space where they can learn at their own pace and with tools adapted to their level.

It will be divided into four sections that combine dramatic texts, pictures, workshop participants and trainer comments. A long way to go, participatory democracy will need the knowledge of the rules organising the nation, a knowledge of the different institutions and actors and a mastery of the techniques that will help the population to be pro active.

 

Read more in the article "Beyond Political Democracy" (PDF) .

Also see Nlandu's essay on the theatrical work "A Puppet Theater in Three Tableaux."

After its last election, the Democratic Republic of the Congo is at a turning point in its existence as a nation and as a free and democratic state. Citizens of this country are aware that the future of their state depends on the responsibilities they will assume as members of a post-conflict nation.