Introduction

See http://www.ghanathinktank.org

In The Ghana Think Tank, problems identified by a group of US Art Students are sent as design briefs to a think tank of Ghanain Villagers, who are requsted to provide solutions the Art Students will enact.

This piece is about different things to different people, even within our own group. For me, it holds interest on two different levels. In a broad sense, it attempts to bring out the gaps and assumptions that exist between different cultures and media, gaps and assumptions that control our perception and actions unbenknownst to us.

A pair of quotes from Chris Rose are evocative at this point

"Context is usually unspoken; you must step back and verbalize the context."

"It's about the flawed construct of human perception, the cognitive model that is produced from the friction of experience between our inner world and the one that exists around us." (Rose, 2006)

By presenting problems in a context entirely different from the one in which the problem exists, the project attempts to focus the many unseen gaps within that exchange though the potentially unexpected solution that is presented in response. By asking for solutions to problems that have no relevance in a rural Ghanaian Village, such as the impact of Powerpoint on decision-making, we are really asking to see the gaps and assumptions at play between our context and theirs.

Of course, this project also exists on another level, as a critique of the external solution model rife within International Development.

"At a common sense level research was was talked about in terms of its absolute worthlessness to us, the indigenous world, and its absolute usefulness to those who wielded it as an instrument. It told us things already known, suggested things that would not work, and made careers for people who already had jobs"(Smith, L.T., 1999)

This is not to say that development and research is useless, but is meant to point at the drastic differences in the needs and perspectives enjoyed by people on either side of the "Development Wall" (Get ref from mom). By flipping the customary power-balance in International Development exchanges, we hope to evoke the gaps and assumptions that govern such important decisions.

That said, this project is done in earnest. I respect, even revere, many West African Village dynamics, and am genuinely eager for the fresh input a rural Ghanain may be able to provide. I know that I personally, and the US communities in which I live in general, can learn a lot from the social dynamics, architectural plans, and decision-making processes at play in these villages. I also value the aspects of projects that flourish beyond efficiency and utility: the inter-cultural exchanges, the potentially rich experience of translating a piece of Rural Ghana into Urban Providence.

In the end, this is an Art Project, not a Development Project.

Gaps and assumptions

I have realized that I learn most about another culture when i make a mistake big enough to show mt the gap between my assumptions and theirs. I've explored these gaps through animations, woodworking, interactive media, web sites, writing and pedagogic research, and I prefer to frame this project within that context than as an attack of International Development and NGOs.

I think NGOs do play an important role, and as they can play a very damaging role they must be carefully constructed and run, but as an Art Student with very limited NGO experience I am in no place to offer valid criticism.