The Création & Transmission space stems from a movement: that of a practice — communication and cultural production — which, when confronted with the complexity and diversity of the field, deepens to the point of becoming research. It is based on the founding principle that communication is a way of acting reciprocally, of creating the spatial, temporal and relational conditions for worlds to meet; it means accepting to be transformed within this movement and to allow new forms of dialogue to emerge from it. It is no longer simply a matter of communicating, but of being, acting and creating through communication – in other words, through connection and presence.
It is within this patiently cultivated relational ground that transmission is defined: it enables co-construction by creating the conditions for fruitful exchange; it constitutes the very process through which the knowledge present mutually nourishes and transforms one another; and, finally, it is the fruit of this process, manifesting as new capacities for action and new modes and objects of learning. Transmission thus operates as a dialogical and generative process in which new forms of knowledge and practice are constructed, and from which new forms of transmission proper emerge. By ‘co-construction’, we mean an approach in which all stakeholders — local communities, holders of endogenous knowledge, researchers, creators, local driving forces — participate on an equal footing in the development of objectives, methods and forms of collective action, within a space where epistemic hierarchies are suspended.
Creation thus becomes a key modality of the transmission process: it brings things tangibly to life, it materialises possibilities, and opens up spaces for experimentation, generation and innovation. It works with what is present, producing new languages, pathways and voices of access. It is an immersive and interactive form of investigating reality, a mode of knowledge production that places imagination and practice at the foundation of our understanding of a plural living world and its potentialities, at the heart of transformative action. It takes shape through the convergence of various forms of knowledge – situated, artistic, craft-based and academic. Orality, gestures, our stories shaped by cultural singularities, identities and symbolism, operating methods and community-based teaching approaches, as well as the long-term timeframes required for territorial anchoring, are all tools and levers that nourish the collaborative creation essential to the relationship between worlds and to a new way of being in the world. This collaborative creation, recognised and valued in its freest and most inventive form, becomes the crucible of a transformation through which the various regimes of knowledge do not merely coexist and cooperate, but transform one another through their interaction, giving rise to hybrid forms and unexpected innovations: this is what we call epistemic alchemy.
Bénédicte Samson has lived and worked independently on the African continent since the start of her professional career. As a communications specialist, executive producer, artistic director and curator, she has spent nearly three decades leading ambitious cultural and artistic projects at the intersection of curation and production, paying particular attention to promoting and showcasing local technical and artisanal skills. Her work has notably been carried out within the Dakar Contemporary Art Biennale: working alongside Simon Njami in 2016 to propose and launch the Afrosiders Train Station project as the IN’s artists’ village; with her personal project, theMatter Art Project, at Dak’Art OFF 2018 and 2022 in partnership with her promoter; working with ElHadji Malick Ndiaye on the IN 2022 and under the direction of the associations Rwanda Art Initiatives and La Lune Nouvelle for *Les Restes Suprêmes*; with Felwine Sarr in 2022 for the IN’s *Les Débats Scientifiques*; working with Bénédicte Savoy and her multinational team of researchers on the 2024 OFF programme with the Re-connecting Art project and its exhibition *Branching Streams – Sketches of Kinship*. Bénédicte also produced, alongside Kader Attia, the Dakar-based section ‘Vive l’Indépendance de l’eau’ for the 2017 Sharjah Biennial; she was responsible for the production and artistic curation of the ‘Museum & Alterity’ symposium led by Felwine Sarr in Dakar that same year; and, alongside Felwine Sarr and Achille Mbembe, organised the four editions of the Ateliers de la Pensée (2016–2022), as well as their doctoral school. It is in this context that she joined the African Pluriversity of Knowledge, where she oversees institutional communications and heads the Creation & Transmission Laboratory. Based in Dakar, she also works as an independent consultant specialising in brand and content creation within the cultural sector.
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